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Processing
electronic Payments
As the business and banking community
continues to move towards electronic
payments rather than paper check payments
you need to think about the best way to get
these electronic payments recorded within
your software.
There are three
ways in which these payments can be recorded
and each has it’s pro’s and con’s.
-
Enter
electronic payments through the General
Ledger as a Transaction crediting cash
and debiting the expense, liability,
asset or capital. The pro to this is
that it is quick and simple to record
the payment. The cons to this are that
if you are using Bank Reconciliation
there will be nothing for you to tag in
Cleared Transactions when the Bank
Statement shows the payment coming out
of the Bank Account. Also it is
difficult to go back and find history on
these payments. Running the General
Ledger Journal for source code M1 (the
default manual source code) will give
you not only your electronic payments
but any other manual entries you made.
w Enter
these payments through Bank Reconciliation,
Transactions. The pro is that it will
generate the proper entries in General
Ledger and it will give you the item to tag
in Cleared Transactions. The con is that the
only way you can go back and research
history is to run the General Ledger Journal
for the Source Code BR. This will not only
give you the entry you are looking for but
it will also give you all other entries that
were made using Bank Reconciliation.
w Set
up a vendor in Accounts Payable for each
type of these electronic payments. For
example I would set up a vendor ID of 941
for Federal Tax Payments, STATEWH for State
Withholding electronic payments, etc. Enter
each electronic payment through Accounts
Payable Transactions and PREPAY them on the
Total Screen. For the Payment number you can
use either a separate series of ‘check’
numbers for these electronic payments or use
the same check number for each type of
payments. You could even use a shortened
form of the date that payment came out of
the bank account (Assuming 06/01/11 you
would use the check number 60111). The pro
of using Accounts Payable is that you now
have vendor detail and payment history that
can be sorted the same way any other vendor
is sorted. Also if the amount is the same
each month you could set up a recurring
entry for this amount and bring into
transactions each month. The con (a small
one) is that it does take extra time to
enter in Accounts Payable.
Top
2011 Customer
Excellence Conference September 14-15.
This year’s
conference will again be at South Point
Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.
These two days are packed with breakout
sessions for both TRAVERSE and OSAS, access
to the Learning Lab and the Vendor Booths
that will show you various software and
programs that can enhance your current suite
of applications. Also get a view of the
latest releases of software that will
shortly be coming your way.
Watch the website for the early bird special
at
www.osas.com.
Top
Is June Your Fiscal
Year End?
June 30 is the second most common Fiscal
year end. Here are a few things you need to
remember if it is your fiscal year end:
- Create your new General Ledger Year as
soon as possible after June 30.
Payroll is processed on a calendar year so
process payroll as usual.
-
Other applications such as Accounts Payable,
Accounts Receivable, etc. are date specific
so as long as you properly date the invoices
they will post to the proper period and
year.
-
Remember to update the Current Year after
you post to the master in the old year. This
brings forward the year end balances to the
new year.
Top
June Promotion
If your software is not current on CES
(Continuous Enhancement Subscription) and
you have been thinking about ‘upgrading’
your software (either TRAVERSE or OSAS) you
can do it during the month of June at a very
reduced price due to the promotion that Open
Systems is offering this month.
Also, if you are an OSAS user and are
thinking of moving to TRAVERSE this
promotion also applies to you.
Rather than an ‘upgrade’ fee you pay two
year’s worth of CES up front and then the
current year’s CES is divided by 12 and you
will be billed monthly for it. If you prefer
you can pay the current year up front to
avoid monthly payment.
This promotion will save you approximately
44% over the usual upgrade or migration fee.
It will also give you the latest version of
OSAS or TRAVERSE along with all the new
features.
Contact us for a quote to get your OSAS or
TRAVERSE software current or to migrate
your OSAS to TRAVERSE.
Remember demo’s are always free.
Top
Credit Card Invoice
Number
When entering miscellaneous credit card
receipts during the month it is a good idea
to use the invoice number to assist you
later on when looking up credit card
invoices in history.
If you use the date of purchase in the
format of YYYYMMDD for the invoice number
all the invoices in history will line up in
date order.
Or, if you use the actual vendor that the
charge was to as the invoice number then
when you look up in history you can see
exactly who this was charged to.
In either case when you run detail history
you can filter a range of dates or a range
of vendors on the report to get right to
only the date you are looking for.
Top
Inventory for
Internal Use
Often times there are items that have been
purchased and placed in Inventory that may
be used internally by your company. These
items not only need to be removed from the
Physical Inventory they also need to be
expensed to the proper General Ledger code
for the use they were removed from the
inventory for.
There are two ways you can handle this:
1. Using
Inventory, Transactions and the ‘Adjustment’
Tab (set to decrease) allows you to enter
the inventory item you are removing, the
quantity, and the General Ledger Account
number that you want this item expensed to.
A comment can be included as to the reason
for this adjustment.
2. Using
Material Requisitions allows you to enter
the Inventory item to be removed from
inventory, the quantity and the
General Ledger Account Number to expense to.
With Material Requisitions you can print out
the requisition to have on file or to send
to the Warehouse much like a Pick Slip for
pulling the items from inventory.
Top
Vacations
Summer vacations tend to bring along their
own issues for the Payroll Department. Some
employees receive their vacation checks in
advance, some employees do not take their
vacations and just receive an ‘extra’ check.
Hourly employees vs salaried employees can
also create issues.
Here are some helpful hints for processing
vacation checks:
-
Hourly employees can receive two (or more)
checks in the same payroll run by entering
their regular hours as normal. This entry
defaults to Sequence Code 000. By entering
the vacation hours under a different
Sequence number you can generate two checks
for the employee in the same check run.
-
Salaried employees can receive two checks in
one payroll run by adding a ‘manual’ check
for vacation hours for the salaried employee
after you have calculated checks for all
employees.
-
To process vacation checks (hourly or
salary) that you don't want all of the
scheduled deductions to apply you can use
‘Manual Checks’ after Calculating Checks to
call up the vacation check and zero out the
deductions that do not apply. Recalculate
this check and when the checks are printed
only those deductions that should apply will
apply.
-
You can generate a single check with both
regular hours and vacation hours for an
hourly employee but know that the taxes will
be calculated at a higher rate than two
individual checks because all tax
calculations are based upon an the check
amount annualized. You do have the option to
go into ‘manual checks’ and adjust the
Federal and State amounts withheld.
-
To process an entire payroll run with no
deductions taken out, only taxes when you
calculate your checks use the Pay Code of 6
and checks will be calculated with only tax
withholdings.
Top
Processing electronic
Payments
As the business and banking community
continues to move towards electronic
payments rather than paper check payments
you need to think about the best way to get
these electronic payments recorded within
your software.
There are three ways in which these payments
can be recorded and each has it’s pro’s and
con’s.
Enter electronic payments through the
General Ledger as a Transaction crediting
cash and debiting the expense, liability,
asset or capital. The pro to this is that it
is quick and simple to record the payment.
The cons to this are that if you are using
Bank Reconciliation there will be nothing
for you to tag in Cleared Transactions when
the Bank Statement shows the payment coming
out of the Bank Account. Also it is
difficult to go back and find history on
these payments. Running the General Ledger
Journal for source code M1 (the default
manual source code) will give you not only
your electronic payments but any other
manual entries you made.
Enter
these payments through Bank Reconciliation,
Transactions. The pro is that it will
generate the proper entries in General
Ledger and it will give you the item to tag
in Cleared Transactions. The con is that the
only way you can go back and research
history is to run the General Ledger Journal
for the Source Code BR. This will not only
give you the entry you are looking for but
it will also give you all other entries that
were made using Bank Reconciliation.
Set
up a vendor in Accounts Payable for each
type of these electronic payments. For
example I would set up a vendor ID of 941
for Federal Tax Payments, STATEWH for State
Withholding electronic payments, etc. Enter
each electronic payment through Accounts
Payable Transactions and PREPAY them on the
Total Screen. For the Payment number you can
use either a separate series of ‘check’
numbers for these electronic payments or use
the same check number for each type of
payments. You could even use a shortened
form of the date that payment came out of
the bank account (Assuming 06/01/11 you
would use the check number 60111). The pro
of using Accounts Payable is that you now
have vendor detail and payment history that
can be sorted the same way any other vendor
is sorted. Also if the amount is the same
each month you could set up a recurring
entry for this amount and bring into
transactions each month. The con (a small
one) is that it does take extra time to
enter in Accounts Payable.
Top
2011 Customer
Excellence Conference September 14-15.
This year’s
conference will again be at South Point
Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.
These two days are packed with breakout
sessions for both TRAVERSE and OSAS, access
to the Learning Lab and the Vendor Booths
that will show you various software and
programs that can enhance your current suite
of applications. Also get a view of the
latest releases of software that will
shortly be coming your way.
Watch the website for the early bird special
at
www.osas.com.
Top
Is June Your Fiscal
Year End?
June 30 is the
second most common Fiscal year end. Here are
a few things you need to remember if it is
your fiscal year end:
- Create
your new General Ledger Year as soon as
possible after June 30.
- Payroll
is processed on a calendar year so process
payroll as usual.
- Other
applications such as Accounts Payable,
Accounts Receivable, etc. are date specific
so as long as you properly date the invoices
they will post to the proper period and
year.
-
Remember to update the Current Year after
you post to the master in the old year. This
brings forward the year end balances to the
new year.
Top
June Promotion
If your software is not current on CES
(Continuous Enhancement Subscription) and
you have been thinking about ‘upgrading’
your software (either TRAVERSE or OSAS) you
can do it during the month of June at a very
reduced price due to the promotion that Open
Systems is offering this month.
Also, if you are an OSAS user and are
thinking of moving to TRAVERSE this
promotion also applies to you.
Rather than an ‘upgrade’ fee you pay two
year’s worth of CES up front and then the
current year’s CES is divided by 12 and you
will be billed monthly for it. If you prefer
you can pay the current year up front to
avoid monthly payment.
This promotion will save you approximately
44% over the usual upgrade or migration fee.
It will also give you the latest version of
OSAS or TRAVERSE along with all the new
features.
Contact us for a quote to get your OSAS or
TRAVERSE software current or to migrate
your OSAS to TRAVERSE.
Remember demo’s are always free.
Top
Credit Card Invoice
Number
When entering miscellaneous credit card
receipts during the month it is a good idea
to use the invoice number to assist you
later on when looking up credit card
invoices in history.
If you use the date of purchase in the
format of YYYYMMDD for the invoice number
all the invoices in history will line up in
date order.
Or, if you use the actual vendor that the
charge was to as the invoice number then
when you look up in history you can see
exactly who this was charged to.
In either case when you run detail history
you can filter a range of dates or a range
of vendors on the report to get right to
only the date you are looking for.
Top
Inventory for Internal
Use
Often times there are items that have been
purchased and placed in Inventory that may
be used internally by your company. These
items not only need to be removed from the
Physical Inventory they also need to be
expensed to the proper General Ledger code
for the use they were removed from the
inventory for.
There are two ways you can handle this:
1. Using
Inventory, Transactions and the ‘Adjustment’
Tab (set to decrease) allows you to enter
the inventory item you are removing, the
quantity, and the General Ledger Account
number that you want this item expensed to.
A comment can be included as to the reason
for this adjustment.
2. Using
Material Requisitions allows you to enter
the Inventory item to be removed from
inventory, the quantity and the
General Ledger Account Number to expense to.
With Material Requisitions you can print out
the requisition to have on file or to send
to the Warehouse much like a Pick Slip for
pulling the items from inventory.
Top
Vacations2
Summer vacations tend to bring along their
own issues for the Payroll Department. Some
employees receive their vacation checks in
advance, some employees do not take their
vacations and just receive an ‘extra’ check.
Hourly employees vs salaried employees can
also create issues.
Here are some helpful hints for processing
vacation checks:
-
Hourly employees can receive two (or more)
checks in the same payroll run by entering
their regular hours as normal. This entry
defaults to Sequence Code 000. By entering
the vacation hours under a different
Sequence number you can generate two checks
for the employee in the same check run.
-
Salaried employees can receive two checks in
one payroll run by adding a ‘manual’ check
for vacation hours for the salaried employee
after you have calculated checks for all
employees.
-
To process vacation checks (hourly or
salary) that you don't want all of the
scheduled deductions to apply you can use
‘Manual Checks’ after Calculating Checks to
call up the vacation check and zero out the
deductions that do not apply. Recalculate
this check and when the checks are printed
only those deductions that should apply will
apply.
-
You can generate a single check with both
regular hours and vacation hours for an
hourly employee but know that the taxes will
be calculated at a higher rate than two
individual checks because all tax
calculations are based upon an the check
amount annualized. You do have the option to
go into ‘manual checks’ and adjust the
Federal and State amounts withheld.
-
To process an entire payroll run with no
deductions taken out, only taxes when you
calculate your checks use the Pay Code of 6
and checks will be calculated with only tax
withholdings.
Top
Contact Us
Maple Business Software Consulting LLC
59113
Timber Trail
Goshen, IN 46528
574-742-9241 - Office
574-312-8056 - Cell
574-975-2755 - Fax Number
email:
rvandaele@maplebusinesssoftware.com
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