Bank accounts are a special type of GL account in the system.

Table of Contents

Setting up Bank Accounts

Bank Accounts require a GL Account first, then define the bank details (BSB and Account number and related cards) on Host Company

Configure the definition of the bank branches

Admin > Financials > 

If you already have GL accounts setup as bank accounts

Setting up a new GL account as a Bank Account on Host Company

Reference the account in the bank account configuration - see Managing the Chart of Accounts to add GL accounts

Setup a Credit Account as a Liability - Credit accounts are a liability for your business

Assigning Credit cards on Accounts to people and Assets

Then you can assign cards that operate on the account to people (expenses) or Assets

Enter an opening balance for the bank account

An opening balance is simply a journal - one side is the current bank (or credit account) balance - the other side is normally formation assets or an account chosen by your accountant

 Any journal to a bank account once reconciled cannot be changed.  It is recommended therefore that opening balance journals NOT include a line for the bank account - but this is done as a separate journal so the opening balance journal can later be changed if required.

Fuel Cards

Fuel cards are a Merchant Account - ie not a bank account - but a company you need to pay.

Create the Merchant Account on the Host company

Link the Fuel Card to the Asset

When the Fuel Statement Arrives

Note if you have Branches and Departments defined they will default from the Asset.

And the Asset will be linked to the $ and L from the line on the creditor Invoice

Credit Card Payments using Credit Card Terminals

When a bank provides Credit Card Terminals for processing transactions

Setup the bank Account Details

Select Payment Method EFTPOS (terminal) - then machine.  Bank will default from terminal

Payment Batch from EFTPOS Terminal Transactions (per terminal)

1. When a payment is created
   1. if no batch exists for the Terminal / date / cutoff time combination - a new one is created
   2. if a batch exists then the payment will be added to it

The batch is cleared in the bank account using the normal method - see ReconcilingCreditCardBatchesBatches

Credit Card Payments using credit card gateways like Eway

Register

1. When you register with a credit card gateway - they will ask you for your bank details - and the bank will provide you with a merchant number that gets passed with the transaction information to identify the bank accounts to be impacted by the credit card transaction.
2. When our system takes a credit card payment - the system passes your merchant number along with the transaction to the gateway and gets a response.  
   1. Every response is logged and you will see the result on the transaction you are actioning (sales order, booking etc).

Indicate supported credit cards to limits the options users have on payment

Indicate the credit cards you support

The eway Merchant Number to pass through

Using eWay as an example: When you register with eWay - they ask for the bank details they are to put money into.  Then they provide you with a Merchant ID number.  Place this number in the Merchant ID field for that bank account.  When the system takes a credit card transaction it looks for the bank account to use and the merchant ID to pass to eWay.  

Payments are batched by eway

Multiple payments per day are deposited in your bank - not every transaction

1. eWay will not send you a transaction for every individual transaction - they will instead send a lump of money 2x per day based on your overall transactions.  
   1. So we need to group together all the transactions eWay has told us have been successful into a single $ value that we expect to see go into your bank.  
   2. For this reason we batch together all credit card transactions into a "Batch" using the cut-off times told to us by eWay.

Clearing CC Batches in Bank Statement

1. Although the payments are grouped together - we have found that the credit card gateways frequently send a different $ amount to what we would expect based on the payments sent to them.
   1. Reasons for this include - fees they may take out, charges they may add, reversals from failures of payment and other reasons.  
   2. So - when you look at the bank reconciliation we have a list of the expected total from the Credit Card Gateway (the batch total) that you can see.
   3. If the amount they put into your bank is the same as we expected - simply right click and "clear all in batch" on the batch - and it will tick all transactions as included in the statement.

If the amount they deposited is not the same - you will have to go through the statement they provided and tick off individual transactions on the bank statement so you know which transactions have cleared.

Payments from/to Debtors and Payments to/from Creditors and bank accounts

When you have entered an invoice you want a payment to reference

When doing a Creditor Payment, Creditor Refund, Debtor Payment or Debtor Refund - you can select the bank account when you do the transaction - and that will place the transaction in the reconciliation screen for that bank account

When you do not want to enter an invoice - you just want to record a payment

Use "Supplier Payment (No Invoice)" or "Customer Payment (No Invoice)" to create the transaction - referencing the bank account

Cash Batches

Cash Batches are used when Cash is Collected by Sales Reps, Delivery Drivers and Bus Drivers

They count the cash in the batch as they drop it off.

Do a second count of each cash batch to confirm the amounts.

Group together multiple amounts of cash into a single bank deposit.  

Capture the cash transaction

Sales Reps, Delivery Drivers and Bus Drivers are collecting cash during a day of driving around visiting customers.  

1. The cash they collect is grouped into a batch to be counted at the end of the day.  This is known as a "Cash Batch"
2. They may also spend some of this cash as they go - to wash the car, parking or other items.  This is known as a "Spend Money" - cash was used.
3. If they purchase items using a credit card (for example a fuel card) this is not included in the daily batch and is not a spend money as no cash was spent.

Cash payments may be recorded in a number of ways by drivers

If your business manages orders

1. As a cash payment of a sales order or booking - from the sales order screen

2. As a cash payment not linked to a sales order - simply a cash collection from a debtor they visited from the debtor or in the driver portal.

If your business manages bookings

1. The bus drivers portal as they drive

2. As a cash payment for a booking in the driver portal or entered later once they have returned.

The cash payment will default to their batch for the day

Cash Counting by drivers

Count the Cash taken during a number of days - Drop at office

At the end of the day the cash needs to be counted by the driver and will include

Cash total to count = Cash collected - cash spent (Spend Money Transactions Only).

The driver will do a first count of the cash and the cash batch will move to "Counted" status - note that the counted cash may not match the expected cash. 

Then batch can then be counted by a second person and multiple batches banked in a single banking deposit.

Count the Cash taken over a number of days - Driver Deposit to the bank

If the driver is depositing the cash to the bank - the batch will be closed and a journal created to the bank for the amount deposited

Once the cash is dropped off to the office - second cash count

The office will do a second count of the cash - noting any discrepancies as an adjustment journal

Office does a second count and moves the batch to locked status

Group multiple cash counts into a single amount to deposit to the bank

Depositing cash into the bank - adding multiple amounts of cash into a total to take to the bank

After second counting a number of batches - the batches can be grouped together into a bank deposit

The batch will then have a reference on it to the journal that links it to the bank statement

How does the cash deposited appear in the bank statement

Cash batches appear as a single journal line in the bank statement ( A yellow General Journal) as all the cash was deposited as a single cash amount

Reconciling the bank statement

Getting ready to reconcile transactions

Reconciling the bank statement is a process of confirming each of the transactions you expect to have appeared are there and creating other transactions that you did not record in your business system.  When you tick the box in the S column you are confirming that you have seen that transaction in the bank statement.

Choose the bank account

The Reconciliation screen will then open with the last reconciled date

Put in the date of the statement that you have in front of you - this is the date you are reconciling to

Enter the Statement Balance.  The variance will populate showing how much $ transactions you have to find and tick as reconciled

Note that the transactions listed will be any transactions prior to the Reconciliation date that have not yet been reconciled. 

Reconciling individual transactions

Next you need to look through your bank statement to find transactions to clear.  Normally you have a printed out statement and you tick off each transaction as you find it.

It can help to untick the "presented" list - this makes it easier to find the transactions you have not yet cleared.  As you clear transactions you can refresh and they will hide.

The bank reconciliation shows some transactions that are part of a credit card batch (see credit card section above in this document) - If the amount we say should be there is the same as in the bank statement you can clear these using a rightclick.

Reconciling Credit Card Batches Batches

The bottom RHS of the screen has a list of batches.  A batch is a group of transactions.  As you can see all the individual transactions are still visible in the bank statement - this is because it is common that what we expect and what is paid to you will often be different - because of fees, bounced transactions and other reasons.  You can quickly clear all in batch using a right click if the values match.  Otherwise you will need to use the credit card statement to clear them independently.

Enter Bank Fees

This is a good time to enter any bank fees that you find when looking at your credit card gateway trading statement

Remember that this is a grid like anywhere else in the system - so you can filter the transactions (CNTRL F) or top LHS of grid for filter - it will filter using any information in the grid

Filtering the transaction list

using letters

Filtering using numbers

Review of past reconciliations including the PDF report

At any time you can print a preview of the reconciliation report using the print button.

When you have completed the reconciliation (Reconcile Now) button all the transactions in the system that have been marked as reconciled will be locked and cannot be changed.

To view the report for any reconciliation - the current screen will then show all the transactions for that reconciliation (locked).

To view the report use the print screen - or the link to the saved report.

This is what the report looks like

 

The saved report shows exactly the situation at the time of doing the bank Req - there are two numbers that may now be different...

When viewing a closed bank Req - the unpresented values are live values (not saved ones).  Hence they will show you if any transactions prior to the reconcilation date have STILL not been cleared.

The saved report shows accurately at the time of doing the bank req:

1. The Journals that were cleared
2. The Journals that are before the reconciliation date that had not been cleared at that time
   
   1. If a journal is not cleared for a number of reconciliations - it will be listed in each report as uncleared. 
   2. Journals that have not been cleared in the bank req can still be adjusted.

The Bank Balance is often not the same as the Balance sheet balance - due to un-presented transactions.

1. If at the time of doing a bank req you have unpresented payments or receipts (this is common)
   
   1. These will not add to the bank req balance at the time of the bank balance
   2. These will add to the balance sheet value of the bank balance
2. If you want to change this
   1. Update the dates of all the unpresented transactions to be after the date of the bank req before saving the bank req

The numbers on the saved reports are expected to vary with the balance sheet balance at the date - this is best illustrated with an example:

1. Two cheques are entered into the system for an empty bank account dated 1st August (note I have used cheques but any transaction type applies here) 
1. $100 
2. and $1,000
2. You do a bank req on 7th August and only the $100 is there - the $1,000 has not yet been presented.
1. no problem as the $1,000 will be listed in the next bank req in case they have deposited it by then
2. As the date on the journals is 1 August the GL Balance for the bank account is $1,100 on the 7th August - this is what will show on the balance sheet 
3. The Bank balance will therefore be different to the Balance sheet balance as it will be $100
4. The $1,000 transaction has not yet been reconciled with the bank so it can be changed / deleted etc if required.
5. If the date of the $1,000 is changed to a date after the 7th August then the balance sheet will now equal the bank balance.
3. Say we change the date on the $1,000 cheque transaction to the 9th August
1. The saved bank req report will still list this transaction as unpresented - it shows the system at the time of doing the bank req
2. Viewing the details of the closed bank req in the screen will now show $0 un-presented (a different figure to the saved report) as this figure shows unpresented transactions that are prior to the reconciliation date NOW (not as at the date of the reconciliation).

Deleting Bank Reconcilations

1. Go to Bank Reconciliation for the bank account affected
2. You can only delete reconciliations if you have the Locked one selected - then right click on the ones to delete.
3. You can only delete the latest Closed reconciliation (and then once that has been deleted the next most recent etc).
4. Note that you may need to clear the date range on the filter to see all bank reconciliations.
5. Delete reconciliations as far back as you need to including the first reconciliation

Note - if you need to delete the first reconciliation check to make sure that the GL account does not have any transactions prior to the from date of the first reconciliation.

Uploading the bank statement - and find the matches quickly

Why upload the bank statement?  If all your transactions are already in the system you do not need to upload the bank statement.

1. To use an upload of your bank statement to quickly create missing transactions
   
   1. You may pay people and not have entered a payment yet - that is ok - we make it easy to create the payments from the bank reconciliation screen
   2. Upload your bank statement - this will provide a list of all transactions you have in your bank

Then search for each transaction to find a match - or create the transaction in the system by right clicking on it.

You can start a bank fee journal from here as well - this will create a journal on the creditor you configured for the bank with the other side defaulting to using the account referenced in Symbols Config - BankFeesGLAccount 

Shutting Down Bank Accounts

When you are closing a bank account there are a couple of things to do in the system

Do a final reconciliation - when you get that final statement - do the last reconciliation.  The final value of the bank account statement balance should be zero.

In the GL - flag the GL account as "Disallow new entries" so it cannot be used as a bank account any more.

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