Dynamic Accounting Solutions, Accounting Software provider for Mid-market companies, KY, Kentucky based

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Periodic Maintenance, what does it mean?	July 2010
Hold/Release vs Invoice Inquiry	July 2010
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act	July 2010
Expanding the GL Mask	July 2010
Mid Year Testing for Payroll’s Taxability—Federal, State, and Local	July 2010
Keeping Orders in Control	June 2010
Vacation Checks	June 2010
Spring Clean your IT	June 2010
Hire Act	June 2010
Summary Histories	May 2010
Workstation Date Change	May 2010
Editing Un-posted General Ledger Entries	May 2010
AR Customer Set up	April 2010
Voiding AP Checks	April 2010
Virus Alert	April 2010
Customer Deposits	April 2010
Company Logos on Invoices	Feb 2010
Cleaning up Purchase Orders	Feb 2010
Landed Cost	Feb 2010
Setting in OSAS text	Mar 2010
Finalizing 2009	Mar 2010
Additional Payroll Checks	Mar 2010
Split and reapply	Mar 2010

Clicking on settings, Fonts/Sizes allows you to size the screen, and change the fonts.

Clicking on Color Map allows you to brighten, dim, or change the colors of your screen.

This is where you would want to adjust the WHITE in particular so that your cursor is visible. Clicking on the BLUE will allow you to adjust the color of the ‘drill down’ figures throughout OSAS.

Now that the flurry of year end has ended and your information for the year has been passed to your CPA or Auditor all you have left to do for last year is to enter any adjusting entries that your CPA or Auditor has given you.

Switch your year in General Ledger to 2009, enter the adjusting transactions, write them, and post to the Master.

Once posted to the Master you will need to ’Update Current Year’ one last time.

Switch to the year 2009, go to Periodic Processing, Update current year. Check the box on top stating you have backed up your data, enter the Retained Earnings Account number and press OK (or page down). Once processed you are returned to the menu. Nothing prints.

This is all that is required for finalizing a year. When viewing last years balances all income and revenue accounts will have the total of the year listed at the bottom of the screen.

Optionally, you can perform ‘Clear and Close Last Year’ will make the actual physical entries to the revenue and expense accounts for the year and set the ending balances for each revenue and expense account to zero. This function does NOT have to be performed. It just depends on how you prefer to see your ending balances for each revenue and expense account- with totals or zeros.

When entering time tickets for hourly employees there is a field ‘Sequence No’. This field defaults to 0 and most of you probably just tab or click right through this field without realizing what it is.

The purpose of this field is to allow additional paychecks to be run for one employee. By changing the ‘Sequence’ from 0 to 1, 2, 3, etc you can process multiple checks for this employee. Splitting large amounts into multiple checks the calculated taxes will not be as large as on one large check.

To produce an extra check for a salaried employee, calculate checks as usual and then enter Manual checks, click on ’Checks’ and add the additional hours and dollar amounts for this salaried employee.

When an Accounts Payable invoice has been entered and posted and is sitting in Hold/Release waiting to be paid you can split this invoice into several invoices with separate due dates and make partial payments on this one invoice.

To split an Open Invoice into several invoices go to Hold and Release Invoices and enter the Vendor ID that you want to split. With your cursor next to the invoice to be split select SPLT. This will bring up a box that allows you to enter the first payment amount and the due date for it. The remaining amount will fill in the Second Payment field. You can also change this due date.

If additional splits are needed simply set the cursor next to one of the split invoices and SPLIT again as many times as you need to and set the new due dates.

For BBj Users you can place your company logo within the OSAS Documents Folder and in Resource Manager, Company Setup, Company Information, enter the name of the logo file with the extension in the Logo file field. (There should be no blank spaces in the name of the logo file).

Now when you print your plain paper invoices your logo will appear in the upper left hand corner. If you have a color printer the logo will print in color.

Do you have old Purchase Orders hanging out there in various status’ that you know are complete as far as you are concerned but just don't go away?

If you have an Ordered Quantity that is higher than the quantity that was received and invoiced, just change the status from “Open” to “Completed”. The next time you post purchases this Purchase Order will be removed once the quantity invoiced equals the quantity received.

If you entered a higher quantity as received than was actually received you will need to complete this purchase order by applying the invoice to the received goods and then doing a Debit Memo to remove these items from Inventory.

Purchase Orders will not be removed until all line items have been received and invoiced. So the main clue to cleaning up old Purchase Orders is to make sure each line of the P.O. has been satisfied.

Landed Cost allows you to assign shipping costs directly to inventory item values when they are received in. These costs are generally not to the same vendor you purchase the goods from and generally they include shipping costs, entry costs, duties, brokerage fees and taxes.

Landed Cost can be applied by Percent of Cost, Fixed Amount, Weight, or Quantity.

Landed Cost can also be set up as several levels. For example shipping costs may be a percentage of cost for the whole shipment based upon the extended cost. A Container Duty may apply to not only the extended cost but also the addition of the shipping cost applied by percentage.

You determine how the cost is applied, what the amount of the cost is and whether or not it is a straight addition to the extended cost of the items or an addition to the items plus other additional costs as defined in the Landed Cost setup.

For each Cost within the Landed Cost set up you a General Ledger Expense Account for the costs to be credited to when the items are received. When the invoices come in that pertain to the Landed Costs you expense these directly to the same General Ledger Account you set up in the Landed Cost Set up.

Because Landed Cost Setup is actually an estimation of all charges that pertain to bringing in the inventory items that you purchased you will need to reconcile the Expense Account(s) that you used in the setup.

When the Item is Invoiced the Expense account is Credited and when the invoice for the additional cost is entered the same account is debited. In theory this is a wash. When the item is sold the full cost (Landed Cost) flows out to Cost of Goods Sold.

Making use of the various fields found within the Customer Set up can assist you as you mine the data and produce the reports you need to analyze your business. Below are some fields and their uses that you may not have thought about utilizing previously.

Attention This field appears above the Company name on the Invoice or Statement. It does not appear on Customer Labels.

Status This defaults to ACTIVE. If you do not want any transactions posted to this Customer change the status to INACTIVE. Payments may be posted to an inactive Customer.

Group Code A “C” is used to signify the customer you are setting up is actually a credit card that will be used to transfer invoices from your customer to this customer until actual cash payment is applied.

Terms Code can be set up specifically for each customer. Discounts and days to pay can be set up from Invoice Date or from End of Month.

Distribution Code signifies the Accounts Receivable General Ledger account to post invoices to as well as the Freight and Misc GL accounts found on the total screen.

Class Code can be assigned to a customer for purposes of sorting. Class code is used as selections for sorting and printing in the Customer Activity and Customer Sales Reports, as well as use when extracting our data.

Credit Limit can be set for customers. A message will appear when entering an invoice for the customer if they have already reached their credit limit. This is just a message it will not stop you from invoicing the customer.

Document Delivery will set this customer as to whether invoices, or statements will be printed on paper, or emailed to the customer.

Credit Hold will give a warning at invoice entry time that the customer is on hold. It can be bypassed.

Partial Shipment will also give a warning at invoice entry time if the customer will not accept partial shipments.

Ship Zone is a free standing field for the customer as well as the Ship To address for that customer. There are no reports that use this sort or print but with ODBC you can mine your data using this field.

Territory a free standing field that can assist in sorting your customers when using ODBC to extract your data.

Ship To If a customer has several locations you can set up multiple ships to addresses and also assign different Territories, Tax Groups and Distribution Codes for each shipping address.

The standard way to void a check is to use the VOID CHECK function found in “Pay Invoices”.

Voiding a check or series of checks this way will reverse the Cash and Accounts Payable Entry (Debits cash, Credits Accounts Payable) and places the invoice or invoices back out in the Open Invoice File.

Assuming these invoices will not be paid to the vendor you then go into Daily Work, Transactions and select Miscellaneous Debits. Using the same Vendor, Invoice Number, General Ledger Accounts, and Amount duplicate this invoice as a Miscellaneous Debit. When posted, they will align with the original invoice in the Open Invoice File.

If Options and Interfaces are set to allow posting without printing checks you can just release both the invoice and Misc Debit memo and the next time you ’Prepare Payments’ these will net to zero and flow out of the Open Invoice File.

If your option is set to NOT allow posting without printing checks you can then PREPAY these invoices from within Hold and Release. Normally I use a check number of 999 to signify payment for both the invoice and the Misc. Debit Memo. Next time you prepare payments these invoices will flow out.

Another way you can ‘void’ a payment is to not use the actual ‘Void’ function but to enter a pre-paid Miscellaneous Debit. Enter this Misc Debit exactly as the original invoice. Then on the TOTAL SCREEN enter the payment information using the same check number that was originally used to pay the invoice. After posting transactions, Prepare Payments and this will appear as a negative on the Pre-paid line.

When payments are posted, this will correct the expense, cash and AP. In Bank Rec it appears as a negative under the original check number.

This month we have seen two clients get infections after visiting WhitePages.com. Users report seeing pop-ups that warn them that they are infected. The pop-up screen, however, is not the real antivirus software, it is a fraud. The malicious software is apparently being installed via banner advertisements from infected websites.

It seems that no user interaction other than visiting the site is required to become compromised.

To limit your risk, use extreme caution when browsing. Additionally, make sure your operating system, applications, and security software have the latest updates installed.

To easily keep up with Customer Deposits and to be able to apply the deposit amount to the Accounts Receivable (or Sales Order) invoice to show the total amount of the invoice along with the deposit applied and the remaining amount owed we recommend you keep up with deposits outside of the Open Invoice file.

Set up a General Ledger account within the Current Liabilities section of your Chart of accounts. When you receive deposit checks from your clients enter it into Cash Receipts without a customer ID. This will open up a General Ledger account for you to apply this deposit to. Enter the Customer Deposit account that was set up and for the invoice number use the Customer ID and apply the amount.

Next set up a Method of Payment (DEP) in Accounts Receivable (Sales Order) that is a write off. Use this Customer Deposit General Ledger Account number.

When the Customer is invoiced go to the Payment section and use the Method of Payment (DEP) you set up above and apply the Deposit payment. The invoice will then show the total due, the amount of deposit applied and the net amount currently due.

Reconciling this Customer Deposit is quite simple. Whenever the Deposit is received this account is credited and when the Deposit is applied to the invoice this account is debited.

Within the Inquiry Menu of Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, and Inventory you will find Summary History.

This allows you to quickly see what you have spent, what your customer has spent, and what has been purchased and sold by Inventory Item.

Simply enter the Vendor, Customer or Item ID and the year you wish to look at. By period within that year the total dollar amount transacted during each period will appear. This gives you a very quick and concise look at a particular Vendor, Customer or Item.

When entering data into past periods it’s sometimes easier to just change your workstation date to the last day of the month. Having the workstation date on the date/month/period you are working in can keep you from accidentally entering an incorrect date or period.

Something to consider though is that all the General Ledger postings will reflect both the Transaction date and the Post date as the same date.

If you do not change the workstation date and enter transactions then the Post Date will reflect the ACTUAL date the entries were made and the Transaction Date will reflect the day/month/period you are entering.

OSAS does allow you to ‘edit’ Journal Entries posted from any application, or entered and written as General Ledger Entries.

To edit ‘un-posted’ entries go to General Ledger, Transactions, Edit transactions. Once inside ‘edit transactions’ if you know the transaction number of the entry you want to change (transaction numbers can be found when running the GL Journal or the GL Activity Report) select “Go to” and enter the transaction number.

With your cursor next to the transaction you want to change press enter. If this transaction came from any other application besides General Ledger you will be prompted with the message “warning this is not a manual, recurring, or reversing entry”. Press enter at the warning to edit this transaction. If editing a dollar amount always make sure you have changed BOTH sides of the transaction.

While editing your journal transactions may be a quick fix for correcting the General Ledger please note that it does not make any corrections to the applications that these entries may have posted out of. For example if you changed a Period in an AP transaction it is only changed in General Ledger it is still the original Period and Date and amount in the Accounts Payable history. This can create discrepancies when comparing and Aged Trial Balance Report to the corresponding General Account Number. Use Editing Transactions with CAUTION.

When your customer places an order for goods or services how are you keeping up with these orders?

Whether you are manufacturing the item, purchasing the item, or shipping the item out of Inventory you need to be able to run a report at any point in time that will tell you what orders (Work-in-Process or Future Work) you still have to produce and in what time frame.

Many customers will keep up with future work on clip boards, work order books or other manual methods. Using these ‘paper’ methods orders can be misplaced or lost creating lost revenue and customer dissatisfaction.

The Sales Order application can assist not only your Sales Reps and office people keep up with orders, but also your shop, or warehouse floor.

When an Inventory Item is entered into a Sales Order the quantity that is entered becomes a ‘committed’ quantity within the Inventory Item. Reports can be run to see committed amounts vs quantities on-hand so that orders to manufacture or purchase additional items can be placed in a timely manner.

When the original order is entered the order itself has a status of “New”. Once the picking slip is printed the order’s status changes to “Picked”. Upon shipment of the order’s items the order is then “Verified”, which also changes the status in the Inventory Item from “Committed” to “In-Use”.

Packing Slips can be generated for each order for inclusion with the shipment. The final step is to print invoices, sales journals and post to create the Open Invoice for the Customer.

Sales Reps can enter ‘Quotes’ using the Sales Order application. Quotes allow the Sales Reps to list and total up the Customer’s request and keep that quote on file until the Customer actually places the order. At this point the quote can then be turned into a ‘New’ order and processed as normal.

The Open Order Report can be printed by Status of the Order (New, Picked, Verified, Credited, Backordered, or Quoted). It can also be printed by Customer or Item ID. The report will show the quantity available for that item along with the quantity requested on the Order.

Running the report by ‘requested ship dates’ not only gives management an idea of upcoming revenue it also allows your purchasing or manufacturing departments to keep up with the incoming flow of orders and thus the coordination between all departments.

If keeping up with your Orders is taking too much of your time, then you should take a look at the Sales Order application so that you can take back control and know exactly what is in your Work in Process.

To generate a vacation check in addition to the employee’s normal weekly check enter the normal weekly hours as usual. Then drop down and change the sequence number for the vacation hours you enter. When calculated two checks will be generated.

To generate two checks for a salaried employee calculate checks as usual then ‘add’ a manual check using the vacation pay-code for this employee. Calculate that one check and process payroll as usual to get two checks.

When most people think of spring cleaning, they think of clearing rooms of their house, scrubbing the baseboards, and touching up paint. Like your home it is always good to ‘Spring Clean’ your computer network and data on a regular basis. The following things can be done to protect your IT infrastructure:

- Clean out dust from your computers and servers. Blow out the dust that can clog up the fans with compressed air.

- Archive your data. Remove from My Documents all those spreadsheets and data you don't use on a daily basis. This allows for easier synchronization to laptops, etc.

- Review your backup process. Are your backups working? Do you have enough space on your tape or backup drive? Have you tested your backups lately by doing a restore? Do you have an off-site backup? If not how secure are your backups should total destruction of your building occur?

Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act was enacted on 03/18/2010

What does this act mean for you? Employers who hire unemployed workers this year (after 02/03/10 and before 01/01/11) may qualify for a 6.2 percent payroll tax incentive, in effect exempting them from their share of Social Security taxes on wages paid to these workers after 03/18/10. This reduced tax withholding will have no effect on the employee’s future Social Security benefits, and employers would still need to withhold the employee’s 6.2 percent share of the Social Security taxes, as well as income taxes. The employer and the employee’s shares of Medicare taxes would also apply to these wages.

Form 941, Employers Quarterly Federal Tax Return, will be revised for second quarter filings. Any first quarter credit amounts would be treated as a payment for the second quarter and would need to be claimed on the second quarter Form 941 filing. In addition:

- The 2010 Form W-2 will have a box 12, code “CC” added for reporting HIRE Act exempt wages and tips for qualified employees.

- The first quarter exempt amounts are to be treated as a payment made on the first day of the second quarter on the revised Form 941, just like the current COBRA subsidy tax credit.

- For the following quarters, employers will report total amounts on the first page of Form 941, and reduce the liability on Schedule B, Form 941, by the amount of the tax reduction.

Qualified employees will need to complete Form W-11. The form is to confirm that the new hire is a qualified employee under the HIRE Act. Employers cannot claim HIRE Act benefits, including a payroll tax exemption or a new-hire retention credit, unless the employee completes and signs the affidavit or similar statement. The form is kept on file by the Employer. Drafts of the 941 and W-11 are at www.irs.gov.

Clients are sometimes unaware they should be performing ‘Periodic Processing’. Periodic Processing performs maintenance tasks on various files and allows you to purge unnecessary historical data.

- Accumulates the balance totals in the and removes paid invoices for Balance forward customers

- Ages the figures in the Customer file to move along into the proper aging periods

- Updates the Open Invoice, Customer File, and General Ledger for calculated finance charges

- Clears the period/quarter/year to date amounts when period/quarter/year is selected

- Remove Alternate and Obsolete items and Promotional pricing before a specified date

- Rebuilds Item Quantities which syncs the on-order, committed, and in-use information in Inventory with Purchase Order and Sales Order

Invoices, found in the Information Inquiry menu and Hold/Release Invoices, found in the Pay Invoices menu both contain information on unpaid invoices contained in the Open Invoice File.

The similarities between these two functions are list invoice number, amount, discount date and amount, due date, status (held, released, temp, or paid), and last payment and amount. Also both can be sorted either by date or by invoice number for easier viewing of the open invoices.

The Invoices Inquiry lists the total of all the invoices for a particular vendor while the Hold/Release does not. The Bank ID assigned to the invoices is only found in Hold/Release.

Both will also only list those Open Invoices in Accounts Payable that have not been paid but the Accounts Receivable will also list payments made against the invoices until the Paid Invoices are removed during the Periodic Processing.

If your small business or tax-exempt organization pays employee health insurance premiums in 2010 you may be eligible to claim a new credit on your 2010 tax return. Employers with fewer than 25 employees (more if you have part-time employees), and less than $50,000 in average wages, may be eligible.

Eligible small employers could qualify for a credit worth up to 35% of premiums paid in 2010 (for businesses) or 25% of premiums paid (for tax-exempt groups).

To find out if your small business qualifies for this valuable incentive to provide health coverage for your employees visit www.irs.gov or consult your tax professional.

As a business grows often there becomes a need to report various divisions or departments of the Company as separate entities.

If your General Ledger Mask is defined as a single Main Account you can expand your individual General Ledger Accounts to accommodate divisions and departments.

There is a function within the General Ledger to allow you to add a department or division segment to your chart of accounts.

For example your Chart of Accounts may be 5 digits. You can expand your Chart of Accounts to now include the original 5 digits but add a two digit segment onto the end of the number.

Once this segment is added and defined you can use this segment to specify your departments or division. For example the original account number 50000 may become 50000-00 for Administration, 50000-01 for Plant, 50000-01 for Sales, etc.

Now you can run individual income statements for each division or department you define.

Want to increase your chart of accounts? Give us a call and we can guide you through expanding your General Ledger Mask.

July marks the start of the third quarter. It is also mid-year and an excellent time to ‘proof’ your employee’s W2 information. This will allow you to make any changes now before you get to year end when everything else is going on.

To proof the taxability of your employee’s wages begin by running the Earnings and Deductions report found in Payroll Reports. Run in summary for Year-to-date. Take the Earnings total and deduct any non-W2 payments you are making through payroll to arrive at GROSS earnings. From this total deduct any tax deferred deductions the employee may have. Tax deferred deductions include IRA, 401K, pre-tax retirement, pre-tax insurances, etc. The Federal (FWH) and State (SWH) Taxable amounts should be the Gross earnings less all these deferred deductions.

To arrive at the taxable wages for Social Security (OAS) and Medicare (MED) deduct the deferred insurance amounts but not the IRA, 401K, or retirement.

Most local payroll tax authorities do not allow for tax deferred deductions but you will want to verify that with your local taxing authorities.

Next run the Quarterly Withholding Report found in Periodic Processing in summary, year to date. Look at the FWH, SWH, MED and OAS taxable wages. These should match what you have calculated from the Earnings and Deductions report. Also multiply the MED taxable wages by 1.45% to insure you arrive at the amount that was withheld, and multiply the OAS amount by 6.2% taking into account anyone over the $106,800 limit and compare to the amount withheld.

If any of these figures are ‘off’ run the Earnings and Deductions and Withholding report in detail and individually ‘proof’ each employee to find out who is ‘off’ in taxability.

You can also prepare W2’s just so you can look at Box 12 and 14 for the proper codes.