Functions: Accounting
- Cory Lyle
Accounting
The Accounting functions allow for management of your fleet accounts across all stores. A “Fleet Account” is generally a customer who owns multiple vehicles that require more frequent servicing, such as delivery services, taxis, local government vehicles, etc. In return for giving you their business, a fleet account will often try to negotiate a discount or ask to be billed monthly, rather than paying at the time of sale
NexGen allows you to configure any number of fleet accounts. Each account can be assigned to a single store, multiple stores, or all stores. You can specify which accounts receive a discount, and those eligible for extended credit. Accounts that are past due or over their credit limit can be disabled. NexGen’s accounting features allow you to track payments, view balances and print invoices. As some accounts may require you to record certain information at the time of the sale, NexGen allows you to configure the store(s) systems to prompt for this required information. Using NexGen you can even include special instructions for your technicians to review before they service a vehicle for particular fleet accounts.
At the store level, QuickTouch allows the technicians to quickly assign a new vehicle to an existing fleet account. Additional security features in QuickTouch can also allow or disallow the manager to override credit limits for accounts that have exceeded their limit.
It is important to note that NexGen supports “Shared Accounting,” meaning that all fleet account management (i.e., adding a new account, modifying an existing account, printing fleet statements, posting payments, etc) MUST be done on NexGen; stores cannot add their own fleets or do any of these functions. Shared Accounting is optional. If you have Shared Accounting, it will be necessary for the stores to notify the central office of any new accounts that need to be added. Sage recommends that you create a simple (faxable) account application that can be filled out at the store and sent to the central office.
Fleet Maintenance
The Fleet Maintenance function consists of seven configurable pages for each fleet account.
On any of the configuration screens you can choose to Save the current record, Delete the current record, Cancel any changes you may have just made, or proceed to the Next or Previous configuration screen.
Fleet Name Required.
Account # Required. This needs to be unique for each fleet account. It can consist of letters or numbers.
Address, Zip Code, City, State Not required, but we recommend filling this in accurately for all accounts.
Contact Not Required. This is the “Attention:” field on the printed statements, if bills need to be sent to a specific person or department.
Phone One Not required, but we recommend filling this in for all accounts.
Phone Two, Fax, Modem, E-Mail These fields are all optional.
Fleet Type Local or National. This allows you to easily identify the fleet as Local or National, but has no other effect in QuickTouch. The % Surcharge field currently has no functionality.
Ask For Reminder Period Usually No/No Reminder here, as reminder cards are not generally sent to fleet accounts. When you select No, you are asked which reminder period to default to. If you leave this as Yes, it will ask for a reminder period at the time of sale.
Allow Fleet Charge / Credit Limit This allows the fleet account to be extended credit up to the limit you input here.
Charge Interest Generally No. This would allow you to charge interest for past due accounts, usually 1.5% per month.
Statement Type Open Items or Balance Forward. Open Items means that each payment received will be paid against an individual invoice or multiple invoices. This option allows you to easily find an invoice that was not paid. Balance Forward simply allows you to apply a payment to an open balance, and the balance will then be reduced. The advantage to Balance Forward is that it is quicker, the disadvantage is that you cannot determine whether a particular invoice has been paid or not. See the Payments/Credits/Debits section to view examples of these screens. After setting the Statement Type, indicate the number of days until the amount is due. For Open Items, each invoice is payable by X number of days after the invoice date. For Balance Forward, a statement is sent at the end of the month, for which the entire amount is due by X number of days from the statement date.
Pricing Category Fleet accounts can be assigned to one of five pricing methods. Standard pricing will charge the fleet accounts the regular price for services. Category pricing allows three categories of fleet accounts, A, B, and C, and each category can automatically receive dollar or percentage discounts as well as upcharges. Custom % will give percentage discount across the board for all parts/services.
Tax Status Generally this will be either Both or None, depending on the account and local laws. The Tax1 and Tax2 settings would normally only be used in Canada, which has two separate tax rates.
Pop-Up Notes You can configure a note to pop up at check-in, check-out or both. Notes are useful to let the technicians know general information about the account vehicles, such as particular procedures to follow or services to perform. Pop-Ups can also be used as “Warning” messages to alert the shop to only allow certain vehicles to charge to the account.
General Ledger Accounts These fields are used for accounting interfaces, and can be left blank.
Pages 4-6 allow up to 24 “Vehicle Information” fields to be collected for the fleet vehicle at the time of service. The vehicle information fields will be printed on the Invoice.
NOTE THAT ONLY SIX LINES CAN BE PRINTED ON MOST INVOICE TYPES. QuickTouch allows 24 fields to be configured because different fleets may have different requirements, but on most invoice types, only the first six enabled information fields will be printed. (A field is considered “Enabled” if any of the buttons are checked). Thus, it is important to conserve lines for fleets that require a lot of information.
The vehicle information may be collected at check-in or check-out or both. The information may also be “Required,” meaning that the cashier cannot print an invoice without supplying the required information. The information can also be remembered or defaulted, from the last visit.
In the example above, the fleet account requires that the Company Name and the Driver Name be recorded at each service. Thus, we have the Pop-up On Check In and Pop-up On Check Out buttons set to Yes. These are also required values, and this is set to Yes. Now, the company name will always be the same for that vehicle, so this is Default From Last Visit, but there may be different drivers, so the Drivers Name field is not defaulted from last visit.
Collecting this information is important because many national fleet accounts and some local accounts may require information such as a Purchase Order or Authorization number before the vehicle is serviced. These types of information will be different for each visit by the vehicle. Some fleets will not pay the invoice if the required information is not printed directly on the invoice!
You can indicate whether a fleet account belongs to a single store, all stores or to a store group (if groups are configured).
Fleet Statements
NexGen’s Fleet Statements function allows you to print all payment, credit, debit, or invoicing activity for all of your active fleet accounts. The fleet statements will print in a format that conforms to #9 Standard Invoice Double Window envelopes. This will allow you to simply fold the invoices and place them in the envelopes without having to write the mailing or return addresses. Note that the return address at the top of the statement can be configured under Settings: COS Setup.
Normally, you will print your fleet statements every month. The statement end dates will normally be on the last day of the previous month (in the following examples, we are using February 1 to February 28 as the billing period, with February 28 as the Statement End Date).
Before you print your statements, you may need to Close Cycle for the previous statement date. The Billing Cycle refers to the date range of activity for your statements. After you print your invoices, you will close the billing period based on the last day of that month (in this example, January 31). Now, when you send out your invoices for this billing period (February 1 – February 28), the system will know that the billing period ended on January 31 and will only print activity after that date.
Start Fleet Name, End Fleet Name These fields allow you to choose the range of fleet accounts you wish to print. The accounts are sorted alphabetically by name, and these options automatically list your first and last fleet accounts – in other words, all of them. Press the arrows to select a specific fleet if you wish to only print one, or a particular range of fleets.
Print Accounts by Groups Allows you to print invoices by groups of accounts that you have previously set up
Print Accounts with No Activity and 0 Balance ‘Yes’ will print all statements from all fleet accounts, even those with no activity or open balances. ‘No’ will only print statements from accounts with activity or open balances since last billing cycle.
Statement Date This will default to the current date, but will normally be set to the last day of the previous month.
After clicking Start, you will be asked if you want to close the billing cycle. If you click OK, the billing cycle will close after the statements print. We recommend that you click Cancel here, and manually close the cycle after you verify that all statements printed successfully and are accurate. Note that you can’t undo a closed billing cycle.
Account Inquiry
Fleet Account Inquiry allows you to view all payment, credit, debit or invoicing activity for a particular account for any date range.
Note that payment activity is tied to the invoices it is applied to – so, the date range will display all invoices during that date range, plus any payments, credits or debits tied to those invoices. If you are searching for a particular payment, you will need to set the Start Date back far enough to cover the original invoice date.
Balance Management
NexGen’s Balance Management function is where you input fleet payments such as checks and automatic deposits.
Select the Fleet you would like to add the check to
In the above example above, I selected ARI Fleet Services
You should now see the screen below
This is where you input the Date of Check, Amount and Description (Check# or other information)
Next, click ‘Apply Payment’ (below the Description field) and you will see all of the invoices with open balances
In our example, you can see that the $40.00 check is going to pay for Invoice #113024.
In the payment field we type in $40.00, and the remaining $2.19 will be typed in the Discount field. We’ll call this the account’s “processing fee.” Check the paid box to mark the invoice as paid.
After you type in the amounts and check the paid box, you can see that the invoice has been completely paid and $0.00 Remain. Now click ‘Apply Payment’ at the bottom of the page. The payment has now been applied to the invoice(s) you selected.
Credits and Debits
The Credits and Debits function allows the user to quickly post credits and debits to an account.
A Debit is a charge against the account, meaning the account will owe you more. A Credit will decrease the balance of the account, and normally reflects either a discount or a payment made by the account.
Simply indicate the type (Debit/Credit), dollar amount, transaction date and a brief description, then click Save. The transaction will be posted immediately.
Note that after posting a credit, you will need to go to the Fleet Payments screen to apply the credit to an open invoice.
Invoice Management
NexGen’s Invoice Management function allows you to transfer an invoice from one fleet account to another. This function is normally used when correcting errors that were made at the store(s). In our example, we are transferring invoice 30300 from Steve’s Plumbing to ABC Industrial since it was cashed out incorrectly at the store.
Undo Payment
The Undo Payment function allows you do undo a fleet payment if it was entered incorrectly. To do this, type in the check number and search, then click the ‘Undo Payment’ button.