Bank Menu
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Just to be different this menu has no sub-menus and the selections are grouped into related items and all have something to do with the transactions which appear on your "bank statement", in whatever form that document takes.
Some of the banking items and reports are dealt with fully in this topic while others have links to other help topics.
Bank Transactions
Bank transactions consist solely of receipts or payments. For every bank statement transaction there should be a matching transaction in the Aspect Property Manager. As such they must be shown within the system as a receipt (bank deposit) or a payment (bank withdrawal). No other transactions can affect the system bank control account.
The records in the bank control account cannot be created or edited directly. Receipts are always created, edited or deleted in a tenant or landlord account and payments in a landlord, supplier, or tenant account, (in order of frequency). Two additional types of payment may be made within the Aspect Property Manager, one from the Fees and GST control accounts, the second a bond disbursement which is made from the Bond control account.
This menu entry displays all receipts and payments within the Aspect Property Manager bank control account.
In the main there will be a one for one match.
However, this is not always the case, because some transactions will be grouped on the bank statement while being a number of individual transactions in the system. Examples of this are the single large withdrawal on the bank statement which consists of all the individual payments made to landlords or suppliers and cash and cheque receipts from multiple tenants but showing as a single bank statement deposit.
Because data entry errors will inevitably be made, there may also be reversing transactions required to correct those errors. But they can only be receipts or payments too because receipts and payments are the only transactions which affect the system bank control account. They will obviously not appear on the "bank statement" but will appear in these bank transactions and must be a "matched pair", that is one of a negative value and one of a positive value which when added together equal zero, thus having no effect on the system bank control account balance. See Transaction Reversals for more on correcting errors.
The fields displayed on the grid are largely self explanatory. Those fields which may deserve additional explanation are listed below. See XXXX for common use items.
Balance = The running total of the bank control account transactions. This will seldom, if ever, be the same as the "real" bank balance due to unentered or unpresented receipts and payments.
Amount = The total value of the transaction as it affects the bank control account. For example this would be the total amount of a tenant receipt consisting of money for rent, letting fee and bond.
Presented = Indicates the transaction has been marked as appearing in both the "bank statement" and the Aspect Property Manager control account.
Statement Id = A system assigned number used to group all the transactions in the Aspect Property Manager which have been matched to bank statement transactions during one Bank Reconciliation.
TransText = Receipts show the tenant code or landlord code. Payments show the landlord, supplier or tenant code plus the content of the Payee field.
Batch No = A system assigned number used to group all the transactions in the Aspect Property Manager which have been processed at one time. Payments will only have a batch number when they have been created and confirmed as part of the Generate Payments procedure. Receipts will only have a batch number when they have been grouped together using the Banking List to deposit cash and cheque receipts.
See Daily Processing in Periodic Processing.
Banking List Overview
The production of a Banking List is most useful to users who regularly handle a reasonable volume of cash and cheque receipts. A routine needs establishing whereby, at a particular time of day, entry of new receipts is stopped for a few moments while the Banking List is prepared and printed after which receipt entry can continue. Although they make up no part of the banking EFTPOS transactions are also shown on a separate page of the Banking List for completeness.
When used as intended all "over the counter" cash and cheque receipts are entered into the system as they are received and before they are banked.
When the Banking List is to be produced all other receipting needs to stop temporarily.
Running the program displays all unbanked cash, cheque and EFTPOS transactions in a grid.
The receipts being included in this next banking are highlighted and two copies of the report produced.
The "Marked as Printed" button is pressed which locks away the receipt transactions on the Banking List.
At this point receipting may recommence.
The actual cash and cheques are counted and checked against the report totals.
Only the cash total, cheque total and combined total are entered on to the bank deposit slip.
One copy of the report is attached and off you trot to the bank.
If your cash and cheque volumes are significant the time saved involved in writing out individual cheque details is considerable. Further savings are made when reconciling the system to the bank account as there is now a single value representing all the individual receipt values which is matched to the single value deposit on the bank statement.
Create Banking List
Location... Bank menu > Create Banking List
Use this screen to display a grid of all cash, cheque and EFTPOS transactions that have occurred since the last time the report was printed and which are to be included in this banking.
When the screen opens all lines will be in bold text signifying they are to be included in the next banking
Where an item is not to be banked for some reason double click the line to make it non-bold.
The unselected lines will not print on this Banking List but will displayed again next time this function is run.
To reinstate a line double click it.
Right-mouse click the grid to display a sub-menu of selection shortcuts.
EFTPOS transactions would normally be left bold because the money is already in the bank. They are printed as part of the Banking List for completeness only, as they identify "money" passed over the counter.
Once the receipts you want are highlighted press the [Print] button.
By default two copies of the Banking Lists will be printed, one for filing and the other to be stapled to the bank Deposit slip.
The report prints the cash, cheque and EFTPOS transactions on separate pages so only the cheque page needs to be attached to the deposit slip as it also shows the total cash received.
After printing you will be returned to the grid display and the report should be checked against the cash and cheque holdings.
Assuming all is OK click the [Mark as Printed] button which marks the "highlighted" receipts so they do not appear next time the report is run.
It should go without saying that if you do not accurately enter your receipts as cash or cheque, including bank and branch details, the report will not be much use.
Reprint Banking List
This does just what it is called. Use this function to re-print any previous Banking List by selecting the one required from the list box where the list number and range of transaction dates are displayed. Watch out for overlapping date ranges which are legitimate, at least as far as the system goes anyway.
If you need to Cancel a Banking List for some reason reprint it first for reference.
Cancel Banking List
Sometimes an error occurs where the cash or cheques don't agree with the report so a banking list may be cancelled, unlocking the transactions which had been "Marked as Printed". This will permit changes to be made so receipts may be dropped or other transactions included before creating the Banking List again.
You can not cancel a Banking List which has been presented without first running the Cancel Bank Reconciliation (as many times as necessary), to gain access those Banking Lists which have been presented. You will need to repeat the cancelled reconciliations again and it's a good idea to reprint any Banking List before cancelling it, unless you have current file copies, so you can get the banking correct for any reconciliations that will need to be repeated.
Bank Reconciliation Menu Overview
The Bank Reconciliation topic provides a complete discussion on reconciling the system bank balance to the real bank balance The next four menu entries are those used in that process and are only briefly discussed here. Follow the links to the main topic for fuller details.
Enter Bank Statement Details
This program is where the receipts and payments in the Aspect Property Manager are matched against the deposits and withdrawals shown on the bank statement and compared to the bank account balance. If a balance can not be achieved the Bank Reconciliation report (below) can be used as an aid to locating the missing, duplicated or incorrectly entered transactions. See Enter Bank Statement Details for more details on performing a bank reconciliation.
Bank Statement Details Report
Once the bank reconciliation is complete it is recommended that the Bank menu > Bank Statement details report is printed and filed with the actual "bank statement" used in achieving the reconciliation.
This provides a list of the receipt and payment transactions in the Aspect Property Manager which were matched against the deposits and withdrawals on the bank statement covering the same date range and having the same opening and closing balances.
Additionally there may be pairs of self cancelling transactions which were used to transfer money internally between accounts or changing the allocation of money within the same tenant account
Bank Reconciliation Report
This is a useful trouble-shooting report as it lists all unpresented receipts and payments in the system.
Printing the report and "ticking off" the system transactions against the printed bank transactions can help find missing or duplicated entries and transactions with wrong values or dates. It also highlights any payments made in the system which have not been confirmed. XXXX define confirm
The first section prints every individual payment and where the payment is part of a batch they are grouped and a batch total printed.
Unconfirmed payments are indicated by a bold U in the unlabelled column immediately after the Cheque No column and there will be a warning message at the foot of the report.
The second section shows only receipts.
Where transactions have been presented (highlighted) on the current incomplete reconciliation there will be a bold asterisk * in the unlabelled column immediately after the Cheque No column
Cancel Bank Reconciliation
This function undoes the "last" bank reconciliation allowing you to return to a known reconciliation point by running the job multiple times. Determine the reconciliation you want to cancel by noting the Statement ID number on the Bank Statement Details Report for the oldest reconciliation you want to cancel. this process does not delete transactions only unreconciles them so incorrect reconciliations may be corrected.
Bank reconciliations which embrace past periods or past period transactions can be cancelled.
The Admin menu > Reverse End of Period will cancel any bank reconciliations which are affected by that process.
Bank Reports
CashBook
This report shows the movement of money in and out of the system. In a sense it is the bank statement of the system and in a perfect world would mirror your bank statements exactly. However, this report will show every receipt or payment made in the system including any errors and corrections made.
When you cannot reconcile the system bank balance and the bank statement balance you may find this report useful to check that you have made the same entries as happened in the real bank.
Take care when using the Date Range option because the cashbook then ignores the period the transaction belongs to and reports strictly on transaction date so "out of period", future dated, post dated and data entry errors may affect the resulting report.
Cheques Issued
This report prints a list of cheque payments in cheque number sequence made from the system. It is selectable by period range and can be used to track who the payee was for a particular cheque. If you are not using the internal reconciliation system you can use it to track unpresented cheques.