Subsidiary Ledgers

This is the time of year when your CPA wants subsidiary ledgers to back up the Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Inventory and other balances on the General Ledger Trial Balance. 

Knowing exactly what reports to run and what print time ‘pick’ selections to use can save you time and frustration. The Open Invoice file is a listing of all those invoices that are currently in the Open Invoice file. In AP you have the choice of picking invoices due before a certain date as well as the status of Released, Held, Temporary, Prepaid or All. This report is the ’current’ status. It does not go back to pick up a ’snapshot’ of a past period. In AR you have the choice to pick invoices due before a date and run either all invoices or exclude paid invoices. 

To run subsidiary reports that match your year-end General Ledger Balances you will want to run the Aged Trial Balance in both AR and AP. 

You should not purge any open invoices from this file until you have run the final report for year end. This is because when you purge ‘paid’ invoices it is for all invoices that are paid ‘before’ a certain date or period. Once purged you cannot go back and get a period end report without actually backing into the figures by adding back all paid invoices and deducting all sales or purchases made in 2009. 

When running the ATB run the report by PERIOD rather than date. This will pick up any invoices that may have a different date, but were posted to a particular period. Also select the Aging and Cutoff period of 12/2008 (if you are trying to run the year end subsidiary ledger).  

Other issues that may affect these subsidiary ledgers matching the General Ledger Balances are un-posted General Ledger transactions, or transactions posted to the wrong year (look for transactions posted to period 12 of the year 2009 or transactions posted to period 1 of 2008).  

The Inventory Valuation Report needs to be run right after you have taken your Physical Inventory and before you start any new transactions in AP/PO AR/SO. The Valuation Report is a snapshot in time and is ever changing, just like your Balance Sheet. If you did not run this report at year end you can still run it now and increase the valuation by all purchases that you have made in the year 2009 and reduce the value by all sales or material requisitions that have occurred in 2009. Make it part of your standard Physical Inventory to print a Valuation Report to file to later give to your CPA. 

Cash Accounts are reconciled by performing your regular monthly Bank Reconciliation procedure for tagging cleared items and running reports. It is recommended you clear out these tagged transactions by either changing the Transaction Status or by purging out the tagged transactions. This will keep your ‘cleared transactions’ area clear of all those deposits and checks that have already cleared the bank in past periods.

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Active Financial Statements  

Beginning with TRAVERSE 10.5 and OSAS 7.5 (BBj) the General Ledger Application comes with the ability to run ACTIVE financial statements. 

What this means is that when you select to print the financial statements ACTIVE they appear on your screen similar to a print preview. Where figures are blue you can double click on them and ‘drill down’ to the next level. If you are looking at a figure on your Income Statement that is made up of several General Ledger accounts it will drill you down to each account that makes up that figure.  

Next drilling down on the individual account you can drill down to the individual entries that make up the amount in the account for this figure. Drilling down yet again will get you to the original document that made up these entries. Documents being AP or AR Invoices, BR or GL transactions, etc.

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Exporting Data  

You can easily create Excel reports with data from OSAS and TRAVERSE with no programming skills. Creating reports in this manner means you don't have to worry about upgrading any programs when the next product update is released. No re-programming is necessary. You can still extract data from your software and save it in Excel and again, no need for programming. 

In OSAS you use the ODBC kit that comes bundled with all the releases of OSAS starting with version 7.0. (This does require the installation of BBj for at least the workstation that will be using ODBC if the full installation is not BBj). Once you configure the ODBC connection, you can extract any and all OSAS information and format it in Excel. With a little imagination you can produce some snazzy looking reports as well as reports that give you only the information you need and nothing more or less. 

In TRAVERSE open your SQL Server and create Views (which are snapshots of your table data) with the information you need to see, with the filters you want to use to limit the data and there it is! Next open your Excel import the View, and there it is! 

NOTE, Because Views are NOT actual data, nothing you do with this information will affect your original TRAVERSE data.  

For example if you want to see all customers who bought products from you in the last year, and you only want to see customers who bought more than $100 and whose Ship To address is Missouri. This will take you very little time to design. Best of all: A month from now when the data changes, because the customers bought more from you all you have to do is REFRESH the data. Need help? Give us a call.

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Electronic W2 filing

Filing the annual W2 and W3 with the Social Security Administration can be done electronically or by paper. If you have over 250 employees you MUST file electronically. If you have under 250 employees, it is your choice to file electronically or by paper. 

Filing by paper you simply run the red copy of the W2’s and the W3 copy and mail them into the Social Security Administration. 

Filing electronically for the first time you must obtain a user ID and password.  Go to the www.socialsecutiry.gov/employer.  Select “Business Online Services” (BSO).  Select “Register”.  Complete the registration form, self select your password and select the “Register” button.  

Next enter your User ID and password to log in. Select “Account Maintenance” and select “Request Access to BSO Services”. You are then prompted to select the roles you want to access.

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Post to the Master in GL

It seems to always rear its ugly head at year-end. Those unposted transactions from previous periods that were not noticed before. 

It’s possible these entries had already been corrected with manual entries, or it’s possible this is the reason your ATB’s in AR or AP do not match your General Ledger accounts for AR and AP. 

When posting in OSAS never just select posting from period 1-12. When posting in TRAVERSE never select ALL unless you are sure you know what is in these previous periods. 

To find out what the unposted entries are run the General Journal for that particular period and select Un-posted entries to review them. You can then use EDIT TRANSACTIONS to change the period in the entry to post to period 12 or leave as is.

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About Maple Business Software Consulting

Maple Business Software Consulting, LLC has over 22 years of experience planning and implementing business solutions for small, medium and large size organizations. Our fully trained staff has the technical skills and business experience necessary to help you realize your company’s full potential through business automation.

Our philosophy is simple "Do the right thing, no matter the outcome".  For our potential customers, this means walking away if our solution does not fit your business. We'll never try to fit a square peg into a round hole. When we take you on as a client, you can be confident that we have a solution that will solve your business challenges.

Purchasing the right solution for your organization could be one of the single most important decisions you make for your business. The key is to find the right product, coupled with a solution provider you can trust. You need someone who will be there with you every step of the way, from the selection process, straight through implementation, training and then after-market support.

We take pride in providing superior service and reliable products to help your business operate more efficiently. Our corporate philosophy, strong work ethics, and experience are the key ingredients to your long term business automation success!

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Contact

Maple Business Software Consulting LLC 

59113 Timber Trail

Goshen, IN 46528

574-312-8056 - Office/Cell

email: rvandaele@maplebusinesssoftware.com