User Group Meeting - Tuesday July 27th

Register today for the InterMicro User Group meeting.  This event will help you sharpen your reporting skills, tech you the tricks to system maintenance, provide reconciling tips, as well as demonstrate the tools to help your business go GREEN.

Topic Included:

• Traverse 11 features

• OSAS 7.6 and beyond

• Using pivot tables/advanced reporting

• Going green (no more paper)

• System maintenance

• Reconcile like a pro

• Moving from OSAS to Traverse

Seating is limited, register today!

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Customer Conference in Las Vegas

It’s not too soon to begin planning to attend this year’s annual OSAS and TRAVERSE Customer Excellence Conference being held September 22-23.      

The agenda will include two days of breakout sessions with several classes to choose from for each session.  The venue is South Point Casino in Las Vegas.    

Click here for the preliminary class schedule.           

Check www.osas.com for additional details. Start planning and budgeting now so you can attend.

Don't forget, the Early Bird Discount ends June 30. Hurry and register!

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Patient Protection and  Affordable Care Act

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.

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Is July Your New Fiscal Year?           

July 1 is the second most common fiscal year beginning behind January 1. If this your new fiscal year remember to create your year 2011 as soon as possible after June. This will allow you to continue processing in the old year while you are beginning your new year.           

Remember to ‘Update the Current Year’ whenever you post to the master in the old year so that your ending balances for the year 2010 are always the beginning balance for the year 2011.

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Periodic Maintenance Just what does it do? 

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. 

Accounts Receivable/Sales Order 

- Deletes paid invoices from open invoices and accumulates balance totals for -- balance forward customers

- Adjusts the customer information to match the open invoice information

- Advances the figures in the aging periods in the customer information

- Updates the credit status in the customer information

- Removes sales history before a specified date

- Posts finance charges to the specified period

- Purges recurring entries for the cutoff date entered

- Purges paid transactions before a specified date

- Clears Customer High Balance

- Clears Sales Rep Year to Date totals

- Purges Quotes, RMA’s, expired document links, and Order history with transactions before a specific date

Accounts Payable/Purchase Order 

- Deletes Temporary Vendors and their History

- Purges Purchase History before a specified date

- Purges Payment History before a specified date

- Purges Vendor history before a specified year

- Deletes Paid invoice before a specified date

- Deletes Purchase Order History before a specified date

- Deletes Document Links that have expired 

Inventory 

- Change the price of items by amount or percent

- Change the standard or base costs of items

- Deletes zero quantity cost buckets before a specified date

- Purges serial numbers with initial dates before a specified date

- Deletes zero quantity lots with initial dates before a specified date

- Purges Alternate Items with end dates as specified

- Purges Serialized Item History before a specified date

- Purges Item History before a specified date

- Deletes Detail History before specified transaction date 

Payroll 

- Rollup Leave Balance combines all sick and vacation leave detail entries into a new starting total and deletes detail entries from the table, then compares to Employee Information Pay tab. If they don’t match the report is generated. Clears sick and vacation hours to zero

- Purges Recurring Entries before a specified date

- Deletes Check History before a specified date

- Deletes Transaction History before a specified date

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Accounts Payable-Hold/Release vs Invoice Inquiry 

Invoice Inquiry, found in the 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 they both list invoice number, amount, discount date and amount, due date, status (held, released, temp, or paid), and last payment and amount.

The difference between these two functions are:

- All vendors can be selected in the Inquiry whether or not they have open invoices. Only vendors with open invoices and be viewed in hold/release

- Hold/release allows you to scroll through each vendor without having to re-select. Invoice Inquiry requires you to select each vendor.

- Invoice Inquiry allows you to drill down and see the header and detail of the invoice. Hold/release does not

- Hold/release displays Bank ID, invoice inquiry does not

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Accounts Receivable-Hold/Release vs Invoice Inquiry           

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

The similarities between these two functions are they both list Invoice number, type (invoice, payment, credit), invoice date, status (held or released), discount amount and check number if paid.

The differences between these two functions are:

All customers can be selected in the Inquiry whether or not they have open invoices. Only those with open invoices can be viewed in hold/release

Invoice Inquiry allows you to look up by Customer ID or by Invoice number. Hold/release is by Customer ID only

Invoice Inquiry displays the credit limit amount, Hold/release does not

Invoice Inquiry allows you to drill down on the invoice number to view the header and detail information pertaining to the particular invoice. Hold/release does not.

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Mid Year Testing for Payroll’s Taxability—Federal, State, and Local

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 Quarter/Year-End Maintenance menu. 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 Withholding Report 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.

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Periodic Maintenance, what does it mean?

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.

Accounts Receivable/Sales Order

-  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

-  Updates credit status in customer file

-  Clears the month/quarter/year to date in Payment Methods

-  Increments the Period by 1 in the Period Table

Accounts Payable/Purchase Order

-  Deletes Temporary Vendors and their History

-  Purges Purchase History before a specified date

-  Purges Payment History before a specified date

-  Purges Vendor history before a specified year

-  Deletes Paid invoice before a specified date

-  Deletes Purchase Order History before a specified date

-  Deletes Document Links that have expired

Inventory

-  Change the price of items by amount or percent

-  Change the standard or base costs of items

-  Verify that QTY detail and QTY totals match

-  Purge Serial, Lot, and Bin numbers before a specified date

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

-  Purge Lot, Detail, and Summary History before a specified date.

-  Deletes Zero quantity cost buckets

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

Payroll

-  Rollup Leave Balance combines all sick and vacation leave detail entries into a new starting total and deletes detail entries from the table, then compares to Employee Information Pay tab. If they don't match an error report is generated

-  Clears sick and vacation hours to zero

-  Purges Recurring Entries before a specified date

-  Deletes Check History before a specified date

-  Deletes Transaction History before a specified date

-  Purges Prior Payroll years

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Hold/Release vs Invoice Inquiry

These two functions are found both in Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable.

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.

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Expanding the GL Mask

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.

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Mid Year Testing for Payroll’s Taxability—Federal, State, and Local

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.

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