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Reconciliation using CentreBill Reconciliation between the providers's billing system and accounting systems is
critical if the provider is to effectively manage their business.
Furthermore, reconciliation between credit card transactions generated by the billing system, the roll-up by the merchant to the provider's bank
account and summary posting of these transactions by the merchant to the provider's bank account also need to be accurately and effectively managed.
CentreBill does all of this simply and effectively.
The screen below shows the transaction summary of reconciliations posted to the accounting system filtered by a date range:
The columns in the table include:
- Sequence
– the sequence number of the reconciliation file generated for posting to the accounting system
- Post Date
– the date on which the file was created
- User
– the name of the user who initiated the reconciliation process
Provided the following five parameters reconcile between CentreBill and the accounting system at any point in time, then the two systems are fully reconciled:
- Balance (asset)
– the bank balance into which all CenterBill receipts are paid
- Unearned
Income (liability) – income in advance for services which still have to be delivered. This is amortized over each accounting period (monthly) until the full amount of the
unearned income has been allocated, where after a new invoice will be raised
- Uninvoiced Charges (asset)
– the sum of all charges raised in the system, either manually or automatically, and which are still to be posted to an invoice
- Unbanked (asset)
– the total amount of income which has been received by the provider but which has yet to be processed by the bank. This may include checks and cash received but
not yet deposited and/or credit card payments made but not yet cleared by the merchant's clearing house
- Total Income
– this is the sum of all income generated in CenterBill and should reconcile with the P&L bottom line in the provider's accounting system
The following additional functionality is provided:
- View Selected
– this button provides a detailed view of the contents of the file which are to be exported to the accounting system. The parameters include:
- Transaction
– CenterBill creates a unique transaction id for every transaction that is exported. Each transaction is imported into the accounting system as a unique record.
- DR Account
– the account number which is the debited in the accounting system
- CR Account
– the corresponding (double entry) account number which is to be credited in the accounting system
- Amount
– the amount of the transaction
- GST Amount
– the tax component of the amount of the transaction
- Doc Type
– This identifies what type of transaction it is. Summary indicates a rolled-up transaction with details included in the roll-up
- Doc Number
– this identifies the reference number of the document to which the transaction pertains, e.g. receipt number, check number, etc. Where Doc Number is 0,
this indicates that the transaction is a summary of several individual transactions
View Detail – this button provides the details behind each of the rolled-up transactions. Again, each
of the columns will have the same meaning as in the View Selected screen above.
- Export Again
– this button provides the ability to generate another identical export file in the event that the original export file become corrupt or was deleted for some reason.
GL Summary Tab
This tab displays the summary information at that point in time for the GL interface. Provided all the
fields in the form agree with their counterparts in the accounting system, then both systems are fully reconciled.
Note: the Charges on Hold field is for information purposes and is used to display the summary (and detail via the corresponding report) of all charges entered into CentreBill
against customers, but not yet approved for billing purposes. These may include pro-forma charges for services to be billed, project milestone charges which will only be approved on completion of the milestone, etc.
The diagram below shows how the reconciliation process works in practice:
The CenterBill batch export and reconciliation process typically takes around five minutes and it is thus useful to make this an end-of-day daily activity.
Whilst CentreBill has the full GL Interface file definition functional for MYOB, as the system has been designed in a modular manner, to include additional accounting system interfaces will be straight forward.
The following reports are included as part of the reconciliation process:
Summary report – this report provides the essential information for reconciliation purposes and is
the only report required to confirm a successful reconciliation
Unearned Income Report – this report details all customers and their respective services who have
prepaid for their services and these services have still to be delivered to the customer by the provider
Uninvoiced Charges Report – this report will show the details of all charges raised in CentreBill not
yet posted to an invoice. The posting will take place at the invoice run which is on the same day or after the customer's anniversary billing day.
Unbanked Payments Report – this report details all payments received by the provider but not yet
banked. Banking takes place when a new deposit slip is printed and attached to the checks, or when the provider's merchant processes the credit card transactions received during the previous banking
period (typically daily).
Total Income Report – this report shows the summary income for each of the income GL codes defined
in CentreBill. Each of the summary line items must reconcile with the corresponding GL code line item sin the provider's accounting system for full reconciliation purposes. Rounding errors may
occur over time and these will be corrected in the accounting system via a period journal entry.
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