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PRICE LIST. While it may not be obvious, the very first function is to enter your price list. Because of the importance of the price list we placed in the upper left corner of the page and the arrows indicate that it precedes all the other functions. The purpose of the price list is to identify what products and services your are going to sell. As mentioned above, this concept is similar to the Items and Services in Quickbooks.
Click on the price list link. If this is the first time you have been here there will be some buttons and header but nothing in the list. Let's add an item. Click on the Add button. You will be taken to a page with several fields. Let me explain each field.
Product ID. You can assign any ten character number for the product or service. You cannot have duplicate product numbers. Give a little thought to your product numbers so that they will appear in a logical order in the list. For example, you might want to put all of your products for monthly service in the 1000's. You could use 1001 for what you charge your member accounts for the monthly license and hosting fees. You could use the 2000's for web development work. Web design could be 2001 and domain name registration as 2010.
Description. Give the product a meaningful description.
Amount. This is the amount you want to charge for this product. Currently, this is just a memo field and is not used anywhere but in your product list. When you invoice a customer for this product you put in the price you want. In a future release, we may make this price the default price. However, right now it does not.
Taxable. Currently, this is also just a memo field.
Billing Period. For a basic accounts receivable system you can leave this field blank. We will discuss this field when we discuss automatic billing.
When you are done, click submit. Now you will have a product in your price list. Continue to add any additional products you offer. For example, in our price list we have a product number for a monthly billing, for quarterly billing, and annual billing. We have product numbers for web develop and another for domain name registration.
The other options available will allow you to edit the product to change the description or other amounts. You can also deactivate or activate a product. If you deactivate a product, it will not appear in any other lists in the accounting system. If you have deactivated any product records and would like them to display in this price list, then check the View All box. If you want to delete a product click the delete button. There will be some restrictions on deleting a product that is associated with any invoice.
Generally, once you have set up your price list, you will not need to enter in this section very often. The return button will return you to the main accounts receivable menu.
INVOICES. The invoicing features are the heart of the accounts receivable. You create an invoice as a bill for your services to your member accounts. Remember that invoices increase how much your member owes you and payments decrease what they owe you. While this principle sounds obvious, it is important to remember it.
When you click on the Invoices link you will be taken to a page that will let you select the member account from a drop down list. (If you have a large number of accounts, you will be presented with a page to help you narrow your search.) Select the member account you wish to work with.
Once you have selected an account you will go to a page listing key information about the member account and a list of invoices, which will be empty if this is the first time in the page. An invoice has two parts, a header and details. The header information consists of information such as name and address. There is only one header record. The detail information lists specifically what the charges are. There can be multiple detail records for each invoice.
To add an invoice do the following steps:
- Click the Add button which will take you to a page for selecting the type of invoice
- As a reseller, you currently only have one print format time, "30-Member invoice." So, click next.
- The name and address of the member has been prefilled for you. However, you can change the name and address for this invoice if you want. Your company name and address will appear in the upper left corner.
- The invoice number will be generated for you by the system
- In the description field enter whatever descriptive information you want.
- The accounting date will default to today's date but you can put whatever date you wish. For example, if you are creating an invoice for last week, you would put in last week's date.
- The due date will default to 21 days in the future. You can put whatever date you wish.
- Enter payment terms. For example, "Due in 21."
- Enter what ever comments you want. This information is for your benefit and will be displayed on the invoice. Remember that the member can also see this comment.
- Click the Next button which will take you to the detail section of the invoice.
The following steps will create detail records:
- Select the product number from the drop down list. This comes from your price list.
- Enter the quantity. For example, if you wanted to charge someone for 2 month's fees and your price list item is monthly, then you could enter a quantity of two.
- Enter the price per unit, such as $39.95 per month. You do not need to enter the dollar sign.
- Enter the extended price. This is equal to the quantity times the unit price. If the amount you enter is not equal to the quantity times the unit price, the system will recompute it so that it will be equal.
- You may enter whether the item is taxable or not. However, currently, this field is not used for anything and will not matter whether you enter anything or not.
- If you have another line item to add to the invoice, then click next line item and repeat the above steps for the detail records. If you are done, then click Finish.
- From the invoice page click Finish again to complete the invoice. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT TO COMPLETE THE INVOICE. Otherwise the invoice will be incomplete.
Once you have clicked finish, you will be taken to an invoice summary page that will list the header information and all the detail line items. At this point you can edit the header information or any detail line item. When you are complete click finish which will take you to a list of invoices.
Once an invoice has been created you can maintain it by clicking on the view button next to the invoice number. When you are Viewing an invoice you can do the following options
- Email the invoice to the member.
- Print the invoice.
- Edit the header.
- Add a new line.
- Delete the invoice.
- Edit the detail line.
- Delete the detail line.
When you are done, click the return button through the series of pages to return to the accounts payable page. If you are multiple steps into a process and you want to get back to the top level functions quickly, then just click the blue Accounting button at the top then click Accounting again.
STATEMENTS. The statements are a summary of what transactions you have created and indicate how much each member owes you. The types of transactions that will be displayed are invoices which we have just talked about, payments which we will talk about shortly, and credit memos which we will talk about later. There is one statement for each member account.
When you click on the Statements link you will be taken to a page that will allow you to select which member account you want to see. (If you have many member accounts the selection page is a little more complicated.) Next you can change the date range of the transactions you wish to see. The system defaults to the last 30 days. You can specify any date range. For example, you could specify all the transactions for that last 12 months. (As of this date, EZ-NetTools has not purged any old transactions. Therefore, all previous transactions are viewable.) Click on the submit button.
You will be displayed the statement. In the upper left corner will be the information about the member account. Your information will be displayed in the upper right corner. All transactions for the period you selected will be display in chronological order. At the bottom will be an aging based on the last date selected. At this point you might just see the invoiced prepared as part of this article.
The buttons at the top and the bottom allow you to email this statement to your member account. You can also print the statement out and send it the old fashioned way. For now we will not talk about the Comments feature. If you want to select another time period click the back button of your browser (at the top of your page) and enter a new begin and end date. When you are done, click the return button, and then return again.
PAYMENTS. Using the payment options you can record the payments that your member accounts have sent you. The payments could be checks or credit cards. This receivable system is what is called a balance forward system. That means that all payments are not matched up to a particular invoice. This is different than the way Quickbooks does receivables. All payments are paid on account. This makes the accounting much easier.
Select the payments link from the main receivables menu. You will see the account selection page as you have seen before. Select the member account you want to record the payment for and click the Submit button. You will be taken to the Payment history page. If there are no payments for this account the list will be blank. To add a payment perform the following steps:
- Click the Add button.
- If you wish, you can change the billing address of the member account.
- Enter the document number. If this is a check, this would be the check number. You can create your own numbering system if you wish.
- Enter the amount of the payment. The amount will default to the amount due. You can change the amount if you need to.
- Enter a description. This will appear on the list in the payment history page.
- The date created is determined by the system and cannot be changed.
- The accounting date can be any date you wish. It will default to today's date.
- In the comments you can document information you want to remember about the payment. For example, you could note that the payment is for the sign up fees and the first month's fees. (Be judicious with your comments because your members will be able to see them from their Accounts Payable tools.)
- When you are done, click the Submit button. (The process button is for an advanced feature that will be explained in a future article. For now, you can ignore it.)
- You will return to the Payment History page. You should be able to see and edit the payment you just entered. Once you have completed a payment, you might want to click on the Statement link to verify that all the invoices and payments are correct. You will want to verify that you create the transactions for the correct member account and that the dates and amounts are correct.
Summary
Now, you should have a fundamental understanding of the accounts receivable system provided in the EZ-NetTools reseller menus. Once you have your Price list set up, you really only need to use the Invoices and Payments options. The Statement link is simply a summary of the transactions. These four links are all that are required for a basic, but very functional Accounts receivable system. If you have few active member accounts, there is no compelling reason to go beyond what you have learned in this article.
(You need to know that when you create these invoices and payments, that your member can see these transactions in their Accounts Payable tools, including the comments. We will cover this in more detail in a future article.)
The next article will discuss how to process credit cards online in the Receivable Tools.
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