Tip of the Month #7 - End of the Financial Year

It’s the end of the financial year! For our Tip of the Month this month, we thought we’d point out some Abacus features that will help you in sorting out everything for the end of April!

Updating Session Costs

Often a new financial year means new session costs! If the pricing structure in the setting is being updated, you can change the cost of your sessions easily in Settings > Session Types!

Click on the yellow edit pencil next to the sessions that you are looking to amend. From here, you just need to put in the new cost of the session whether you charge hourly or by session.

Sending statements through QuickPay

Did you know that you can print statements for your children? Head to Finance > QuickPay and tick on the name of the child or children that you would like to send a statement to.

In the bottom left-hand corner, you can click on either “Print Statement” or “Email”. The statement will show the parents how much they owe and from which invoices this debts have accrued. This is a really handy tool for chasing those last few payments and explaining to parents exactly what is owed.

If you choose to email the statement, you will need to pick a cover letter which will be the email to which the statement is attached. You set this up in Email Configuration.

Setting Up Your Email Templates

Did you know that you can set up multiple email templates that invoices and statements can be attached to? To set them up or make adjustments. Head to Settings > Email Configuration to do so!

We recommend keeping them quite generic so that you can use them for multiple children across multiple months but having different templates for specific reasons! For example, you might want to have a cover letter for “Invoice”, “Reminder Invoice” and “Statement” among any others!

Using Financial Reports

Since the end of the financial year is upon us, you may want to utilise some of the reports so you can see what is still outstanding and how much you have invoiced for! Did you know that all of the financial reports can be exported into a Excel spreadsheet or CSV file?

There are lot's of helpful finance reports on Abacus - take some time to play around with them to see which ones you like best! If you don't where to start, try these;

Detailed Invoice Summary Report – This report will show you the total of the invoices in a selected period. Try running the report by “Date” and “Invoice Period” to see invoices for sessions on the dates rather than invoices dated a particular day! At the bottom of the last page, you will find the totals!

Credit Note Report – This report will show you all of the credit notes that were raised within the period selected. This is a great way to make sure than no invoices have been credited accidently and not re-run!

Aged Balance Report Monthly Outstanding - This report will show you who has an amount outstanding on their account! It will also show you how old the debt on the account is whether it is one, two, three or more than three months old! This is a great report to identify parents that aren’t very good at paying on time!

Payment Receipts List - This report will show you all of the payments you have received in a selected period. Choose "Advance Receipts" to see your payments that have been added onto the system but not allocated to an invoice, Choose "Allocated Receipts" to see the individual receipts for the payments added to invoices or click "Consolidated Summary" for a payment receipt summary!

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