We’ve have a couple software enhancement requests concerning payables to Vendors and sending files to your bank. I’d love to get some feedback on these topics. Do you love these ideas? Do you hate them? What?
1. Automated Clearing House (ACH) is an electronic network for financial transactions. It means you could pay a Vendor with an ACH transfer right from your bank directly to their bank – with no check! We’ve had a couple requests for this and I’m wondering how many schools might actually allow this. As you can imagine, you’d need VERY tight security and a whole bunch of approval procedures in place within the software in order to send a file to the bank. But - it would save trees, save money spent on postage, save time spent in preparing checks, stuffing envelopes, etc.
2. Positive Pay is an anti-fraud service offered by most every US commercial bank. Here’s how it works: Every time you print a batch of checks, your software (like SchoolBooks) automatically sends a file with all the check numbers and amounts to your bank. That way, your bank knows the amount of every check you’ve issued and can decline a check with an altered amount.
You know that we are constantly evaluating new features which may increase the functionality of our software. I’ll be sharing about more of these in this blog going forward – because this is a great place for Blue Bear users to share their thoughts – with me and everyone else. So what do you think about these two? Are they things you may want in a year or 3 years? Or never? Or what? Let me know!
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I have set up business bill pay thru my ASB bank account with my districts permission due to the fact that I am required to pay the state sales tax by e-file. It was easy to do except it takes about two weeks to get the process completed at the bank end. I have purchase orders open for the three accounts that I need to pay the sales tax out of but now I have to send the payment electronically instead of using a check written in schoolbooks that would clear the purchase orders and take the funds out of the correct accounts. What would be the best way to post the sales tax that has been electronically taken out of the bank account?
ReplyDeleteHi Camille. Here's my thought:
ReplyDelete1. Enter invoices in SchoolBooks for those sales tax purchase orders.
2. Pay the sales tax through business bill pay and note the reference/confirmation number you get from your bank.
3. Enter a manual check in SchoolBooks, using all or part of that reference/confirmation number as the check number. (This will hopefully keep it out of your regular check number sequence.)
4. I think that should do it!
Thank you Carol. I will follow your instruction. It all sounds good to me. Have a great day!
ReplyDelete