How defaults affect your accounting process

How defaults affect your accounting process

Setting financial defaults controls certain financial processes, such as how the system differentiates in its handling of different companies and properties. These settings are found on the Business Structure and Defaults screens. Be aware that some of these settings cannot be easily changed after you have started using the system.

In the Business Structure you specify:

• GL currency is the home currency in the accounting system. By law, when a tax invoice is raised the document must show amounts in GL currency. Thus, in cases where the customer is being charged in a currency other than the GL currency, an exchange rate from folio currency is required. The GL currency is specific to the invoicing unit.
  If the financial interface is active, the system also prompts for an exchange rate when receipts are processed against folios whose currency does not match the GL currency.
• Which Banks and Cash Points can be used by the company.
• Which properties fall within each company.
• Invoice numbering. The invoice number comprises of 3 segments – Environment (e.g. WB: online / RS: offline at the reservations office / PA: offline at the property), Identifier, and Sequence Number.
  The environment is set automatically, according to the server on which the invoice is generated.
  You can choose any value for the identifier, such as a one or two-character abbreviation of the company name.
  The sequence number is automatically applied as the next available value for the Environment – Identifier combination.

The following parameters that govern financial processing at the system level (i.e. applicable to all companies) are made on the Defaults > Financial screen: 

• How frequently exchange rates have to be entered and whether these rates have to be controlled from a single environment, e.g. from the Reservations Office.
• How to handle bookings that span two or more rate periods, e.g. if a booking arrives in low season and departs in high season must a single rate be applied or a different rate for each season’s portion of the booking. 
• Define whether booking arrival or departure date is to be used as the default invoice date. This setting determines which date will be applied as the invoice date when an invoice is generated, although you have the ability to override the date at the time of invoicing.
  The default invoice date also affects financial reports when you are reporting on values by folio date. On an invoiced folio the actual invoice date is the folio date but on an uninvoiced folio the system applies the default invoice date as the folio date.
• Whether you allow an invoice to be generated for a date in the future.

On the Defaults > Documentation screen you can control the presentation of financial documents (Proformas and Tax Invoices) with the following settings.

• The title to be applied for each document.
• Whether tax details (tax rate and tax amount) are to be shown on each detail line in the body of the invoice.
• Whether a Tax Table is to be included on the invoice by default. This table presents one row for each tax rate applied on the invoice, showing the consolidated value for that tax. On the Business Structure, i.e. per company, you can choose which tax rates to include in the table and the sequence in which they are to be listed. (The sequence is particularly significant if you are printing to a fiscal machine.)
• Set a label for consolidated rate components. For example, if you need to combine Accommodation and Transport to show as ‘Package’ on financial documents. 

It is important to review and set these defaults before you start using the system so that much of your process is already defined. These settings should generally only be changed by your system administrator to avoid any confusion in your workflow and to ensure they are set correctly.