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Volume 25 No. 1
December 2012 Revisions Released!!
Make sure that you install these revisions AFTER your last payroll in 2012 has been completed and BEFORE you Save/Prepare W2's.
The latest accounting revisions were posted to our website www.gmsactg.com on December 14th, 2012. You should have received an email from GMS on December 14th that included instructions for downloading and installing these revisions. It is VERY important that all revisions are installed in a timely manner. As all of our revisions should be installed timely, it is even more important that the December revisions be installed at the proper time as critical issues such as W2’s and FICA, Federal, State and Local tax rate changes for the subsequent calendar year are included with these changes. (Please refer to the November newsletter and GMS Help Manual for more detail.)
January 2013 IN THIS ISSUE:
RLSS Non-Sufficient Funds Check Off-site Accounting Services Available Coming Soon! Mobile App Do You Know Who This Is?
Continued on page 3
Cost Allocation Series Article Seven Supplement #389 Cost Allocation Locks
Do you have grants and contracts that end at vari-
ous times during your fiscal year? Are you required
to submit final financial reports for these programs
prior to your fiscal year ending? Do you use actual
rates determined by using a year-to-date base for
any of the allocation pools such as leave, fringe
benefits, indirect costs and/or special allocations?
If the answer to these questions is “Yes” and your
grantor will not accept a revised final financial re-
port once your fiscal year has ended, then you may
want to consider using the Cost Allocation Locks
supplement.
As you are aware, when using a year-to-date base
to allocate your pools, the allocation rates will fluc-
tuate on a month to month basis. If you have a pro-
gram that ends during your fiscal year and you pre-
pare the final report to the funding source based on
that particular month’s Revenue & Expense report,
chances are in the subsequent months the allocation
rate(s) will fluctuate in either direction.
As the rates fluctuate you will see the result of this
fluctuation as small amounts charged to the pro-
grams that you have already “closed”. By the end
of your organization’s fiscal year these amounts are
going to have to be dealt with. The Cost Allocation
Locks supplement is an excellent way to accom-
plish this! Continued on page 4
Fun Facts about Austin!!!
Austin, Texas has about 19 million visitors each year!! This is more than Disneyland (14.7 million) or Niagara Falls (14 million). Why not come and see what all the fuss is about??!!
Join us May 19th – 24th for the GMS Summit 2013 - 28th Annual Financial Management Conference in Austin, Texas. Watch for the next few month’s newsletters for articles de-tailing the sessions to be offered and an an-nouncement of a NEW Intensive Session on Employment Law!!
For further details please visit our website:
https://www.gmsactg.com/events/conferences.html
Page 2 NEWS FROM GMS A PUBLICATION FOR GMS CLIENTS VOLUME 25 NO. 1
GMS, Inc. 10559 Metropolitan Avenue
Kensington, MD 20895
Phone: 800-933-3501
Fax: 301-933-3502
E-mail: service4gms@gmsactg.com
Off-Site Accounting Services Available
GMS offers a wide variety of off-site services for our clients. Two of the more popular ones are year-end assistance and training on a specific feature or pro-cedure in GMS. However there are also other areas in which we may be of as-sistance. As you know, bank reconciliations being done timely are critical in order to produce accurate financial reports. Other accounts on the Balance Sheet are not to be taken lightly either. Not having your Accounts Payable Analysis reconciled to your General Ledger, or not knowing the detail behind any asset or liability account on your Balance Sheet can have a dramatic im-pact on your financial reports.
One of the services we offer is to reconcile these accounts for your agency. We know that there can be a variety of reasons that these reconciliations may have gotten behind. Why not let us help you get cur-rent with your procedures? We are also available to create some of the more involved Report Writer exercises for you. Don’t wait until your fiscal year ends to request these services. These services are billed at the prevailing rate which is presently $100.00 per hour.
Should you require off-site assistance in any of these areas, please contact us at service4gms@gmsactg.com to schedule these services.
RLSS Non-Sufficient Funds Check
When a check is returned because of
insufficient funds, the steps taken to
reverse the entry will depend upon the
method selected for interest calculation.
The primary difference between the
two methods is the Activity Date that
will be used. This Activity Date is im-
portant because the current period’s
interest is calculated based upon this
date if your loan is set up with Daily
Interest. The Activity Date is also es-
pecially important this time of year if
you issue 1098’s to your client as you
need to correctly reflect interest that
you have received during the year so
reversing the entry in the correct calen-
dar year is critical.
An Important Note: The following
steps were developed using the as-
sumption that the NSF check was the
most recently posted activity.
If the loan is set up as Amortization
method:
Select Loan Activity, enter the appro-
priate loan number, tap enter. Select
Print and print a copy of the Loan Ac-
tivity History, since you will be recon-
ciling the new balance to a previous
one and will need to know the dates
and amounts to be used in the next step.
From Loan Activity, Adjustments,
make a reversing entry. Use the same
activity date originally used when the
NSF check was received as the activity
date, and select repayment as activity
type. Enter the original activity total as
a negative number under “activity to-
tal”. Also enter the interest as recorded
on the original activity as a negative
number under interest. This will also
apply if there were any penalties, es-
crows, or miscellaneous fees recorded
in the original activity. Be sure to re-
verse any accrued interest that may
have been part of the original entry.
Use the paid-thru date of the last good
payment as the “new paid-thru” date.
Verify the new balance, which should
revert back to the balance prior to the
NSF check being posted as a repay-
ment. Use the Notes section of the ac-
tivity screen to record any pertinent
information.
Continued on page 4
The GMS Offices will be
closed Monday, January
21st in honor of Martin
Luther King Jr’s Birthday.
The offices will reopen
Tuesday, January 22nd
for
normal business hours.
Present versions
of Software are:
Accounting 1.2.287
RLSS 1.0.0.9
“Whether we want them or not, the New Year will bring new challenges; whether we seize them or not, the New Year will bring new opportu-nities.” ~Michael Josephson
Page 3 NEWS FROM GMS A PUBLICATION FOR GMS CLIENTS VOLUME 25, NO. 1
December 2012 Revisions Released continued from page 1
It is also important that all staff using the
GMS Accounting System read through the
list of changes included with the revision to
familiarize themselves with the new features
or changed items. Following is information
on some of the changes included in this revi-
sion:
New Items
New Supplement – We are happy to
release Supplement #424 Comparison
Financial Reports. This supplement
includes comparison reports for up to
5 years for your Balance Sheet and
YTD column on the Agencywide R & E
Report!!
Existing Budgets can now be edited
directly in the grid in Budget/PY rather
than deleting and re-entering the line.
For the Ohio school tax, all school dis-
trict codes can now be used even if a
district has no school tax.
.
Supplement #422 New Hire Reporting
now includes the electronic format for
Florida.
General Ledger
In PDF Reports we have added Quar-
terly Payroll Register and Quarterly
Reporting Register.
Documents can now be attached to GL
Codes, allowing a grant or contract to
be attached to a project code.
In Monthly Processing, the Batch Anal-
ysis is now available for multiple
months and you can choose to generate
the list for specific Books of Entry.
Accounts Payable
We have added a screen display on the
Print AP Check Form that shows the
next available check number.
When beginning to print A/P checks
and one of the requested check numbers
has been previously used, you will now
receive a list of the checks and batch
numbers in which they were used.
Supplement #330 Complete 1099’s now
has an option to adjust the position
vertically of the printed information
on the form.
Payroll
When entering or importing timesheets
for annual salaried employees who are
on a semi-monthly or monthly pay cy-
cle we now display the total hours in
the pay period on the Batch Control
Screen and Timesheet Batch Report.
We have added a screen display on the
Print Payroll Check Form that shows
the next available check number.
When beginning to print Payroll checks
and one of the requested check numbers
has been previously used, you will now
receive a list of the checks previously
used.
We have defaulted the posting period
of the Payroll Journal Entry to the
last day of the month of the settlement
date if Supplement #306 Direct Deposit
Payroll is used. If the supplement is not
used, it will use the last day of the
month of the paycheck date.
In Supplement #517 Retirement Report
for Indiana clients severance pay can
now be reported separately from regular
pay.
These are just some of the changes in the
December 2012 revisions. Please make sure
you read the memo included with the re-
visions on December 14th or click on Help/
Latest Revision to see a complete list of
the changes and new features.
Note: Subsequent to these revisions, on
January 2, 2013 a revision was posted to
the GMS website containing the 2013
changes for Federal withholding, FICA
withholding, Ohio School Tax and State
of Oregon withholding. There was also a
change for position 499 of the 2012 W2
electronic file. This revision should be
installed before the first payroll dated in
2013 is processed. Please see the Memo
dated January 2, 2013 for more details.
Here is another baby pic-
ture of a current GMS
staff member. Do you
recognize this person?!
How many of you
guessed correctly last
September? To find out
who the “Featured Em-
ployee” is, please go to the GMS Employees page on
our website. http://www.gmsactg.com/company/
about-us/gms-employees.html. On the bottom of the
page we will reveal whose picture it is!!
Do you know
who this is?
GMS will launch a new mobile application in
January, 2013 for our GMS Summit - 28th
Annual Financial Management Conference!
You will be able to view schedules and maps
as well as plan your day and network with
other attendees. You will have the ability to
access up-to-date information leading up to
the big event and stay connected while in at-
tendance from the convenience of your
smartphone.
Visit our website for all conference related
information: https://www.gmsactg.com/events/conferences.html
COMING
JANUARY 2013!
Page 4 NEWS FROM GMS A PUBLICATION FOR GMS CLIENTS VOLUME 25, NO. 1
Cost Allocation Series Article Seven Supplement #389 Cost Allocation Locks continued from page 1
When a program ends and you finalize the allocation
amounts you can move the subsequent amounts caused
by the rate(s) fluctuation to another program. Typically you would move these amounts to the following grant or
contract for the same program. This is done very simply by identifying the “final” allocated amounts, locking them
at those amounts, and specifying the program element to
which the fluctuation amounts are to be transferred. GMS highly recommends that you send a letter to your grantor
agency informing them of this accounting practice prior to finalizing each of the grants/contracts.
This is a great way to deal with one of the characteristics
of a year-to-date base for pools when your programs have
differing years than you organization’s fiscal year and your grantor agencies will not accept a revised final financial
report.
Please see the GMS Help Manual for more details on this supplement and its methodology.
Orders for this supplement may be placed on the GMS
website at https://www.gmsactg.com/order -
supplements.html. The supplement price is:
Purchase Annual License/
Price Maintenance 1-2 Users $160.00 $24.00
3-4 Users $200.00 $30.00
5+ Users $250.00 $37.50
Note: This is the final article on the Cost Allocation Series. We hope you found them helpful!!
RLSS Non-Sufficient Funds Check continued from page 2
If the loan is set up as
Daily
interest method:
Select Loan Activity, en-
ter the appropriate loan
number, tap enter. Select
Print and print a copy of
the Loan Activity History,
since you will be recon-
ciling the new balance to
a previous one and will
need to know the dates
and amounts to be used in
the next step.
From Loan Activity, Ad-
justments, do an adjusting
entry. Use the date of the
last “good” activity as the
activity date. Select re-
payment as activity type.
Enter the amount of the
payment as a negative
number in “activity total”.
Enter the amount of inter-
est charged when the pay-
ment was originally re-
ceived as a negative
amount in “current inter-
est”. Enter any other
amounts as negative
amounts in fees, escrows,
etc., as originally record-
ed. Be sure to reverse any
accrued interest that may
have been part of the orig-
inal entry. This should
result in a minus principal
amount which equals the
amount of principal rec-
orded in the original
transaction. Use the paid-
thru date of the last valid
activity as the new paid-
thru date for this activity.
Use the Notes section of
the transaction screen to
record any pertinent infor-
mation. Verify the new
loan balance – it should
revert to the
loan balance as
it was prior to
the NSF check
being original-
ly posted as a
repayment.
NOTE: Alt-
hough you may
wish to record
a fee under
“NSF Fees” it
is more reason-
able to do so
when the next
payment is received. If
you include it in the re-
versing entry, it will im-
pact the balance, basically
increasing the loan bal-
ance by the amount of the
fee. By doing this, you
will be charging interest
on the fee, which is not
normally an acceptable
accounting practice. If
the closing documents
signed by the borrower
allow interest to be
charged on NSF fees, then
yes, you may enter it now
and increase the loan bal-
ance. Think of it this
way: you cannot collect a
fee from a check that was
returned due to non-
sufficient funds. The next
time a valid repayment is
recorded is the time to
deduct the NSF fee from
the activity total.