“Tis the Season” Of Recoveries and Escalations By: Eire Stewart • J.P. DINAPOLI COMPANIES, Inc. Tis the Season of Recoveries and Escalations ..................................... 1 Excel Tip of the Month: Jump Right In and Create Useful Hyperlinks ................. 2 See What You Can Do With the Viewing Pane ................................. 3 With a Few Additional Steps, Extras Will be Ready for Buyout and Billing .......... 6 Checklist of the Month ............................... 10 TUG Calendar ............................................ 11 TUG Online Training Opportunities ............ 11 News & Information for Users of Sage Timberline Office Software for October 2006 continued on page 4 A s winter falls upon us, our thoughts turn to warm, cozy fire places and sugar plums. For those of us in Property Management, this season also conjures up thoughts of Recovery Reconciliations and Escalations. If you haven’t set them up in Timberline for the year 2000, it’s not too late to start. You will need to manually enter figures for your Tenant’s estimated payments, but the really hard stuff, pulling from the General Ledger, is unaffected by when set-up is performed. Start with “Help”. Some of the AFFs (Application Formula Functions) used in the Recovery process are complex. These can be printed and kept close by during the Recoveries Controls set-up. “Help” can also be parked on top by selecting the “Keep Help on Top” feature under Help, Options. This can allow you to view how the formula works while you are selecting calculation methods. The Property recovery controls set-up becomes a tem- plate for all your Lease recovery controls. It’s important to think ahead to all the variables you may need to cope with: expenses that are allocated by something other than square feet, exclusions from CAM for specific tenants, dispro- portional allocations, such as utility usage or items that are allocated at a building level within a multi-building business park. The manner in which your caps apply may require that you set- up separate charge types for items that either have differing caps or are excluded from caps altogether, such as property taxes or insurance. In general, the more variables you have, the more important it becomes to set up the expense categories within your recovery controls at a detailed level. I use a table to help IN THIS ISSUE “As winter falls upon us, our thoughts turn to warm, cozy fire places and sugar plums.”
Transcript
“Tis the Season”Of Recoveries and Escalations
By: Eire Stewart • J.P. DINAPOLI COMPANIES, Inc.
Tis the Season of Recoveries andEscalations ..................................... 1
Excel Tip of the Month: Jump Right In andCreate Useful Hyperlinks ................. 2
See What You Can Do With theViewing Pane ................................. 3
With a Few Additional Steps, Extras Will beReady for Buyout and Billing .......... 6
Checklist of the Month ............................... 10TUG Calendar ............................................ 11TUG Online Training Opportunities ............ 11
News & Information for Users of Sage Timberline Office Software for October 2006
continued on page 4
A s winter falls upon us,our thoughts turn towarm, cozy fire places
and sugar plums. For those of usin Property Management, thisseason also conjures up thoughtsof Recovery Reconciliations andEscalations.
If you haven’t set them upin Timberline for the year 2000,it’s not too late to start. You willneed to manually enter figuresfor your Tenant’s estimatedpayments, but the really hardstuff, pulling from the GeneralLedger, is unaffected by whenset-up is performed.
Start with “Help”. Some ofthe AFFs (Application FormulaFunctions) used in the Recoveryprocess are complex. These canbe printed and kept close by
during the Recoveries Controlsset-up. “Help” can also be parkedon top by selecting the “KeepHelp on Top” feature under Help,Options. This can allow you toview how the formula works whileyou are selecting calculationmethods.
The Property recoverycontrols set-up becomes a tem-plate for all your Lease recoverycontrols. It’s important to thinkahead to all the variables you mayneed to cope with: expenses that
are allocated by something otherthan square feet, exclusions fromCAM for specific tenants, dispro-portional allocations, such asutility usage or items that areallocated at a building level withina multi-building business park.The manner in which your caps
apply may require that you set-up separate charge types foritems that either have differingcaps or are excluded from capsaltogether, such as propertytaxes or insurance. In general,the more variables you have, themore important it becomes to
set up the expense categorieswithin your recovery controls at adetailed level. I use a table to help
IN THIS ISSUE
“As winter falls upon us, ourthoughts turn to warm, cozyfire places and sugar plums.”
- 2 -
Published by theTimberline Users Group, Inc.
and sent to all members.
Board of DirectorsMike Suhovecky, President
Sharon Hessong,Vice President
Robin Peterson, SecretaryCharlie Auger, Treasurer
Lynn BitarTom MooreJon Banse
Dawn NaisbittNatalie Allen
Dennis StejskalTom Love
Wayne Newitts
Publications CommitteeEire Stewart
Robin PetersonTom Moore
George MurphyAlan Cusson
Carolyn Boettner, EditorMaureen Connolly,
Consultant
National AdministratorBoettner Business
ProfessionalsP.O. Box 697
Sylvania, OH 43560Phone: 419.885.9004
Fax: 419.885.9007
Toll Free: 800.884.4630
Web Site
the TUG Pulse
We’ve all received e-mailssaying, “Click here.”Then, when we do
click, we’re taken to a website.Sometimes that’s good, andsometimes…not so good. Thispowerful technology is called a“hyperlink.” You can use thistechnology to greatly impact yourproductivity. Some examples ofhyperlink uses in Microsoft®
Excel are:• Producing a “table of con-
tents” sheet and jumping tothe areas of interest in yourworkbook (or in other work-books!).
• Showing a summarized totaland jumping to the detail thatmakes up that total.
• Showing a list of records(such as a job list) andjumping to a website to getdirections to that job site.
• And more!Hyperlinks are extremely
easy to find and use. While inExcel, you can insert a hyperlinkinto a cell by clicking on Insert,Hyperlink and then selecting awebsite, or clicking on and select-ing a Bookmark. You can eventype in alternate text that willdisplay in a cell with thehyperlink, or create a screen tip sothat you can help the person usingyour workbook to understand whatwill happen by selecting thathyperlink.
Once you create yourhyperlink, the format of the cellcontents will become underlinedand, usually, change to a blue font.Clicking on the cell contents withthe underline will jump to your“linked” bookmark or website.
Sometimes a website is a
Jump Right In andCreate Useful Hyperlinks
By: James Coyle • Event 1 Software, Inc.useful place to jump (such asGoogle Maps, or the local weatherforecast). You can also create“bookmarks” within your work-books and jump to those book-marks that you select when youset up your hyperlink.
To try this out, create a newworkbook.1. Select a
location inyour firstworksheet,say cell A20.When youselect cell A20, you’ll seeA20 listed at the top of yourworksheet in the Name Box:
2. In this name box, where yousee A20, type in “TOTALS”.
3. Click on cell A2 so that A2 isin the Name Box.
4. From the Excel menu, selectInsert, Hyperlink.
5. In the Text to display: box,type in “Jump to totals”.
6. Now click on the Book-mark… button. Select theBookmark from the list underDefined Names for theTOTALS.
7. Click OK to select theBookmark.
8. Click OK to save theHyperlink.
9. You’ll now see Jump to totalsin A2. Click on the thishyperlink. You should jump tothe bookmark you created incell A20. If row A20 hadtotals for your report, you’dbe at the totals! You can jumpto other worksheets andworkbooks as well.There’s no end to the types of
information you can provide witha hyperlink.
ExcelTip of the Month
ExcelTip of the Month
- 3 -October 2006
CrystalReports Tips
Continued on page 9
When you run a reportcreated with CrystalReports in Sage
Timberline Office, whether as astand-alone report or as part of aSage Desktop, the report can bedisplayed in a viewing pane thatprovides several features that areoften overlooked. Byusing the ‘Print Preview’button from the PrintSelection window, thereport will open onscreenin the Crystal Reportsviewing pane, so you can:• Set the zoom level,
by percentage or bypage width or bywhole page.
• Move between pageswith the Go to NextPage and Go toPrevious Page but-tons.
• Jump to the first orlast page of the reportwith the Go to FirstPage and Go to LastPage buttons.
• Jump to any particular pageby typing in the page number.
• Jump to each instance of aparticular word by using theSearch Text command.
• Jump to the page that con-tains specific content byusing the Group Tree orGroup Tree command toshow or hide the Group Treeview in the Preview tab.
• Print one or more pages.• Export one or more pages to
Microsoft® Word, Excel, PDF,or other format.
Crystal Reports Tips and Tricks for Report Designers:
See What You Can DoWith the Viewing Pane
By: Tom Moore • I.C.E. Builders, Inc.
Setting Zoom Level
To choose the amount ofdetail you see on screen, a pull-down menu controls zoom level.Use the pull down menu to selecta zoom percentage, from 25% to400%. You can also choose Page
Width to set the maximum zoomthat will display the entire page ofthe report form, left to right, basedon your window size. Full Pagegives you the maximum zoom,displaying the entire page, fromleft to right and from top tobottom, based on your windowsize.
Viewing Page Control
The Page control will indicatethe number of the page you arecurrently viewing, plus how manytotal pages are included in thereport you are viewing. If you
type a page number into the pagecontrol, the viewing will jump tothat page.
In the example below, we arecurrently viewing Page 3 of aneight-page report. The right-pointing triangle is the Go to NextPage button, while the right-
pointing triangle with avertical line is the Go toLast Page button. You canuse Go to Next Page togo though the report, onepage at a time, or use Goto Last Page to jump tothe end.
The Square button isthe Stop Loading button;some reports take aLONG time to load whenyou click Go to LastPage, and Stop Loadingwill halt the process and“un-freeze” the reportviewing pane.
When you are onany page other thanPage 1, you will also be
able to click the left-pointingtriangle which is the Go to Previ-ous Page button, or you canchoose the right-pointing trianglewith a vertical line which is theGo to First Page button.
Group Tree (“Table of Contents”)
The icon with three smallrectangles is the Toggle GroupTree button. This button willtoggle on or off the group treepreview pane to the left of thereport pane. The Group Tree willexpose the structure and content
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continued from page 1
determine what CAM expensesmight be effected.
Square Feet types don’tnecessarily need to contain squarefeet. It’s important to think ofthem as numerators and denomi-nators in an equation. We fre-quently use a square foot type of“Parking Spaces” – at the Prop-erty level, this contains the totalnumber of spaces, then eachLease and Unit reflect thenumber assigned under theLease. This allows us to allocateparking lot expenses to excessusers. The “Elevator” squarefoot type frequently excludes therentable square footage of thefirst floor tenants, who are notallocated this expense. Othersquare feet possibilities are thenumber of loading docks in ashared warehouse facility or yardspace for the allocation of insur-ance or property tax in an indus-trial park. To set-up unique squarefoot types, click on File, DataFolder Settings. Choose CustomDescriptions and slide down toPM SF Type. Remember that thesquare feet for your new type willneed to be added to both theProperty and the Unit, as well asthe Lease.
When setting up your ex-pense categories within theProperty Recovery Controls, it’seasiest to start with a trial balance.This way you can highlightaccount numbers used in expensecategories as you go, avoiding thepossibility of duplicating expensesor missing them altogether. Insetting up your recovery expense
categories, general ledger accountnumbers have to be consecutive.This may force you to set upseparate expense categories forrelated expenses, because they arenot sequential. You will not beable to edit the general ledgeraccount number spreads in Recov-ery Controls at the Lease level. Ifyou anticipate that certain ex-penses could be excluded fromindividual leases, you need to setthose ones up as separate expensecategories. That way you caneasily delete them from specific
leases within their RecoveryControls.
The GL accounts used don’thave to be expense accounts. Wehave a retail property in which aneighboring tenant rents addi-tional parking spaces. We pull therevenue account into the reconcili-ation so that this income is de-ducted from the parking lot
expenses as part of the reconcili-ation. In another instance, weuse unit accounts to captureslurry seals and HVAC replace-ments over a period of severalyears. The same trick works forcapturing a previous owner’sexpense in property acquiredmid-year. (See March 2000TUG Pulse for details)
Since the Property RecoveryControl become the template forthe Lease recoveries, you maywant to activate expense accountsthat are not yet in use in the GLbut may be necessary in thefuture. Doing this reduces thepotential of missing those expenserecoveries in future years.
The fixed/variable columndetermines which charges aresubject to occupancy gross-upprovisions. As an example,landscape expenses (fixed)typically aren’t effected by occu-
Tis the Season
Expense: Allocated SF Type: All Flrs/ Subj to Base Yr? Other Comments:to: Buildings Cap
Alarm SF Rentable Yes CAM CAM
Elevator SF Elevator No CAM CAM 1st floor excluded
Life Safety SF Rentable Yes CAM CAM
HVAC SF Rentable Yes CAM CAM
Insurance SF Rentable Yes Exclude INS
Janitorial SF Janitorial No CAM CAM Bank does their own
Landscape SF Rentable Yes CAM CAM
Parking Lot Spaces Park Sp No CAM CAM Anchor as excess parking
Prop Taxes SF Rentable Yes Exclude PTAXRoof SF Rentable Yes CAM CAM Some tenants excluded
membraneUtilities SF/% Rentable Yes CAM CAM Anchor is excess user
“When setting up your expensecategories within the PropertyRecovery Controls, it’s easiestto start with a trial balance.”
Within Reconciliation Con-trols, you want to be careful toselect a different charge type forthe Reconciliation invoice, other-wise, your charge type totalswhich are accumulated for thefollowing year’s reconciliationwill include this amount. We usea charge type of RCAM, short forReconciled CAM.
When choosing your escala-tion options within EscalationControls, you need to revisit theAFF printout to determine yourcalculation methods. At the sametime, if you are escalating recur-ring charges based on budgets,you need to activate budgets forall the GL expense accounts youare pulling from, even though theymay not have dollar amounts.Otherwise, your expenses, as wellas your budgets, will not pull fromthe GL during processing.
Most caps, base year infor-mation (located on the CalculationControls tab) and OccupancyClauses are lease specific. Forthat reason, you probably want toleave these options silent at theProperty level. Administration ormanagement fees may be moreconsistently applied and could beset up and then overridden if thelease varies.
Once the Property RecoveryControls is set up, the Lease set upsimply becomes a matter ofactivating the recovery from theRecurring Charges tab and apply-ing the specific exceptions uniqueto each lease. If you are startingthis process now for the 2000fiscal year, you will need tomanually enter the total estimatedpayments made to date under eachlease in the “Charges This Period”field on the Recovery Controlstab.
With the exception of the GLaccount numbers and descriptionsbeing used within Expense Cat-
egories, almost all fields pulleddown from the Property set up canbe overridden. Individual lineswithin the Expense Categories canbe deleted, square feet types canbe modified, or by blanking outthe square feet types, manualpercentages can be applied. Onceyou have pulled expenses from theGL, the actual expense can beover written for any manual dollaramount adjustments. Stops andcaps which apply to individualExpense Categories can be en-tered on a line by line basis,however stops and caps whichapply to this charge type as awhole need to be entered on theCalculation Controls tab.
Calculation Controls is alsowhere you will enter any base yearinformation. You will need tomanually calculate the base year
amount applicable to this specificlease. This is not informationwhich Timberline currently storesin the Property Master file. Weuse GL unit accounts to store BaseYear totals historically, so that italways available for reference.Caps can be entered with differentfrequencies from your Recovery
Frequency, so long as the fre-quency is not less than the Recov-ery frequency. As an example,although you reconcile a recoverymonthly or quarterly, you canenter your cap amount and fre-quency on an annual basis. Thesystem will accumulate the capapplied at each reconciliation untilit is reached. If you are process-ing Recoveries on an annual basis,you will need to convert monthlycaps to an amount that matchesyour recovery period. As anexample, if you have a cap onCAM of $0.25/square foot/month,this would be entered as $3.00 (12months x $0.25). The Cap Fre-quency also needs to be the samenumber of months as your Recov-ery Period on the RecoveryControls tab.
The Occupancy Clause tabgives you the ability to apply theOccupancy “gross-up” from yourlease and also provides a ManualPercent Occuppied, so that youcan override the system occu-pancy calculation at an individual
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This is the secondpart of a two-part series on
using the Extras feature,from Job Cost to Estimat-ing, to Buyout, to Billing.In the first part, wediscussed identifyingyour company’s buyeroptions, preparing JobCost for extras, creating atemplate job, setting upan estimate to work withExtras, setting up a set ofvalues, and creating a templateestimate ready for export. Inthis article, we’ll export thetemplate estimate to Job Cost,sort by extras, and use extras inBuyout and Billing.
We’ve created the templateestimate, and now we’re readyto export it.
Go to the Interface menu,Job Cost, for the Job CostTransfer Wizard. On the Step1 tab, check the Job CostNumber to be the tem-plate job.
On the Step 2 tab,choose Skip.
On Step 3, check thebox called Map estimateinformation to Extras inJob Cost, and select theExtras Sort Level. SelectAll WBS values.
Continue to the Step4 tab, moving the desiredReport destination to Preview,enabling you to back out andmake a correction if the transac-tion previews as Rejected. Check
With a Few Additional Steps, ExtrasWill be Ready for Buyout and Billing
By: Mathew Cunningham • Gross Builders, Inc.
the box to Automatically launchJob Cost. Then click GenerateTransactions.
The preview shouldshow Total warnings 0. Ifso, then click Print tocreate the transactionfile. If warnings aregenerated, then close thePreview. The warningsmust be repaired prior toprinting the preview.
The Job Cost Import
The Job Cost Importwill launch. A blank
textbox appears in the Extraline in the estimate. Clickinside this box and the file willpre-fill with the “Estimate willbe applied to” information: jobnumber, job description, extravalue, and extras description.
Click Start. This loads thetemplate job with the samevalues as those in the estimatewhich are the same values inthe Estimate Database. Thetemplate job in Job Cost is now
pre-loaded with extrasand is ready to be used.
In Job Cost, go toSetup menu, Copy Job.As the estimates are usedfor takeoff, in the Extrascolumn, simply definethe extras as you go.Since the template job inJob Cost will be creatingthe jobs in Job Cost, theextras will already be setup and waiting for
amounts.
Part 2: Using Extras
- 7 -October 2006
Item Takeoff Settings
In Estimating, ifseveral items will betaken off, or if assemblieswill be used, it may provehelpful to get into thehabit of setting the ItemTakeoff Settings. Thisadjustment sets thedefault for items added tothe estimate after theTakeoff Settings havebeen set.
C l i c k from theEstimating menu. TheItem Takeoff Settingswindow opens. Noticethat Extras is now avail-able to select defaultvalues. By choosing adefault value, all items orassemblies taken after thedefault is set will thenpre-set the Extras columnto the Value selected. Ifthe default value is blank,mouse over the Valuecolumn and right click theValue Extras row. List thevalues already set in thedatabase. Of course, ifdoing takeoff for standardportions of the job or one-to-one upgrades, thedefault value for Extras isblank.
Sorting by Extras
After a few extras aregiven values in the esti-mate, it’s time to sort theestimate by extras. Go toItem Takeoff, EstimateInformation, SpreadsheetSequence. Select a se-quence number and give ita name.
Choose the availableelements to sort. We useExtras and Phase. Option-ally, you can check the boxcalled Use this sequencefor new estimates. Click
OK. The window closes,and the tabs at the bottomof the estimate alsochange.
Click on your NewSort tab and look at theExtras/Phase sort Se-quence. Go through theReports menu and seewhat’s available. There’s anew sort for Extras.
In the case of theSunroom Extras shownabove in the screenshot,we install the samesunroom on any numberof houses. The sunroomwill get its own estimatewith no job numberspecified. Anytime abuyer selects a SunroomExtra, the sunroomestimate will be importedinto Buyout as an addi-tional file, after theoriginal standard esti-mate.
Finish the estimate(s)and create a Buyout WorkFile.
Import the work fileinto Buyout, and close theEstimating application.
On to the Buyout Phase
Open Buyout andopen the work file youjust created. Go to theActions menu, and selectWork File Information.Click the Sort Sequencestab. As in Estimating,choose the sort numberand extras, then phase.Check the box called Setas default Item windowsequences for new workfiles. Click OK.
The View menu’sSort, Extras/Phase is nowavailable. Go through the
Continued on page 8
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Continued on page 12
Continued from page 7
work file and use it as younormally would.
We use Buyout tocreate purchase orders.After issuing, the file issent to Job Cost via theInterface menu, ExportCommitments. To do this,in the Export Commit-ments window, selectthe Options tab. In theJob Cost Extra Setuparea, check the box forMap work file informa-tion to extras in JobCost. Select the sort thatrepresents extras in Job Cost.
The drop down list in theExport Commitments windowunder the Options tab has theExtras sort available. If this is notdone, the extras will not work. Ifyou plan to regularly trackextras, use Save Default on theright, in the Export Commit-ments window.
Click to Export the infor-mation.
The extras are now com-piled into their own separate“sub jobs.” Look for a report inthe Timberline folder with thisname:
X:\Timberline\Accounting\Reports\JC Commitment RecapReport with Extras and Detail.rpt
The Billing Phase is Next
Now that the commitmentsare sitting in Job Cost, the Pur-chase Agreement and Buyer fileswill soon arrive. For some compa-nies, the sales information caninterface with Billing through anA/R Import file. In Job Cost, go toHelp and search for “ImportAccounts Receivable file” to workin this time-saving import.
For now, open Job Cost. Goto Task, Enter Billings. All of the
With a Few AdditionalSteps
buyer-paid information can beallocated on this screen. When thescreen is first opened, the secondcolumn in the layout will be Draw.When you enter a job in the Jobcolumn, if the job has an extraallocated to it, the Extras column
is added automatically to thelayout.
Also notice the Detail col-umn. This is where the cost codesfor one-to-one items will go. Thecost code (Detail) is required, andthe Extras column is optional.Also a Revenue Account and ARAccounts are also required.
For us, the Revenue is thebank account and the AR accountsare the various places to allocatethe funds. The cost codes that holdthe primary sales data are similarto the AR accounts numbering.For example, if the account thatholds the base sale price is4300.00, and the corresponding
cost code is 40-300, thepremiums go to account4305.00, and the corre-sponding code is 40-305.Finally, the upgrade salesgo to 4310.00, with a codeof 40-310. These costcodes and accounts holdall the allocations for thebase house, the premiums/
incentives, and anything allocatedin an “extra.”
As for the upgrade costcodes, we use the 4310.00 ARaccount, but allocate to the actualcost codes that were used inBuyout and subsequently sent toCommitments. Our upgrade costcodes begin with 19-xxx. Theeasiest way to input the data is atclosing when all the money hasactually been received. That way,no retainage is held; it is allbilled. Once you’re more familiarwith this, you can retain theentire sum and bill the retainageas monies arrive. Either way, now
you can make a fairly simplereport using only JC_Job,JC_Cost_Code, and JC_Extras.All are Master files and thesimplest to implement in ReportWriter. There is also a cannedreport in Sage Timberline Office,Accounting, Reports, but thisdoesn’t contain billings informa-tion.
Finally, just remember thatthe process of planting the infor-mation where it belongs and thenharvesting the data as you need itis much easier than piling theinformation together—for hourson end—into a spreadsheet that
“In our experience, once youhave about 100 units sold, thesystem history can eventuallygenerate a forecast.”
- 9 -October 2006
of the report you are view-ing, allowing you to jump toa particular group and/or todrill down to a specificrecord. For example, in theRFI Log with Detail (CR)report, click the + sign nextto the job number to viewthe list of RFI numbers.Then, click any RFI numberto jump to the page andsection of the report wherethat RFI is displayed.
Text Search
The binoculars iconopens the Search Text tool.This tool will only searchfrom the current pageforward, so if you wish tosearch the entire report, besure to click the Go to FirstPage button before clickingthe Search Text button.
Enter a text string andclick Find Next to find thenext instance of that text inyour report.
Print
After viewing the reporton screen, use the PrinterSetup button in the lowerright corner of the reportpreview pane window toselect the printer to print to.Use the Printer Setup com-mand to select the printer forprinting the report, and to setits properties. If you do notselect a printer, the programwill print to the Windowsdefault printer. Note that thedefault printer for eachreport is set by the CrystalReports design and is notyour regular default printerfor your computer.
After selecting a printerand clicking OK, click thePrint Report printer icon inthe upper left of the report
preview pane window. In the Printwindow, you can click OK to printall pages, or you can specify apage range for printing on selectednumbered pages.
Export
Continued from page 3See What You Can Do
The envelopeicon, with a red arrowto the right of thePrint Report icon, isthe Export Reportbutton. Clicking theExport Report buttonallows you to specifya page range and alsoa file format. You canchoose from PDF,Word, Excel, andseveral other fileformats.
The Destinationbox enables you toexport to a disk fileto an application, to aLotus Notes database,to an ExchangeFolder, or to an e-mail. Choosing toexport an AcrobatFormat (PDF) to aDisk file and clickingOK will allow you tospecify a page rangethen specify a filename and folderlocation where youwill save the file.
Another optionis to export toMicrosoft Excelformat. There areseveral options youcan set when export-ing to Excel. Keep inmind that mostreports are formattedto look pretty on thescreen and but arenot formatted toexport cleanly toExcel. It’s likely thatyou’ll have to dosome re-formattingand cleanup in Excelafter you export.
continued on page 10
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Continued from page 9
1) Tax Issues:A) Year End Returns - Prepare......................................................................................................____B) Year End Returns – Mailed ......................................................................................................____C) Update Tax Memos (Yearly Carryforward)................................................................................____D) Next Year – Open Tax File.........................................................................................................____E) Next Year - Estimated taxes prepared and scheduled.............................................................____F) Update Tax Permanent Files ....................................................................................................____
2) Year End ReportsA) Update FMV balance sheets if applicable................................................................................____
3) Timberline MaintenanceA) Archive LY activity to Historical Budgets (6 & 7) prior to closing..............................................____B) Print Monthly TL Working Trial Balance (LY) for storage...........................................................____C) Close TL Year End....................................................................................................................____D) Verify correct equity close using Historical Working Trial Balance Report ..............................____
4) File MaintenanceA) Close out prior year Excel workpapers.....................................................................................____B) Open new Excel workpaper file................................................................................................____C) Archive old investment information .........................................................................................____
There is no charge for online training. This is one of the manybenefits of membership in the Timberline Users Group. Webinars areheld at 12:00 noon Eastern time at TUG.webex.com.To participate,email the TUG office at [email protected]. You will receive an emailconfirming your participation and with instructions for logging on andjoining the audio portion of the session. Keep watching the Pulse foran updated calendar.
Continued from page 8lease level. The Occupancy“gross-up” can be applied to fixedexpenses, variable expenses orboth.
The last tab within the LeaseRecovery set up is ConcessionPeriods. By entering dates on thistable, expenses which occurduring those specific accountingperiods will be excluded. Unfor-tunately, quarterly or annualexpenses which occur during theConcession Period will not bespread over the applicable ac-counting periods and will beexcluded. This same conditionapplies to mid-year move-ins andmove-outs. As an example,Property Taxes which apply to thefull year, but are paid in twoinstallments may not be fullyreflected because one or bothinstallments are paid during theconcession period. The samething can occur with quarterly
Tis the Season With a Few AdditionalStepsalarm or HVAC preventative
maintenance expenses. If youraccounting is not done on a fullaccrual basis, GL unit accounts,used in conjunction with recurringjournal entries, can be used tospread these expenses evenly overthe applicable months. A numberof users modify calculationmethod AFFs to compensate forConcession Periods as an alterna-tive to this process.
If you want to learn moreabout the Recovery and Escalationprocess, join us at TUG’s AnnualConference in Nashville May 17-19, 2001. A session will walkusers through basic set-up meth-ods and then will provide severallease abstracts so that we canapply a variety of exceptions andoverrides in a lab environmentalon a sample property.
has to be done weekly, monthly, orquarterly.
In our experience, once youhave about 100 units sold, thesystem history can eventuallygenerate a forecast.
For more information onthese processes, here’s a list ofKnowledgebase resources to helpyou:
