Finance Charges

Finance Charges

This document will walk you through setting up Finance Charges and how to add them to an invoice.

Setup Finance Charges

You need to make sure the below settings are set up in order for finance charges to work.

• Go to Admin -> Administrator then Sites -> Accounting Settings.

  

• If these settings are not set you will get the below message when trying to access the Finance Charges screen.

  

• You can also control finance charges per account. There is a setting in the Financial Terms section of the Account Manager.

  

• Checkmark the Assess Finance Charge options to make the account eligible. Uncheck the option to exclude the account from finance charges. With the option unchecked, the account will not show up on the Assess Finance Charges screen of the Accounting Manager at all. Please note, turning this setting on and off has no bearing on finance charges that may have previously been assessed.

Assess Finance Charges

• Once customers have overdue balances, they become eligible for finance charges. You can easily generate an invoice to be sent to the customer.

• Start out by choosing the Finance Charges option in the Accounts Receivable section of the Accounting Manager. The Assess Finance Charges screen will open.

  

• All customers with overdue balances are displayed, based on the Assessment Date. This date automatically defaults to today, but you are able to change that.

• You can generate finance charges either per invoice or for the entire customer balance. You can also select which Term to use for computing the finance charge. You can also choose to use the account's term, which is useful if you have different terms for different accounts and have configured them in the account manager.

• Simply place a checkmark next to the invoice number, and the Finance Charge column will begin to populate with the finance charge amount. The Total Finance Charge will also begin to increase.

  

• Once you have selected everything you want to generate an invoice for, hit the Create Finance Invoices button. An invoice will either print out (or get queued for later printing, if you selected that print option).

  

Common scenarios encountered while generating finance charges

You want to assess less than the total finance charge:

• If you’d like to change the finance charge, click the “+” button next to the customer name to expand all the associated invoices

  

• Change the finance charge amount by double clicking the finance charge cell at the invoice level

• Notice that the total finance charge is less than the Finance Charge Due

  

***You don’t want to generate invoices for finance charges, just a line item on customer’s next statement

• If you don’t want to generate invoices for the charges, but would rather just have the charge show up as a line item on the statement just choose these settings in the finance charges screen

  

• Print Options -> Don’t send at all

  

• Uncheck Queue Invoices to Send