Tag Archives: MR9

Lesson #54

Receivables – Monthly Journals function

Monthly Journals are static monthly reports that break down all sales and cash receipts posted during the selected month into debits and credits. Your accountant uses these reports to prepare your company’s financials.

The Sales Journal lists all posted daily credit sales totals for the selected month, grouped and subtotaled by business unit (BU). It shows you how much you billed. Each BU has its own page(s), and in addition to listing the BU’s sales as debits in Accounts Receivable and credits in Revenue at the end, it lists the number of jobs and invoices included in that amount.

The Cash Receipts Journal lists all posted daily cash inflows for the selected month, grouped and subtotaled by BU. It shows you how much money you received. Each BU has its own page(s), and includes the total amount for each applicable account per BU, crediting sales and debiting cash and other transactions.

The last page of each journal is a grand totals page for your entire company that includes the totals of all of your BUs.

Report options

The journals default to the current month displaying revenue from all BU accounts and subtotals by date posted for all of your company’s BUs. You can view information from other months, broken down by service item, in summary form, and/or for one or several of your BUs.

Daily financial transactions are temporary until they are posted (i.e., closed out). Once posted, they cannot be modified nor deleted. Monthly Journals use the post date (not the transaction date) to select and group transactions on the report.

Monthly Journals compile posted transactions that meet your criteria as 2 separate reports, which each group their entries under one BU per page, plus a Grand Total page. Each report is shown as a tab above the report pane so you can quickly access either one.

You can search for a word or phrase in the onscreen report. RB will highlight all instances of your searched word/phrase in the report and list them in a scroll box along with the page number where they occur. You can print or export monthly journal reports in a variety of formats — PDF, CSV, Excel, Rich Text, TIFF, or web archive — to email to your accountant.

TL;DR: A summary recap of daily sales and cash receipts registers. Your accountant uses this report to prepare your company’s financials.

RB concepts in this lesson

Business Unit (BU): One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately.

Job: Usually the reporting of a deposition, but can also be any kind of service you provide. More >

Lesson #53

Receivables – Finance Charges function

Finance Charge is a fee that is added to invoices when they haven’t been paid in 30 days or more. If you plan to assess finance charges for overdue invoices, set up finance charge percentage rates in clients’ firm records first. Then use this function to generate finance charges. You can generate finance charges manually or have MR9 automatically generate them for every invoice that is more than 30 days old. MR9 assesses finance charges by multiplying an invoice’s current balance by the billed firm’s finance charge percentage rate, if it has been more than 28 days since you performed this task last.

Generate finance charges automatically

Generate finance charges before running monthly statements. You can generate finance charges for one or more invoices at the same time.

MR9 generates finance charges on open invoices billed to only those firms that have finance charge rates in their records. If you do not want to charge a particular firm finance charges, leave the default “0.000” finance charge rate in their firm records. Their open invoices will not appear in the Finance Charges function, and they won’t be assessed finance changes.

Generate finance charges manually

You can also add finance charges yourself for any time range and amount. For example, if you have an invoice that is overdue, but you have not had MR9 automatically generate finance charges on it each month, you can add retroactive finance charges manually so you do not miss out on any amounts due.

View history & clear charges

You can also use this function to clear finance charges and to look up the history of finance charges applied and cleared. You can view a list of all generated and cleared charges, or use filters to view charges within a date range, for a specific firm or invoice, and/or for one, several, or all of your company’s business units.

If you want to clear finance charges, use the filters to search for the invoice(s) you want to clear of finance charges. You can clear charges for a single invoice, selected invoices, or all invoices in your results at once.

If a client makes a payment that only covers the current balance of an invoice and not the finance charge, zero out the finance charge if you do not plan to pursue the issue. Any invoice with a zero balance is considered paid in full even though it still has unpaid finance charges or late charges. (Cleared finance charges are not deleted: MR9 does not actually zero out the finance charge for each cleared invoice. It creates an entry with a negative amount for the finance charge so that you will have an audit trail.)

You can sort your finance charge results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, MR9 will revert back to the default order). Export results as an Excel or CSV file to save, use in other applications, share, or print if you want a hard copy record of finance charges you generated and cleared.

TL;DR: Generate finance charges, view finance charges, clear finance charges, view finance charges that were cleared.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Business Unit (BU): One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately.

Firm: Business you provide services to, usually law firms. More >

Lesson #52

Receivables – Daily Balance Log function

Get an instant snapshot of accounts receivable, or reestablish a starting balance as of a certain date by using this audit function. You can view the report for your company as a whole, for a single business unit or for several BUs.

Daily Balance Log defaults to all transactions for your company in the current month to date. You can change the start date for reporting transactions to find previous starting balances.

The report lists all dates within your specified range on which transactions occurred that affected your accounts receivable and displays the day’s beginning balance, the amounts from transactions that increased and decreased A/R, and the day’s ending balance after the increases are added and the decreases are subtracted.

Daily Balance Log uses the entered date of a Receivables transaction instead of the post date (when it was closed out) to match the Aged A/R report.

You can view any listed day’s transactions broken out and grouped according to type (invoices, payments, debits, voids, write-offs, etc.). You can also sort these breakout lists by invoice number or date.

You can export the report and breakout lists as Excel or CSV files to save, share, print, or use in other applications.

TL;DR: Use this audit function to see accounts receivable balances for any date; for example, if you need to reestablish a starting balance as of a certain date.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Business Unit (BU): One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately, such as branch offices, other companies you own, affiliates, and profit-sharing operations.

Lesson #51

Receivables – Daily Register function

Run the Daily Register function so you can review reports of transactions for a specific day or other time period. Generally you run daily registers at the end of the day after posting. You can also generate the reports for unposted transactions to review them.

All daily transactions — such as invoices, payments, credit memos, etc. — are temporary until they are posted (i.e., closed out). Once posted they cannot be modified nor deleted so daily registers use the post date — not the transaction date — to select and group posted transactions on the report. If you use Daily Register to monitor unposted transactions, it uses the invoice number or date of the transaction to order the list of results returned.

Types of daily registers included

MR9 provides three types of daily registers:

1. The Sales Register lists all invoices posted for the specified period, grouped and subtotaled by business unit (BU). It shows you how much revenue you generated. Each BU has its own page(s). In addition to listing the BU’s total billed amount at the end of its invoices, it lists the number of jobs and invoices included in that amount.
2. The Cash Receipts Register-Payment lists all payments posted for the specified period, grouped and subtotaled by BU. It shows how much money you received. Each payment lists its total amount and breaks down how it was applied to the invoice balance (credit), discount, overpayment, late charge, finance charge, processing fee, and net cash. Each BU has its own page(s). In addition to listing the BU’s totals at the end of its transactions, it breaks out the total amounts for invoices over 90 days old.
3. The Cash Receipts Register-Other lists credit memos, debit memos, duplicate payments, miscellaneous receipts, refunds, voids, and write-offs posted for the specified period, grouped and subtotaled by BU. It shows amounts for all transaction types that are not payments. Each BU has its own page(s), and includes the total amount for each transaction type.

In addition to grouping transactions onto separate pages for each of your company’s BUs, the last page of each register lists grand totals combining the activities of all of your BUs.

Generate targeted registers

The function defaults to today because it’s a good practice to review posted transactions daily so you stay on top of things and catch any issues quickly. You can also run daily registers for any date or date range.

You can limit which categories of invoices to search if you want to focus on a particular type of invoice — such as ones for your affiliates. You can also choose to run reports for a single BU, several selected BUs, or all BUs.

Daily Register compiles transactions that meet your criteria as 3 separate reports — which each group their entries under one BU per page — plus a Grand Total page. Each report is shown as a tab above the report pane so you can quickly access each one.

You can search for a word or phrase in each of the 3 reports. MR9 will highlight all instances of your searched word/phrase in the current report and list them in a scroll box along with the page number where they occur.

Each report’s footer will display which search criteria you used to generate the report with the exception of blank search fields and ALL list selections. You can export any of these 3 reports to save and/or edit it in another application, or print it.

TL;DR: Monitor your posted transactions daily or for any other time period with these 3 reports: Sales, Cash Receipts-Payment, and Cash Receipts-Other. You can also monitor unposted transactions separately.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Business Unit (BU): One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately, such as branch offices, other companies you own, affiliates, and profit-sharing operations.

Lesson #49

Receivables – Enter Other Transactions function

Financial transactions do not always entail client payments for invoices. Use this function to deal with bounced checks, incorrect invoice charges, misapplied payments, duplicate payments, refunds, miscellaneous income, and uncollectible bad debts.

Enter these types of non-cash transactions into MR9 to keep your MR9 ledger accurate. Balance the transactions and post them.

‘Other Transactions’ in MR9 include:

• Credit Memos
• Debit Memos
• Duplicate Payments
• Refunds
• Miscellaneous Receipts
• Voids
• Write-offs

Credit Memos

Use a credit memo to reduce the balance of an invoice — for example when a client returns a product or was charged for a service they didn’t ask for. A credit memo can be for the full amount or part of the amount of an invoice. If a commission was earned on the sale you can choose to decrease the sale rep’s commission or honor it.

Debit Memos

If a client bounces a check or you applied a payment to the wrong invoice, use a debit memo to increase the invoice balance. You can use the entire balance — including late charges and finance charges — in a debit memo. You can also credit any commissions back to the related sale rep. After posting the debit memo you can enter the payment again with the correct invoice.

Duplicate Payments

If you receive a check for an invoice that has been paid already and you want to deposit the check (rather than return it) enter it as a duplicate payment in MR9 to record the payment.

Miscellaneous Receipts

If you receive a check from a client  that does not reference an invoice — such as the check for a retainer (upfront deposit) — you can record it as a miscellaneous receipt for tracking purposes.

Refunds

If a client sent you an overpayment or a duplicate payment for an invoice reimburse them through your accounting system such as QuickBooks, then enter the refund in MR9 so that the Payment Transactions log is complete.

Voids

Posted invoices cannot be canceled or deleted. So if a client returns a product, its invoice must be voided. Or if a job was billed incorrectly the invoice(s) should be voided before the job is billed again. By default, commissions are voided when an invoice is voided and if the sales rep has already been paid you must adjust (reduce) their pay (in Payables) to deduct the amount paid from the next payroll. Or you can choose on a case by case basis to pay the  commission in spite of the voided invoice.

Write-offs

If an invoice becomes uncollectible, write it off as a bad debt. When you write off an invoice  any commissions related to the invoice are not voided by default. However you can choose to void commission(s) on any write-off.

Entering ‘Other Transactions’

When you open this function any unposted transactions are listed with their basic information:

• Transaction type, date, and amount
• Amount of any late charge or finance charge to be debited
• Applicable internal account number (from the Chart of Accounts)
• Invoice number
• Who created the transaction and when

You can view, edit, or delete any individual transaction in the list. Depending on the transaction you can view information about the invoice and its related client and update the client’s information, if desired. You can post transactions here singly or in batches. And you can enter new transactions by type.

Enter relevant information about the transaction including the date, amount, and account you want the transaction recorded in. Also enter any remarks about the reason for the transaction or other relevant information. Depending on the transaction you can also enter information such as the relevant check number and date, and how to handle commissions related to the transaction.

If you have multiple transactions of the same type, you can continuously add them in the same window to save time when processing transactions. When finished all transactions appear in a list along with any other unposted transactions. You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function RB will revert back to the default order). Export the list as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, share, print, or use in other applications.

Don’t forget to post transactions

Finally you post the transactions to close them. You can post them singly, a select few, or all at once. When you run the daily registers, these transactions will appear on the Cash Receipts Register – Other Transactions page of the report. You can also use the Voided Invoices function to quickly review all invoices voided today or for any time period.

TL;DR: Keep your MR9 ledger accurate by including all types of transactions beyond payments — including credit memos to deal with returns or incorrect service item billing, debit memos for bounced checks or payments applied to the wrong invoices, duplicate payments, refunds, miscellaneous receipts such as retainers, voided invoices, and write-offs for bad debts.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Service items: Regular charges that you bill to your clients.

Lesson #48

Receivables – Receive Payments function

Enter a payment and apply it to outstanding invoices in this function — whether the payment is for a single invoice or multiple invoices. MR9 can handle an unlimited number of invoices paid by one check or other type of payment — such as credit card, electronic payment, or retainer.

Adjustments

You can make adjustments if needed when applying payments to invoices — such as when a client sends you a check that is slightly less than the current balance of an invoice and you don’t want to try to collect the difference. You can discount the difference on the posted invoice. Or if a client sends you a check for more than is owed, enter the excess as an overpayment. (MR9 tracks all overpayments so they can be refunded in the future.)

Fees & other charges

You can also enter late charges, finance charges, and credit card/PayPal processing fees. (If you receive a payment prior to when late charges would accrue, the Late Charges and Finance Charges fields in Receive Payments are grayed out and uneditable so you won’t accidentally penalize a client.)

Credit card payments

When processing credit card payments, you can break out the usage fees associated with them. Set up credit card payment processing fee accounts in your business units. Then when processing fees are applied to invoices in Receive Payments, they are included in the corresponding accounts for your company. You have 2 options for handling credit card fees in MR9: If you pay the processing fee, you use the Processing Fee option; if your client will pay the fee in addition to the balance of the invoice, you use the Surcharge option.

Retainers

If you are holding a retainer from a client, it will automatically appear when applying payments by that client so you don’t overlook it. If any money is left over, it remains in the client’s retainer account until you issue a refund check to the client.

Other payment info

Beyond payment types and adjustments, you can maintain a wealth of information about a payment from the check number and date to third-party payer to transaction date (when you entered the payment) and debited account.

Online payments

If clients pay online through MR Connect, you do not have to enter payment information manually. MR9 automatically enters the payment — including the processing fee if you have set up processing fees in MR9. You can review and edit the payment if needed, then post it like any other payment.

One Check One Invoice vs. Multiple Invoices

If a client is paying for a single invoice, you can use the streamlined One Check One Invoice sub-function to quickly enter the payment. If a client is paying for multiple invoices with one check or you don’t know what invoice they are paying, use the One Check Multiple Invoices sub-function which displays a client’s entire list of open invoices which you can search by job number, invoice number, or amount range. You can export the list as an Excel spreadsheet to save, print, or use in other applications.

Posting payments

After entering a payment and applying it to outstanding invoices, you can continue to add payments to other invoices or finish the payment process by posting the payment. If you have a lot of transactions to record — instead of posting payments as you go — enter them all first then select a batch to post all at once.

All daily transactions are temporary until they are posted (i.e., closed out). And once posted they cannot be modified nor deleted. Some RB reports — such as monthly journals — use the post date (not the transaction date) to select and group transactions on the report.

When you post a payment it must match the total amount of the invoice(s) you applied it to. If the payment is more than the invoice balance(s), MR9 will not allow you to post it until you balance it with credits (such as the overpayment credit). One exception: MR9 does not require payment of late fees or finance charges to post. So if a client sent a check for the original amount of the invoice only even though there have since been late fees and/or finance charges applied, you can post the invoice and MR9 will zero out the fees and remove the invoice from your outstanding receivables.

Audit trail

Unposted payments remain in Receive Payments until they are balanced. MR9 tracks who entered a payment and when, so you have an audit trail of who is responsible for crediting payments to invoices. You can use this feature to filter unposted payments to see only those you entered to get a total amount and reconcile.

Information on who entered payments and when appears in the results when you search for unposted payments in Receive Payments so you can see it at a glance. Listings also display the payment type, transaction date, payer and if it was a third party (for example if an insurance company paid for a bill their lawyer incurred for them), invoice amount, and its outstanding balance. Grand total and total outstanding balance amounts also appear in the results.

You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, MR9 will revert back to the default order). Export the list as an Excel spreadsheet to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

You can pull up any unposted payment’s details from the results — either as a drop-down to quickly see all the invoices paid with one transaction, along with their fees breakdown and bill to/sold to information — or in a separate transaction screen.

TL;DR: Enter payments and apply them to one or more invoices — making adjustments as needed for overpayments, late charges, finance charges, and credit card processing fees. Maintain an audit trail of who entered which payments and when.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Bill To Contact: The person responsible for paying the invoice for a job.

Bill To Firm: The company responsible for paying the invoice for a job.

Business Unit (BU): One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately.

Processing Fee: If you pay the credit card processing fee when a client pays an invoice by credit card, you record it as a processing fee in MR9.

MR Connect:> Online repository, orders, and access to your office for clients and others. More >

Sold To Contact: Person who ordered the services on the invoice.

Sold To Firm: Company that ordered the services on the invoice.

Surcharge: If you pass along the credit card processing fee when a client pays an invoice by credit card to the client, you record it as a surcharge in MR9.

Lesson #47

Manage accounts receivable

Receivables is another large module in MR9 with functions for accepting and crediting payments, assessing additional charges, correct invoices, monitor accounts receivable, and perform collections. In this module, you can:

• Credit and track client payments. Apply a payment to multiple invoices at once. Apply retainers and payments via checks, PayPal or credit cards.
• Keep track of retainers. If a client has a retainer, it automatically appears when crediting payments from that client so you can apply it.
• Enter credits, discounts, overpayments, and other adjustments.
• Balance transactions and post payments.
• Enter non-cash transactions, such as credit and debit memos, duplicate payments, refunds, miscellaneous income, voids, and write-offs.
• Acknowledge client payments with emailed receipts.
• Assess finance charges.
• Include PayPal and credit card processing fees.
• Run daily register reports.
• Print or email monthly journal reports to your accountant. Get an instant snapshot of accounts receivable for any date.
• Send clients monthly statements via email or regular mail.
• View monthly client activity reports. View all paid or voided invoices for a set time period.
• Find overdue invoices.
• Send clients detailed collection letters.
• Monitor collection efforts using reports, follow-up alerts, collections notes log, and copies of disputed or unpaid bills you can pull up from the central repository and email to clients from within MR9.

Receivables functions by name

• Receive Payments
• Enter Other Transactions
• Send Payment Receipts
• Daily Register
• Daily Balance Log
• Finance Charges
• Monthly Journals
• Aged A/R
• Send Statements
• Client Account Activity
• Paid Invoices
• Voided Invoices
• Collection Letters
• Collection Follow-up
• Collection Forecast

TL;DR: Apply payments and perform other accounts receivable tasks, including collections.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Notes Logs: Un-editable internal-use only notes entered either by a user or automatically by MR9 appear in chronological logs in the database record where they occurred.

Lesson #46

Inquiry – Marketing Inquiry function

Know where your business is coming from. Discover problems — such as inactive clients — to deal with proactively — such as sending them reminder cards.

Client-focused inquiries

Evaluate clients on a firm or contact level in terms of orders placed and revenue generated. Review new client entries and check for duplicate entries. View individual clients’ details. Then use this information for more targeted marketing efforts.

When you start using MR9 review firm and contact entries for errors or actions to take. Then periodically review new clients within a range of dates to acquaint yourself with them. You can also use these reviews as a form of quality control.

As clients order services and you invoice them, you can use other filters in Marketing Inquiry to find out more about your clients and tailor your marketing efforts.

Find your best clients by firm or contact in terms of most orders or most revenue generated within a date range. You can include or exclude copy sales in revenue generated. Including copy sales gives you an overall view of your real top revenue-generating firms and contacts because it’s not only including their invoices, but any other invoices posted for the orders they place with you.

Find inactive clients by searching for which firms or contacts have not placed any orders during a range of dates as compared to the year prior. Seeing who went quiet gives you a list of clients to contact and see if there are any services you can provide for them.

You can also search to see which clients generated no revenue with you within the date range searched as compared to the exact same time period in the prior year. If a client appears in the results, it means they had at least one invoice posted between the dates searched for the previous year.

When searching for clients to market to you can exclude any firms or contacts that have requested that you do not market to them.

If you searched for firms the listings in the results includes firm name and address. If you searched for contacts the listings in the results includes contact name, firm they work at, address, phone numbers, email, and the email’s category in the contact’s listing. You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, MR9 will revert back to the default order).

Use the email notification categories for further targeting your marketing. For example if you want to offer a limited time discount for paying invoices early, you can generate your list for Accounting email notifications only then select the contacts in the list with an accounting email address.

Export the results as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use to create reports in other applications. If you see any incorrect or missing information in the listings, you can update entities directly from their listings.

Print envelopes and labels from Marketing Inquiry results for your targeted marketing efforts. For example generate labels for holiday gifts to your best clients.

TL;DR: Lists contacts and firms in a range of categories, so you can see who your best clients are, review new client entries, and see which clients are inactive and need marketing to. Print envelopes and labels from inquiry results. 

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Contact: Person who works for a firm you do business with.

Firm: Business you provide services to, usually law firms.

MR Connect: Online repository, orders, and access to your office for clients. More >

Lesson #45

Inquiry – Anniversary Inquiry function

Never miss a chance to congratulate your clients on their personal milestones with MR9’s automatic reminders and Anniversary Inquiry’s ability to print envelopes and labels. MR9 will remind you of upcoming events so you can use Anniversary Inquiry to pull up a list of those events and print envelopes for cards and/or labels for gifts to send.

You set up the kinds of events you want to remember for contacts such as birthdays and wedding anniversaries, then enter dates for these events in individual contact’s MR9 records and when you want to be alerted about these upcoming events.

Print envelopes & labels

When MR9 sends you a reminder about a client’s upcoming event through its internal email system you can use Anniversary Inquiry to print an envelope and/or a label with the contact’s business address or home address.

Or if you prefer you can use Anniversary Inquiry to periodically generate a list of clients with upcoming milestones you want to acknowledge. You can restrict your list to only clients you have designated as active — and select specific anniversary types that you want to celebrate this time that occur on a specific date or in a date range. You can also generate lists of contacts at a single firm or contacts that are clients of a specific sales rep or client rep.

Contact listings in the search results include the person’s name, firm name, address, anniversary type, and date. You can sort your lists by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, MR9 will revert back to the default order).

You can view or edit any contact’s details in the list before printing envelopes and labels. And you can export the list to save, share, use in other applications, or print as a report.

TL;DR: Generate lists of clients celebrating upcoming birthdays and other anniversaries, then print envelopes and labels for sending cards and gifts to them.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Contact: Person who works for a firm you do business with.

Firm: Business you provide services to, usually law firms.

Lesson #44

Inquiry – Receivable Transaction Inquiry function

Look up the payment details for a single check or search payment histories by transaction type and/or other options. Searchable options include:

• Check number
• Check date
• Invoice number
• Transaction date
• Posted date
• Payment details
• Firm billed
• Payer

Searching by check date will return only check payments. You can also search for any posted receivable transaction. Transaction types include:

• Payment
• Duplicate payment
• Credit
• Debit
• Miscellaneous receipt
• Write-off
• Void
• Refund

Any transactions that meet your search criteria will appear as a report. The search results in the report include all of the search categories (except the billed firm) plus:

• Payment type
• Payment amount
• Who entered the payment into MR9
• When it was entered

You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, MR9 will revert back to the default order). You can export the report to save, share, use in other applications, or print.

View individual transactions

From your search results you can view detailed information about individual payments and other transactions. If you look at a payment’s details it will include a list of the invoices paid by the payment and a breakdown of how the payment was applied to each invoice in the list. For other transactions you can find information about the client and/or remarks about the transaction depending on the type of transaction.

You can also view invoice details directly for all transaction types — except payments and miscellaneous receipts.

Use with Aged A/R

In addition to using Receivable Transaction Inquiry to look up payments or search payment histories, you can also use it when you are managing collections and accounts receivable with the Aged A/R function. In the interactive Aged A/R report you can open the Receivable Transaction Inquiry directly for any client and it will automatically list that client’s payment activity for the past 90 days.

TL;DR: Use Receivable Transaction Inquiry to look up a single check or search payment histories and view detailed information about individual payments and other transactions such as refunds and write-offs.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Firm: Business you provide services to, usually law firms. More >