Accounts, Set-up Payment Methods

Starting from the “Accounts Menu”…

· Click the “Set-up” button

· If it’s not already in front of the others, click the “Payment methods” tab

· Click the “Find First” button on the toolbar (i.e. two to the left of the “Binoculars” button)

From this point you can choose to use the “Next” button (i.e. on right of the “Binoculars” button) to browse your way though the existing payment methods, deleting those you don’t want with the “Bin” button, editing the names of others and re-saving them with the “Save” button, or creating new ones via the “Starburst” button.

What are Accounts Payment Methods?

These are standard descriptions to show how you received or paid sums of money (e.g. so you can then select “Direct Debit” from a dropdown, rather than having to re-type it every time). They are purely for convenience and your own reference purposes. They are used in the Cashbook to show how money was paid or received, and also rather confusingly in the General Insurance Premium Screen, where they appear in the dropdown entitled “Paid by” (see “Policies, General, Payment Methods”) that appears before a totally different one called “Method”.

As far as the system is concerned you could manage with just one “Payment method” for everything (e.g. “ANYW” – “Any way you like”). However you might prefer to set up a range of different payment methods, in particular for cheque payments, in which case you can record your cheque stub numbers by setting the “Ask for cheque or ref number” to “Payments only”. Note that as you’ll probably receive cheques from a number of different customers it’s quite possible two or more will have the same cheque numbers, hence Durell recommends you only enter the reference numbers when paying cheques. A suggested set of payment methods follows…

CODE	LONG NAME	ASK FOR CHEQUE OR REF NO
AC	Automated Credit	No
CHEQ	Cheque	Payments Only
CASH	Cash	No
CRED	Credit Card	No
DD	Direct Debit	No
SO	Standing Order	No
GIRO	Bank Giro Credit	No