Reports, Accounts, Statements & Transaction Trail

A statement shows all the money owing for the account in question (i.e. everything that is outstanding, or un-reconciled). The example below shows a statement for the adviser Jane Potter, where the ticks and crosses in the “Paid” column on the right indicate whether the brokerage has received payment from the relevant policyholder or insurer.

Statements may include part-payments (e.g. the cheque for £100.00 above is a part-payment for the commercial policy, for which Jane Potter is owed £140.40 in total). Statements may also include money paid in advance, along with all unsettled invoices and credit notes. Moreover entries may be from both the Sales Ledger and the Purchase Ledger, which is particularly important for General Insurance statements, where the net premiums purchased will be in the Purchase Ledger, while the commissions for policies sold by direct debit will be in the Sales Ledger.

To produce a statement, starting from the “Accounts Menu”…

· Click the “Reports” button

· Click the “Statements” button

· Use the “Set” drop-down to select the address set (e.g. “Advisers”, or “Companies, General Insurance”)

· Use the search buttons above the “Set” to find the person or company

· Ensure “Report type” dropdown is set to “Statement (outstanding)”

· Click the “Display” button to see the statement on screen

· Click the “Print” button to print the statement

· Click the “Exit” button when done

At the top right of the screen you can change the title to appear on the printed report (e.g. from “Statement of Account” to “Group Invoices”), though this will default back to “Statement of Account” each time you re-start the program. You can also tick the box at the top right to show the Policyholder on the statement, which is normally not necessary, though very useful when sending a statement to a Finance Provider, such as Close Brothers. A similar tick-box at the bottom right allows you to display the VAT separately on statements.

The “Print from” and “…to” fields are for Transaction Trails, described below. You cannot set them for Statements because regardless of age they will include everything that’s not fully settled. If used for insurance-related business you can however produce a Statement for a single policy. To do this, simply click the “List for single policy” tick-box and select the policy from the adjacent drop-down.

Print All Statements

You ought to print and send out all statements every month or so. To do so, click “Print” then select “Bulk statement run”. This will print statements for all those people or companies that don’t have a zero balance in your accounts. If you want to prevent a particular statement from being printed, first preview it on the screen, as described above, then click the tick-box at the bottom of the screen, entitled “Exclude from bulk statement run”.

Transaction Trail

These are produced identically to statements, except you select “Transaction Trail” as the “Report type”. You may additionally set a date range, as otherwise transaction trails can get very long.

A transaction trail is similar to a statement, but shows all transactions (i.e. both settled ones and outstanding ones). Compare the example screen above for an outstanding Statement with the Transaction Trail print-out below, which again shows Jane Potter’s adviser account. In the Transaction Trail below you can see how the cheque for £44.00 also includes for £14 in full settlement for AARON F’s motor policy. In contrast, in the outstanding Statement version above, both the £14 policy (PO.000001) and the £14 received for it (CP.000009) are excluded, because they are been fully settled.

So you might for example, use a Transaction Trail to settle an argument with an adviser regarding what cases you have and have not already paid, and also which you should have settled because the brokerage has already received payment from the relevant insurers or clients (i.e. “Paid” column on right).

Adding Comment Lines

You can add your own text at any point within a Statement, as shown below. To do so...

· Move the highlighted bar to the location where you want to insert a line

· Click the “Add note” button on the left

· The new line will appear above the highlighted one, unless you’re on the last line, in which case you can select whether you want it above or below.

This will generate a clear YELLOW line, which you can type straight into. To subsequently edit a line, simply click onto it and the click the “Edit note” button, whereupon it will turn YELLOW during text entry.

To delete an unwanted TEXT line, first highlight it, then either...

· Click the yellow “Bin” button

or

· Click the “Signpost” button, then select “Comment / Delete comment”

If you try to delete an invoice line (as opposed to free-format note) you’ll be prompted to either discard the line completely, or merge its value with the next line that you double-click, as shown below…

Merging Statements

You might want to merge statements, perhaps to include the invoices for the children’s car insurances in their father’s one, or to include a director’s home insurance in with his company’s PI invoice. To do the latter…

· Start with the client’s statement, as shown below, which contains the Household policy to be merged…

· Highlight in turn each line not required in the final merged statement and click the “Delete line” to discard it completely.

· Click the “Signpost” button and select “Merge statements”

· Find the client to merge with (in this case the company called “DURELL SOFTWARE” in “Clients, Business”

· Click the “Add” button to add the just-found client’s invoices to the current display, as shown below…

· Finally highlight the Household policy and click the “Delete line” button

· But this time, select “Add its value to the line I double-click”, then double-click the commercial policy

· As shown below, the statement for Durell now only shows the commercial policy, though its value has been merged with the household one.