Business Units are discrete parts of your business

The only thing you need to start using RB is a single business unit for processing receivables; but you can set up as many BUs as you like

Lesson #110
Entities – Business Units function

A Business Unit (BU) can be any entity within your company whose revenue you want to track separately. This could be a branch office, affiliate, another company you own, or an internal division that you want to monitor independently from other segments of your company.

Depending on the size of your company, you could have just one business unit or multiple BUs. The ability to create multiple BUs allows you to track jobs and revenue down to individual offices/divisions/etc.

Many functions and reports in RB can be filtered to show results for one business unit, several BUs, or all BUs. Some reports group data by business unit, such as the Daily Register and Monthly Journals which give each business unit its own page(s) breaking down sales and receipts, plus grand total pages that combine information from all of your business units.

Information you can view/edit in individual BU listings in RB includes their address and contact information; financial info like tax ID; scheduling, production and billing preferences; which accounts to use for different types of financial transactions; your company logo to include on your invoices, statements, and transcripts; and miscellaneous information and notes.

Adding BUs to your database

Because RB comes with a built-in set of default values, forms, and templates, you only need to set up one thing to start using RB: a business unit. RB requires you to set up at least one BU so you can process receivables.

After designating a single business unit, you can start using RB, plus you can create additional BUs and customize RB to your company. You can update your set-up at any time — adding/editing/deleting BUs and RB defaults — to better meet your needs.

You can enter business units from scratch, or save time and reduce entry errors by copying an existing BU and editing it to create a new BU. All of the BU’s details are copied into the new BU, except company logos.

Search for business units

You can search for business units by city, or you can view all of your business units in the business units main grid. 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).

From the Business Units results grid, you can view and update any listed BU’s details, add new BUs, and export the grid as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

Basic BU information

The only information you are required to enter about a business unit is its name and ID. The name will appear in your report headers, invoices and statements, so it might be simply your company name. Different BUs can have the same name.

The ID, however, must be a unique maximum 10-character designation. Keep IDs brief, yet meaningful. For example, you could combine abbreviations for the location and the service provided (LA-DEP for Los Angeles – Deposition; LA-VID for Los Angeles – Video).

In addition to the business unit name and ID, enter the BU’s location and contact information under General information. Like the BU name, this information will appear in your report headers, invoices and statements, so enter this info as you want it to look on these documents.

Other General information tips

While you can have hundreds of business units in RB, we recommend setting up as few as possible so that when designating a business unit, you don’t have to scroll through a long list of BUs to find one.

If you are entering the BU’s street address or P.O. box number, skip the other fields and enter the zip code. RB will fill in the city, state, and country for you.

If you have entered the BU’s address, you can view maps and directions to the address in RB. You can also add your own directions to the BU’s listing. Any instructions entered here will appear in the Directions field of a job if the job will be at the business unit’s office. (BU is one of the options when setting job locations, so you can select one of your offices as the job location.)

Additional information

In the Additional pane, enter miscellaneous information about the business unit, including your company’s tax ID associated with the BU, and which BU payments for invoices and statements associated with this BU should be sent to. For example, if you have a P.O. box that you want payments sent to, set it up as a separate BU and select it for remittances.

This is also where you enter your company’s web address, and any information about the business unit that is not covered in other BU fields.

Preferences

Preferences set in business units will be used automatically in other RB functions. In the Preferences section, you enter the business unit’s production and billing preferences.

If you add late charges to invoices, this is where you enter the number of days before you assess a late charge. After the defined number of days passes, the late charge specified in the firm being billed will be automatically added to the invoice amount.

If your reporters must wait to get paid until you are paid, and you require checks to be entered into RB by a certain date before you release related payments to resources, you can set a preference in your business units to apply cutoff dates to when payments are received instead of when invoices are issued.

If you deduct a specific number of pages from transcript pages when calculating resources’ pay (for example, you don’t pay resources for cover pages), you can enter that preference here. This default can be overridden for a specific job at the time of billing.

You can also choose to show or hide per unit rates when printing detailed invoices that you send to clients.

Accounts

Default financial accounts are included in RB, but you can set up your company’s own accounts and/or designate which accounts RB should use for different types of financial transactions involving the business unit. For example, if you use QuickBooks for accounting, set up your BUs’ accounts to match your QuickBooks. Then you can import your RB data directly into your QuickBooks using RB9’s QuickBooks Integrator, eliminating the need to re-key financial data.

If you accept credit cards, you 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.

Invoice/Statement Logo

Upload your properly-formatted company logo into each business unit to automatically include your logo on financial correspondence from RB.

PDF Transcript Logo

Upload a small version of your properly-formatted company logo into each business unit if you want to automatically include your logo in headers and/or footers of RB-PDF Transcripts.

After initial setup, add more information

When you save a new BU, RB asks if you want to restrict access to this BU. Usually you will not want to restrict access: you will want the BU to appear as a selection when setting new jobs and performing other functions in RB. However, there are times when you do not want people selecting a specific BU.

For example if you want a BU that is only used for new jobs coming from client requests through RB Connect, set up a restricted BU for web orders and select it as the preferred BU for New Jobs in Contact – Calendar preferences. It will then be used when job requests come from RB Connect but it will not appear as a selection when your staff is setting new jobs.

Task Due Days

Once you save a business unit in RB a new pane, Task Due Days, appears.

Set a general time frame for each type of task (for regular deliveries) by business unit; then when a task is added to a job its due date will be automatically calculated based on this setting, excluding weekends and any designated holidays. (You can select which holidays your company observes in System Preferences.) This value will be overridden for jobs for firms that have their own deadlines for preferred services. And you can override it manually in individual jobs.

In addition to entering information in the new fields in the Task Due Days pane, you can:

  • Export the Task Due Days pane listing as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV(comma-separated values) file to save, share, print, or use in other applications.
  • Enter more information in other panes.
  • Update existing information.
  • Delete the BU if there are no jobs associated with the BU.
  • Merge the BU into another BU. Merged BUs do not retain any information from the merged BU’s listing, but any jobs associated with the merged BU are carried over.

BUs in RB

When entering a new job, assigning a business unit is required, because whichever BU you select here will follow the job through its entire process. Any revenue generated or any reports you run based on business units will have anything pertaining to this job tied to the BU you select here. You select a business unit in User Preferences to be your default for new jobs, but you can override the default when setting a new job.

You also select a default business unit to be displayed on report headers. Each report you print out in RB displays BU information from the default you select. You can select a different BU from your default BU.

Business units are used in many RB functions. Additional examples:

  • When generating FedEx or UPS labels in Shipping, it defaults to your preferred business unit’s address and phone number, which can be changed for individual shipments.
  • On RB-PDF Transcripts, the default merge data field for Author is the name of the business unit that handled the job.
  • When setting up RB users, you can designate which unrestricted BUs they are associated with. You can add or remove individual users’ access to different BUs at any time.

Give others access to BUs

If you have RB Connect, you must give your contacts and resources access to your business units. Without access to a business unit, your contacts and resources can’t see jobs related to that BU in their RB Connect Calendar. RB9 doesn’t automatically grant RB Connect access because it doesn’t know which BUs should be visible to RB Connect users and which shouldn’t, so you have to denote that yourself in the general Connect preferences (don’t forget to do this when adding new BUs). You can have different BUs available to contacts and resources.

Business unit access in RB Connect is different from access in RB. Your contacts and resources don’t have the option to select business units; access here just means that they can see their jobs that are assigned to specific business units by your staff.

Since all jobs must have an associated business unit for billing and reporting purposes, we recommend setting up a restricted BU for RB Connect job requests as mentioned above and set it as the default BU for contacts in the general Connect preferences. That way you funnel all new online requests into one place, instead of having them mixed in with jobs set up in-house that default to your main BU. Then when you formally schedule a job from an online request, you can select the appropriate BU to assign to the job.

TL;DR: Set up business units to cover discrete areas of your business that you want to track performance and other metrics independently. You only need to set up one business unit to start using RB.

RB9 concepts in this lesson

Contact: Person who works for a firm you do business with, such as attorneys, paralegals, and secretaries.

RB Connect: Online repository, calendar, and access to your office for clients and resources. More >

RB-PDF Transcript: PDF version of a transcript with built-in transcript-specific features like hyperlinked exhibits, word lists/indexes, errata sheets, and enhanced headers/footers containing case and depo information.

Resource: Person or thing that provides your business with a service, such as reporters.

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