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 RB automatically generate them for every invoice that is more than 30 days old. RB 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.
RB 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 RB9 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: RB 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, RB 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.
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.
Firm: Business you provide services to, usually law firms. More >
