Tag Archives: Finance Charges

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 >

Lesson #47

Manage accounts receivable

Receivables is another large module in RB 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.
• Provide resources with billing reports instead of invoices to see what they can expect to be paid for work they have done.
• 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 RB.

Receivables functions by name

• Receive Payments
• Enter Other Transactions
• Send Payment Receipts – RB9-only function
• Resource Billings Report – RB9-only function
• Daily Register
• Daily Balance Log – RB9-only function
• Finance Charges
• Monthly Journals
• Aged A/R
• Send Statements
• Client Account Activity – RB9-only function
• Paid Invoices – RB9-only function
• Voided Invoices – RB9-only function
• Collection Letters – RB9-only function
• Collection Follow-up – RB9-only function
• Collection Forecast – RB9-only function

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

RB concepts in this lesson

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