A Business Unit (BU) can be any entity within your company whose revenue you want to track separately.<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Many functions and reports in RB9 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<\/a> and Monthly Journals<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n Information you can view\/edit in individual BU listings in RB9 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.<\/p>\n Because RB9 comes with a built-in set of default values, forms, and templates, you only need to set up one thing to start using RB9: a business unit.<\/strong> RB9 requires you to set up at least one BU so you can process receivables.<\/p>\n After designating a single business unit, you can start using RB9, plus you can create additional BUs and customize RB9 to your company. You can update your set-up at any time \u2014 adding\/editing\/deleting BUs and RB9 defaults \u2014 to better meet your needs.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s details are copied into the new BU, except company logos.<\/p>\n 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, RB9 will revert back to the default order).<\/p>\n From the Business Units results grid, you can view and update any listed BU\u2019s details, add new BUs, and export the grid as an Excel<\/em> spreadsheet or\u00a0a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.<\/p>\n The only information you are required to enter about a business unit is its name and ID.<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n 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 \u2013 Deposition; LA-VID for Los Angeles \u2013 Video).<\/p>\n In addition to the business unit name and ID, enter the BU\u2019s location and contact information under General information. Like the BU name, this information will\u00a0appear in your report headers, invoices and statements, so enter this info as you want it to look on these documents.<\/p>\n While you can have hundreds of business units in RB9, we recommend setting up as few as possible so that when designating a business unit, you don\u2019t have to scroll through a long list of BUs to find one.<\/p>\n If you are entering the BU\u2019s street address or P.O. box number, skip the other fields and enter the zip code. RB9 will fill in the city, state, and country for you.<\/p>\n If you have entered the BU\u2019s address, you can view maps and directions to the address in RB9. You can also add your own directions to the BU\u2019s listing. Any instructions entered here will appear in the Directions field of a job if the job will be at the business unit\u2019s office. (BU is one of the options when setting job locations, so you can select one of your offices as the job location.)<\/p>\n In the Additional pane, enter miscellaneous information about the business unit, including your company\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n This is also where you enter your company\u2019s web address, and any information about the business unit that is not covered in other BU fields.<\/p>\n Preferences set in business units will be used automatically in other RB9 functions. In the Preferences section, you enter the business unit\u2019s production and billing preferences.<\/p>\n 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\u00a0added to the invoice amount.<\/p>\n If your reporters must wait to get paid until you are paid, and you require checks to be entered into RB9 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.<\/p>\n If you deduct a specific number of pages from transcript pages when calculating resources\u2019 pay (for example, you don\u2019t pay resources for cover pages), you can enter that preference here.\u00a0This default can be overridden for a specific job at the time of billing.<\/p>\n You can also choose to show or hide per unit rates when printing detailed invoices that you send to clients.<\/p>\n Default financial accounts are included in RB9, but you can set up your company\u2019s own accounts and\/or designate which accounts RB9 should use for different types of financial transactions involving the business unit. For example, if you use QuickBooks<\/em> for accounting, set up your BUs\u2019 accounts to match your QuickBooks.<\/em> Then you can import your RB9 data directly into your QuickBooks<\/em> using RB9\u2019s\u00a0QuickBooks Integrator<\/a>, eliminating the need to re-key financial data.<\/p>\n 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<\/a>, they are included in the corresponding accounts.<\/p>\n Upload your properly-formatted company logo into each business unit to automatically include your logo on financial correspondence from RB9.<\/p>\n 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n When you save a new BU, RB9 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 RB9. However, there are times when you do not want people selecting a specific BU.<\/p>\n For example if you want a BU that is only used for new jobs coming from client requests through RB Connect<\/a>, set up a restricted BU for web orders and select it as the preferred BU for New Jobs in Contact – Calendar preferences<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n Once you save a business unit in RB9 a new pane, Task Due Days, appears.<\/p>\n 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<\/a>.) 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.<\/p>\n In addition to entering information in the new fields in the Task Due Days pane, you can:<\/p>\n 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<\/a> to be your default for new jobs, but you can override the default when setting a new job.<\/p>\n You also select a default business unit to be displayed on report headers. Each report you print out in RB9 displays BU information from the default you select. You can select a different BU from your default BU.<\/p>\n Business units are used in many RB9 functions. Additional examples:<\/p>\n 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\u2019t see jobs related to that BU in their RB Connect Calendar.\u00a0RB9 doesn\u2019t automatically grant RB Connect access because it doesn\u2019t know which BUs should be visible to RB Connect users and which shouldn\u2019t, so you have to denote that yourself in the general Connect preferences (don\u2019t forget to do this when adding new BUs). You can have different BUs available to contacts and resources.<\/p>\n Business unit access in RB Connect is different from access in RB9. Your contacts and resources don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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 RB9.<\/strong><\/p>\n Contact:<\/strong> Person who works for a firm you do business with \u2014 such as attorneys, paralegals, and secretaries.<\/p>\n RB Connect:<\/b> Online repository, calendar, and access to your office for clients and resources. More ><\/a><\/p>\n RB-PDF Transcript:<\/strong>\u00a0PDF 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.<\/p>\n Resource:<\/strong> Person or thing that provides your business with a service \u2014 such as reporters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adding BUs to your database<\/h2>\n
Search for business units<\/h2>\n
Basic BU information<\/h2>\n
Other General information tips<\/h3>\n
Additional\u00a0information<\/h3>\n
Preferences<\/h3>\n
Accounts<\/h3>\n
Invoice\/Statement Logo<\/h3>\n
PDF Transcript Logo<\/h3>\n
After initial setup, add more information<\/h2>\n
Task Due Days<\/h3>\n
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BUs in RB9<\/h2>\n
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Give others access to BUs<\/h2>\n
RB9 concepts in this lesson<\/h4>\n