Monthly balancing can be a painful process for some and we are frequently asked for advice on how to balance. With this in mind, we’ve created a document to walk you through the balancing process. Click here to view the document. In addition, below are a few tips we felt might help you along the way.

The most important suggestion we can make is that you print and/or export all your monthly reports before you start entering transactions for the next month. Auditors frequently ask for detailed reports that correspond with a Monthly Balance report from several months ago. However, some of the reports are accumulative, which means they are updated as soon as you post or delete a transaction. For example, Auditors come into your office in April and want to see everyone who owed you money at the end of February. The report they are looking for is the Receivables | Group of Invoices for Only Unpaid Receivables. The totals on this report should match the Ending Balance column on the Monthly Balance report. As this report is accumulative, the report will only reflect balances as of the day you access it, meaning if you try to print it on the day the Auditors are there, the report will not reflect the information the Auditors wish to see from several months ago. The report they need should have been printed/exported at the end of February. So just be aware of when you are printing/exporting your reports and make sure nothing is posted in the collect system until you have completed the process.

Also, many of our collectors have created a folder on their desktop called Monthly Balancing. Then each month, they export their monthly reports into this folder. As many of the reports are only needed if an Auditor wants to see the details, printing every report is unnecessary. Simply export the reports to the folder each month, then when a specific report is requested, at some point in the future, it will be in that month’s folder. For instructions on how to export a report click here.

Our final tip on balancing monthly is simply to do it. It may seem obvious to many of you, but others never balance until the end of their fiscal year. When you balance on a monthly basis, errors are caught and fixed in a timely manner, making the year-end process less of a hassle. So, take a few minutes to look over the Monthly Balancing document. Then try using it at the end of this month, and give us a call if you have any questions.