We have now enhanced this feature further by showing invoices that have a supplier commission amount outstanding AND invoices that have a customer amount still receivable in red. Each agency has a different policy in terms of when to pay an agent, but we hope this feature will save you time by not having to check whether there are any amounts still receivable on an invoice from suppliers or customers, before paying the agent.

1. From the Back-Office module, either edit the invoice (by clicking on invoice management on the left and searching for the invoice) OR click on “Customer Receivables” to get a list of invoices for which amounts are receivable and click ‘received’ next to the amount you wish to write-off.
2. Add a customer payment (as you normally would do) by clicking on the “Add Payment” button.
3. When the small payment window opens, select “Write-Off Amount” as the method of payment, enter the date and the amount to write-off. Click on the button to save it.

This will remove the invoice from the customer receivable list in the back-office, and also generates a journal entry (part of Journal Entry 001) in the month of the write-off, as follows:

Dr. Bad Debt Expense
Cr. Accounts Receivable – Customer

We hope this quick new feature will allow you to quickly write-off old customer amounts owing that you are certain will not be collectable.

Part 1: Learn to log into the app, learn about the features of the invoice management module, navigate the home page, and get started creating a basic invoice:

Part 2: Continue creating the basic invoice by learning to add travel and insurance products, and complete the booking details page:

Part 3: In this last part, learn to add payments and complete the invoice, as well as search the system for existing invoices:

We hope you find the videos useful. I plan on adding more videos on various topics in the future. Stay tuned.

1. Customer Payments Report – This report provides a detailed listing of all previous payments received from customers, including the booking date, date received, date deposited into the bank account, and reference information.

2. Supplier Payments Report – This report provides a detailed listing of all previous payments made to suppliers.

3. Supplier Commissions Received Report – This report provides a detailed listing of all commission amounts received, whether by cheque or direct deposit, from the supplier.

One common mistake we’ve noticed users make is in the recording of dates; for example, we’ve noticed cases where the date received/paid is before the booking date, or the recorded date deposited/withdrawn is before the date the amount was received/paid. These input errors will obviously result in an incorrect journal entry; therefore, we are hoping that through the above reports, you will easily be able to identify and correct such input errors yourself.

To access these reports, simply login to the back-office and go to the reporting sections under the “Customer Receivables”, “Supplier Payables”, or “Supplier Commissions Receivables” sections. You can also access these reports under the “Management Reports” section.

- From the Team at Merang.

Highlights of some changes include:

• The ability to further sort the payments/commissions lists based on various columns (e.g. invoice number, booking dates, date paid etc.)
• The ability to record or reconcile multiple invoices as a batch where the payment type is the same or the deposit/withdrawn date is the same. This will save a ton of time as you no longer need to record/reconcile each invoice individually.
• We’ve added a couple of fields in the lists. For example,  the “Departure Date” has been added to the list of supplier commissions  receivable which will help you better determine when to follow-up with suppliers if commissions have not been received.

The following is a more detailed explanation of the changes.

1. Supplier Payables:

When recording amounts paid to the supplier, you can now filter the listing and then sort the list based on various columns such as the invoice number, supplier, reference number, or booking date.

You can also record multiple invoices (e.g. if they were all paid together on one cheque or on one company credit card payment) as a batch. Simply click on the relevant checkboxes to select the invoices and then click on the “Record Batch Payment” button. You will then be asked to select the method of payment and date of payment and the system will automatically record this for all of the invoices selected. Please note that this should be used where the full amount of the invoices is being paid on the same cheque/company credit card payment. You still have the option of recording individual invoices and partial payments by clicking on “Payment”, as before.

When you reconcile the cash payments or company credit card payments, you can now sort the list based on the titles, and you can also reconcile multiple invoices if they were all withdrawn or paid on the same date as per your bank statement/credit card statement. As always, recording the correct withdrawn date is critical to ensure that the journal entries are accurate, and the withdrawn date should always be after the payment date.

2. Supplier Commission Receivable:

Similar to the changes made to the supplier payables sections, you can now sort the lists under the supplier commission receivable section and you can record the commissions received for multiple invoices. Sometimes suppliers send one cheque for multiple bookings and you now no longer need to record each invoice separately. Simply select the invoices for which the full commission was received and click on the “Record Batch Received”. Then select whether the commission was received as a cheque or a deposit to your account and the date.

When reconciling commissions to your bank statement, most agencies deposit multiple cheques on the same date. Therefore, you can now also select multiple invoices when reconciling as long as they have the same deposit date. As before, recording the deposit date accurately is critical to ensure that the journal entries are accurate.

We’re very excited about these changes (and something that has been on our roadmap for a while). We certainly hope these changes will make your back-office tasks even faster.

Think Apple. Who would have thought that Apple, a company that sold computers, would change the way we listen to music, or communicate by phone, or even the way we do business.

Think Google. They dominate the field of organizing and searching information (amongst many other things). In my younger days, if one had to research a topic, we often turned to the Encyclopedia Brittanica. These guys specialized in putting together and selling knowledge. Yet today, most of us first turn to Google (or perhaps even Wikipedia) when searching for information – if Encyclopedia Brittanica were experts in this field, why aren’t they dominating the online search and knowledge sharing field today?

There are many examples of once world-leading organizations being wiped out by new players who come from the outside. Think Kodak.

An old ninja saying: “In competition, the best ninja does not worry about fighting the second or third best. They worry about the 20^th best.” That’s because the 20^th best has nothing to lose and will use tactics outside the normal way of thinking. I would go further and argue that in the real world, a ninja should also worry about another fighter who has no ninja experience. Because they will break all the rules and change the way you fight.

I believe, those from outside our industries are not constrained by their beliefs or narrow thinking. They start to question why not, and will find other ways of doing things. They approach problems in a different way, and don’t dwell on limitations, so if you want to star a new business what you have to is believe in your project and them check this online business tips.

How does this apply to your thinking, your business, or your industry?

So what is the accounting cycle? The accounting cycle is a series of steps that you establish to collect all business transactions, process and record them, and then prepare financial reports from them. The accounting period can be monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually depending on the needs of your requirements. The accounting cycle takes place during one accounting period, and then starts again in the next accounting period.

Here’s what a basic accounting cycle looks like:

A reliable accounting process should not be just another administrative burden on your business, but rather a useful tool to help you manage and make better decisions. It should provide you with details of the health of your company and help you with your planning for the future. But this is only possible if you make the process efficient and repeatable. If there are any specific areas you would like to me to focus on and provide a ‘deeper dive’, let me know.

We provided this “Cash-Trust Account” section just as a helpful and easy tool so that you can keep track, by invoice, of commissions that you can transfer to the General bank account. It helps you track all fully completed invoices for which all money has been received (from customers) into the Trust bank account and all money paid from (to suppliers) the Trust bank account, and what the remaining ‘commission’ amount is that you can transfer to the General bank account is. But for this to work properly, it is very important that the invoices that appear in this “Cash-Trust Account” section have accurate amounts (or else you may end up transferring too much or too little to your General bank account), this app you can get a real look through the finance side of the business.

So, the way the “Cash-Trust Account (Tracking)” section works in the back-office is that it only shows those invoices for which all the money has been received (from the customer) (and reconciled to the bank statement) and all the money has been paid to the supplier (and reconciled to the bank statement).

Generally, here are the steps that agencies go through before an invoice will appear in the “Cash-Trust Account (Tracking)” section:

1. After creating a new invoice and recording the details, mark the invoice as “Completed”. (This pushes the invoice to the back-office.)
2. Record any remaining outstanding amounts receivable from customers or owing to suppliers, as they are received/paid.
3. On a monthly basis, reconcile the amounts received from customers/paid to suppliers in the system to your monthly Trust Account bank statement. Reconciliation is very important to ensure accuracy.
4. For invoices that are fully recorded and reconciled, they then appear in the “Cash-Trust Account (Tracking)” section. Use this to decide how much to transfer from the Trust Bank Account to the General Bank Account, and keep track of it here by recording the invoices that you have transferred the commissions for.

We hope this helps you manage and track the commissions you can transfer to the General Bank Account and use to pay for operating expenses and contribute to your profits.

Here’s what you need to do to create multiple invoices for a group:

1. Create the first invoice completely for the first couple/passenger in the group, including all the itinerary details.
2. Once completed, to create a duplicate or clone of this invoice, simply open this initial invoice, scroll to the bottom and click on the “Save as New Invoice” button. This will generate a new invoice with the same itinerary details, selling price, net cost etc. as the original (but will leave the customer and supplier payments blank so that you can complete it as needed).
3. In this new duplicated invoice, just change the customer name/address (if needed; just remember to click on the ‘create’ button for a new customer, and not the ‘update’ button). Also change the passengers listed that is relevant to this new invoice. You can also change the selling price/net cost as required for this invoice by editing the travel product. Scroll down and click on the “Save Invoice” button.

Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each additional invoice you require for this group. Don’t forget to add how you received customer payments and made payments to supplier on each invoice, as applicable.

Here’s a tip: If you do a lot of group bookings, you may wish to assign some unique group id to each group (e.g. #GR001 – use a # sign so that we know it is a group). We recommend entering this as part of the Booking Reference field. For example, if you have added a ‘vacation package’ travel product and the supplier locator number/booking reference number is LGHFY, then you could enter ‘LGHFT/#GR001’ in the booking reference field for that product. Then,  in the future, if you wanted to search for all invoices related to that particular group booking, you simply go to the search feature and enter ‘GR001’ in the booking reference field to search for. The system will automatically show you all invoices related to that group booking.

The feedback we’ve received from users to date is that this feature has saved a lot of time when doing groups, and so we wanted to share this with you.