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The Integrated Membership & Bookkeeping system for Charities, Clubs & Societies
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TUTORIAL - Some Posting Basics


Tutorial Index Main Contents:

Welcome
Introducing hontreasurer.com
Online Manual
How Do I?
HELP! - I'm Stuck!
TUTORIAL
The Forum
TO DO List

TUTORIAL Contents:

Introduction
Preferences
> Setup
> Roles
> Users
Activity Names
Accounting Categories
Activities

Accounts
Statuses
Members (Contacts)
Posting
> Cheque or Cash Received
>> Against Invoice
> Cheque Written
>> Against Invoice
> Cash Paid
> Cash from Cash Account to Bank
> Cash from Bank to Cash Account
> Cash Banked
> Bank Transfer In
>> Against Invoice
> Bank Transfer Out
>> Against Invoice
> Account Transfer
> Bank Interest Received

> Opening Balances
> Opening Income & Expenditure

> Invoice Sent
> Invoice Received

The Bank Reconciliation

Transaction Enquiry
Balance Enquiry

The Year End

Reporting

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Now you ready to post some transactions - almost! Before you do, though, I am going to take a little more of your time. To post any transaction, you need, at least:

1. An Amount. You might think this would be simple but there are things which can catch you out even with something as simple as the amount! Generally speaking, hontreasurer.com wants all amount put in as positive numbers and it accepts two decimal places; commas are ignored. This is suitable for most currencies in the world. So a cheque received for 40.00 is entered as 40.00, a cheque written for 5,087.67 can be entered as 5,087.67 or 5087.67. An account transfer from Current to Deposit (Savings) of 1000 is 1000. There are very few times when you have to put in a negative number - usually when a refund is given or received. HOWEVER - and this is important to note - the system will report and display all expenditure as negative and all income as positive. So don't be surprised when you enter a cheque written as 15.83 and it is displayed or reported as -15.83 - that's the way it works! Don't think about it too much and it will all look quite natural!

2. A Contact, Member, Trader or whatever you are calling them. I will call them Contacts for the time being. There is absolutely no distinction in hontreasurer.com between people you pay money to and people you receive money from. The system is only really interested in the Firstname and Surname of the person you are paying or receiving money from. So you can put in just these details when you post to someone you haven't seen before. All contacts are listed in posting screens, so just pick the right one or add a new one.

3. An Activity. hontreasurer.com is a little different from other systems in that it wants to know from the start which Financial Year the amount is for. So activities are first Named, with Activity Name maintenance, and then "validated" for a Financial Year. That sounds complicated but really it isn't. For example, lets suppose we run a summer school. We enter the Activity Name "Summer School" and some description - that's it. When we start getting or paying money for the 2006 Summer School, we create an Activity for Summer School IN 2006. It doesn't matter whether the money is received or paid in 2005, 2006 or 2007, hontreasurer.com will sort it out for you. When the 2007 summer school comes along, we will create a new activity for it called Summer School IN 2007. Its the same with "continuous" activities too, e.g. Tea Money. When the year changes, a new Activity must be created for the new year (the Activity Name is already there) so that hontreasurer.com can sort the accounts out without further adjustments.

4. A Financial Year. All organisations should have their finances organised by financial year. You will have the first year set up, so don't worry too much at this stage what happens at the end. It will be covered later and all these examples will be for the first year.

5. An Account. You don't need to worry too much about accounts because hontreasurer.com can normally tell from the type of transaction and the user you are which account to use. Frequently there is no choice. However, if you are doing an account transfer, you obviously need to know which account the money is going from and to. There is sometimes confusion about "Cash" accounts. Just think of these as a label on the Cash Tin and the amount of money which is in it. If you have lots of Bank and Cash accounts, see the discussion here.

6. A Date. This should always be entered as the date of the transaction rather than the date you put the posting in. So for a cheque written it is the date on the cheque; for a cheque received it is the date on the paying in slip and for an internet transfer or direct debit, for example, it is the date on the bank statement.

7. A Reference. This number is for tying the posting to the piece of paper outside the system which originated the transaction. Cheque number for cheques, payin number for payins - those two are easy. Transfers are more difficult because Bank typically don't allocate a number when doing, for example, an internet transfer (why on earth not?) but hontreasurer.com can allocate a reference number because it knows the last on of the type entered and will allocate the next (press F9). But if you have documents supporting, for example, bank transfers and these have a number, enter the document number in the reference.

8. A Receipt Number but only for receipts. The reason this is separate to the reference number above is that the payin number is the number hontreasurer.com requires for doing the bank reconciliation (the operation which convinces us that the bank is right!). But the receipt number is useful for tying the transaction to the receipt which was issued to the Contact.

Whew! We have got there - lets try it!

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