Academies Finance
STARACADEMY– User Guide
Section 9 - Cheque Printing and Other Payments
This Section not only details the processes involved in making payments when using the Cheque Printing facility but also those involved when making payments by Direct Debit, Credit Card or BACS.
About Cheque Printing
The Cheque Printingoption within StarAcademy is a facility that will assign Cheque Numbersto all expenditure transactions waiting to be processed. To use Cheque Printingyou must have this option activated in the‘School Details’screen (see Section 2).
If Cheque Printing is not activated Cheque Numbers will have had to have been allocated when Orders are received and paid (Section 7) or Transactions created (Section 8). Their details will then be sent directly to the Bank Reconciliation screen ready for reconciliation when the bank statement is received.
If Cheque Printing is activated the transactions will appear on the Bank Reconciliation screen but will only be available for Bank Reconciliation once the Cheque Run has been completed (as detailed in the following paragraphs) and their respective Cheque Numbers or Direct Debit/Credit Card details allocated.
Remove Zero Payments
StarAcademy cannot produce a cheque for a Supplierif the net amount is less than or equal to zero. To remove self-cancelling entries for a Supplier, highlight the required invoices and click Remove Zero Payments before completing the Cheque Run.
Please Note: The Next Cheque Number must not be blank for this process to be completed.
Clear Direct DebitsCredit Card Payments
If a Direct Debitor Credit Cardtransaction has been entered without a Statement Date (see Section 8) it will appear on the Cheque Runscreen. To clear this payment from the Cheque Run highlight the requiredtransaction, or for Credit Card payments select the option at the top of the screen.
Click Payment Cleared by Direct Debit or Payment Cleared by Credit Cardas appropriate:
The selected payment will be flagged as a Direct Debitor Credit Cardpayment and appear on the ‘Bank Reconciliation’and ‘Transaction’ screens with a Cheque Numberreference of “DD” or “CC” and the Statement Date that was entered out (e.g. DD 01/06/XX or CC 13/02/xx).
For example:
List of Transactions Pending Payment
If you want to see a list of transactions awaiting payment split by Accounting Period then select Cheque Run List at the bottom of the screen:
A list of all outstanding transactions awaiting payment will be displayed – they will take account of the Accounting Period selected and will be split by Accounting Period accordingly:
Transactions from any supplier that have the same Invoice Number and same Invoice Date will be collated and shown as one entry.
Process Cheque Run
The default is set to list all payments awaiting inclusion on a cheque run. Highlight the transactions you wish to process. If you wish to process all transactions shown click. It will be automatically sorted by “Due Date” but you can change to sort by Supplier.
Please Note: You must ensure that the next Cheque Numberis correct before proceeding with the Cheque Run(i.e. it is the next cheque in your cheque book/pre-printed cheque stationery).
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Once you are satisfied that all the transactions you wish to process have been selected you have several options as detailed below:
Please Note: When processing the Cheque Runa confirmation message of the next Cheque Number will appear:
Cheque Run Options
You can either:
1- Click Print Cheque List – This will print a report showing which transactions to assign to each cheque. You must then ensure that the cheques that are written match this report. This is useful if your Academy does not use pre-printed cheque stationery and does not require a Remittance Advicefor each cheque written.
2 - Click Print Cheque with Remittance Advice – This will print a one page Remittance Advicefor each Supplierin the format selected within the School Details screen (see Section 2) i.e. your pre-printed cheque stationery format. If yourAcademy does not use pre-printed cheque stationery cheque format “Z” can be used to produce only the Remittance Advice which can then be attached to manually produced cheques.
3 – If you wish to print both theCheque List and Remittance Advices you will need to click Print Cheque List, and then select No when asked if you wish to update the Cheque Numbers. You can then click Print Chequewith Remittance Adviceand click Yes when asked if you wish to update the Cheque Numbers(if they have printed correctly).
Cheques for over 15 Invoices
When processing theCheque Run the maximum number of invoices that can be printed within the “Invoice Details” section of the Remittance Adviceon one sheet is 15. If you are processing a cheque for a Supplierthat contains more than 15 individual invoices the following message will appear:
You must insert a plain piece of paper for each cheque that has more than 15 invoices. If more than one is required this message will state the number required. Click OK to print this additional report – it will be headed as the “Breakdown of attached Cheque” and will detail ALL invoices being paid by this cheque. The related Remittance Adviceand cheque will be printed next but will only have the first 15 invoice details shown.
Insert the cheque printing stationery back into the printer and click OK to continue printing the cheques.
Re-issue a Cheque
If a cheque needs to be reissued for any reason with a different Cheque Number (for example the original may have been lost in the post), this can be done by reversing the original transaction (See Section 8) and entering the transaction again with the new Cheque Number.
Alternatively, a cheque can be reissued as follows:
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Click Yes to continue or No to cancel.
A Remittance Advice will then be printed that shows both the original Cheque Numberand the reissued number. You should then write a new cheque to match the new number shown on the remittance if Cheque Printingis switched off.
Cheque Payment Details Report
The Cheque Payment Details Report(as detailed below) can be set to automatically open at the end of the Cheque Run process. If you would like this report to open automatically ensure that the Print Cheque Summary box on the ‘School Details’ screen is ticked (see Section 2).
This report provides a breakdown of all items paid on each Cheque Number including the Voucher Number, Invoice Number, Date Paid and Supplier. If the transaction has been reconciled a tick will be shown in the Reconciled box.
To print this report (if required) select the StarAcademy dropdown, thenclickPrint. To close this report selectthe StarAcademy dropdown, then clickClose.
BACS Payments
Only Users that have been set to BACS Creator will be able to process BACS payments. The BACS file to be processed is created within the Cheque Run screen. From the ‘Main Menu’, select the ‘Process’ tab and then click Cheque Run.
The list defaults to ExcludeBACS transactions so to process BACS payments click on the BACS only option:
BACS Reference
The BACS Reference will default to the next reference that can be used within the accounts. This reference must start with the letters ‘BACS’ with a numerical number (eg: BACS12). If you do not wish to accept the default you can overtype the BACS Batch No with the Batch Number you require. The BACS Batch No: must be between 1 and 9999 and not have been used previously.
At this point a control sheet will be printed that must be authorised by the responsible budget officer (e.g. head teacher):
If then bank account details of any of the suppliers has been changed in the last 90 days an asterisk will be displayed alongside their entry and the additional sentence added to the authorisation report.
Please ensure that this report hasbeen printed correctly as you will be unable to amend the Batch details after clicking Yes to the following message:
An encrypted BACS Payments file will be placed into the ‘STAR\ Backup\Archive\BACS’ folder on the server.
Once it has been confirmed that the BACS report has been printed correctly the following message will be displayed to prompt the user to send the file to Lloyds:
Press OK and the Folder will be opened with the file just created shown:
It will be called “BACSPayment” and Location Code and current month/year and the BACS Reference, for example “BACSPayment2390-March2014-BACS21.csv”.
There is no need to separately authorise the payments within the STAR Academy system (other than the signature on the BACS report printed earlier) as the file authorisation takes place elsewhere. The fileshould now be uploaded to Lloyds as part of that authorisation process.
Any user with BACS Creator status can process a BACS payment and create the file for sending to Lloyds butthe authorisation process MUST be carried out by someone other than the person who created the file.
Sending BACS Remittance Advices
The BACS Creatorcan produceindividual Supplier’sBACS Remittance Advicesfor authorised transactions. This facility can be accessed from the Cheque Run screens.
Click on .
Selecting the BACS Remittance button will lead you to the Authorised BACS Payments not yet printed/emailed screen where you will be able to print or email the BACS Remittance Advice(s)for any of the transactions you want to choose:
- Allwill select all BACS Payments shown on the screen
- Print Onlywill selectonly those transactions without a BACS email address recorded on their Supplier’s record.
- Email Onlywill select only those transactions with a BACS email address recorded on their Supplier’s record.
Having selected the transactions for which you want to produceRemittance Advices you can choose either the Print/Email Selected or Print Selectedoption to decide how to produce the Advices.
Print/Email Selected
Choosing this option will produce a BACS Remittance Advice for each transaction selected according to the following rules:
- If the transaction has a BACS email address recorded on the Supplier’s record then an email version of the Remittance Advice will be prepared and sent.
- If the transaction doesn’t have a BACS email address recorded on the Supplier’s record then a printed version of the Remittance Advice will be prepared.
Print Selected
Choosing this option will produce only a printed version of the BACS Remittance Advice for each transaction selected irrespective of whether it has a BACS email address recorded on the Supplier’s record or not.
Reprinting BACS Remittances
Select the Reprint BACS Remittance button to reprint selected BACS Remittance Advice(s).
Once this button is clicked the following screen will be displayed:
Select the BACS Reference from the drop down list that will contain the transactions for which you wish to reprint a BACS Remittance Advice and the following screen will be displayed:
Select the Supplier for whom you wish to reprint an Advice and if the Supplier has a BACS email address recorded on their record you will be asked whether you want to send an email rather than print the Advice:
BACS Details
Clickthe BACS Detailsbutton to provide a summary of all BACS Payments selected in a range:
Select the First and Last Batch Numbers from the drop down lists to select the range of BACS Payments required and the following list will be printed:
Supplier Bank Details
For Supplier Bank Details click
The following box will be displayed on the screen:
Current Supplier Bank Details - if you select the ‘print’ button without entering any other detail you will be presented with a list of all ‘Active’ BACS Registered Suppliers’ banking details which are current at the time of printing. Any BACS Registered Supplier who is currently ‘Inactive’ will NOT be included in this report
This print is also available on the Supplier screen from the “Supplier BACS Details” button.
Supplier Bank Details for a particular BACS payment file
If you select a previously processed BACS file from the drop down list in the “Batch Ref ID” box, then press the ‘print’ button a print with the following headings will be displayed:
The print doesn’t show any totals paid – it merely confirms the bank account details that were used for each Supplier who received a payment from this particular BACS payment file.
Supplier Bank Detail changes made within a specified date range
If you input a date range into the “Date From:” and “To:” boxesthen press the ‘print’ button a print with the following column headings will be displayed:
The column headings are self-explanatory except for the “Amendment” column under which a number of different values may be displayed eg:
Only changes/additions/deletions of Account Number or Sortcode within the date range specified are included in this print. A change to a BACS email address without a change to the Account Number or Sortcode will not be included. The “To:” date will default to today’s date if it is left blank.
BACS Payment Corrections
- Payment rejectedfor including incorrect Supplier Bank Details
The bank may reject the entire batch due to an incorrect supplier bank detail on one of the payments. Identify the incorrect supplier bank details, amend the details and reissue the BACS Payment as you would reissue a lost cheque. You can only reissue the entire batch using this method if none of the payments with that BACS reference have been reconciled.
From the Payments screen, with ‘BACS Only’ selected, click on
Only unreconciled BACS Batches can be reissued and will appear in the drop down list. Select the Batch that is to be reissued.
The next BACS Batch number will be automatically assigned to the batch. When you click ‘Yes’, all the transactions will be amended to the new BACS reference, in this example ‘BACS39’. A new Batch will be created ready to be uploaded to the bank. The original BACS payments will be prefixed with ‘x’ and the file extension removed so it cannot be uploaded again in error.
eg: xBACSPayment9999-October2014-BACS37
- Cancelthe entire Batch or Individual Payment with the option to reissue on a future Batch
If you want to cancel all the BACS payments of a specific BACS Batch, ie: some/all payments were selected in error, you can do this from the Transaction screen by selecting the “Reverse Transaction” button. You then have the option to reselect the payments for a future batch (Reissue) or not (Cancel)
When opened, the Cheque / Transaction Reversal screen will default to your selected default Bank Account. From the drop down box select the BACS Batch file required from the drop down list.
This will then list all the payments in the selected BACS batch.
Reverse Entire Batch:
If the entire batch is incorrect, click the ‘Reverse’ button.
If ‘No’ is selected to reverse all payments within the chosen batch the following message will appear:
Click ‘Yes’ to reverse the BACS batch, or ‘No’ to cancel.
If ‘Yes’ is selected in the ‘BACS Reissue / Reversal’ message to reissue all payments within the chosen batch the following message will appear:
Click ‘Yes’ to complete the reissue or ‘No’ to cancel.
If ‘Yes’ is selected enter a brief meaningful reason for the reissue, then click ‘OK’. Click ‘Cancel’ to stop the reissue process.
All of the payments relating to the selected BACS batch will be reversed and recreated, meaning they will appear again within the ‘Cheque Run’ screen ready to be re-assigned to a new BACS batch.
Reverse an Individual Payment:
To reverse a single payment within the BACS batch, select the Batch as above then double click the required payment:
If ‘No’ is selected the following message will appear:
Click ‘Yes’ to reverse the selected payment, or ‘No’ to cancel.
If ‘Yes’ is selected in the ‘BACS Reissue / Reversal’ message to reissue the payment within the chosen batch the following message will appear:
Click ‘Yes’ to complete the reissue or ‘No’ to cancel.
If ‘Yes’ is selected enter a brief meaningful reason for the reissue, then click ‘OK’. Click ‘Cancel’ to stop the reissue process.
Generally the reason for an individual payment to be rejected is because the bank account details entered are incorrect. When reissuing an individual payment the option to amend the bank details will be given:
Click ‘Yes’ to open the supplier edit form, or ‘No’ to cancel.
Please Note: If the payment was rejected because the incorrect bank details are held these must be amended before the payment is reassigned to a new batch.
The selected payment will be reversed and recreated, meaning it will appear again within the ‘Cheque Run’ screen ready to be re-assigned to a new BACS batch.
Section 9– Cheque Printing
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