Reports and Procedures to help close a month in TBN

Reports and Procedures to help close a month in TBN



Closing an Accounting Period.

This guide provides an example of how a company might close an accounting period in TBN. Since each company has its own accounting practices, this is not intended as a definitive process for everyone. Instead, it demonstrates how to locate the necessary data to meet your specific requirements.

Reports

A "point in time" report is a reporting function in TBN where the report is showing what the results were at a given point in time. This means for example, if I am looking at my "Accounts Receivable" I can look at what that was at the close of a month, not only what it is today. 

The following reports have been designed to provide you with the information you need to close a month. 
  1. GL Code: Revenue Entry Reports
  2. AR Aging
  3. Invoice Free Entry Discrepancy
  4. Unearned Revenue
  5. Not Invoiced Bookings

GL Code: Revenue Entry Reports

The GL Code Revenue Entry Report shows all of the revenue entries during a given period. It allows you to search by either booking departure or return date, or invoice date and has filters that will let you refine it further to see revenue specific to Addons, vehicles, discounts, or free entry invoice transactions. It can be grouped by the GL code or the Vehicle/addon types and can also be used to highlight issues that may exist during your closing process such as entries with no GL code associated or where there is revenue that has not been invoiced. 

AR Aging 

The AR Aging report is a "point-in-time" report that shows the the status of all aging invoices. This report allows you to filter by invoice date as well as to choose what you see including current invoices or past due (all, 1-30, 31-60, 61-90, 91+) and will also give you access to summaries of this data inlcuding either on the Organization level or on the contact level. 

Invoice Free Entry Discrepancy Report

This report provides a snapshot of any free entries that have been created on an invoice where the creation date of the invoice and the creation date of a free entry transaction differ. This is important information because it will call out things such as Credit Card Surcharge revenue that was created when a customer paid an invoice online. This report allows you to easily see this and to allocate that revenue to the proper periods. 

Unearned Revenue

This report is a point-in-time report that shows you what your unearned revenue balance was at any given moment in time. This report allows you to choose wether this is displayed based on the departure date or the return date and to choose the date. It also allows you to filter the results using transaction type and general ledger codes. This report is designed to give you a sum of the total unearned revenue which is calculated based on transactions for trips that have not met the date criteria you are filtering for (departure or return) resulting in a total which can be used as a journal entry to track unearned revenue in your accounting software. 

Not Invoiced Bookings

Not invoiced bookings is a simple report that will allow you to search based on either departure or return dates and refine those results if desired by only showing bookigns marked with hold invoice, hiding those that are paid in full, or only showing those that are paid in full. This is designed to show an accouting team if there are invoices that need to be generated before closing the month and reporting on the AR balance. 

Sample Closing Process

Reminder!!! Not all accounting processes are the same and as such this is designed to be a sample of how a company could use TBN to close a month. 
Process Assumptions for this guide- Revenue is posted on trip return date, All bookings are being invoiced regardless of payment status, closing a single month (June 2024) for a single location, you are managing Unearned revenue with a period journal entry, you are uploading all individual transactions to your accounting program and you are tracking AR in TBN and using Journal Entries to register those in your accounting software. This also assumes that you are using TBN's mapping feature for GL codes and mapping all revenue entries to a general ledger code.  
  1. Run the "Not Invoiced Booking" report using trip return date for the accounting period you are wanting to close. (do this by using the return date range filter with the start date of June 1st and the last date of June 30th and clicking apply filters).
  2. Invoice anything that shows up on this list either by individually invoicing or batch invoicing from the invoices page and using the "process invoice" function. If you are closing a period AFTER the end date of the period, ensure that you set the invoice date to a day within the period. 
  3. Verify that all payments are logged in the system for the period. This may mean checking for automated deposits such as ACH or checks that have not been posted that were received in the period. Once those have been entered you would proceed to the next step. 
  4. Navigate to the Invoice Free Entry Discrepancy Report and choose as the "Free entry created date" the reporting period you are closing (June 1st - June 30th). 
  5. Click the Invoice date column and ensure that the records are shows oldest to newest. 
  6. Look for any Free Entry Records where the Invoice Date is BEFORE the period that you are closing. 
  7. For any Free entries where the revenue is showing for an invoice that was closed in a previous period, you can either make individual entries in your accounting software OR you can make a journal entry with the total of all free entries where the invoice is outside the concerned period. 
  8. Go to the General Ledger Code- Revenue entries report and set the Invoice date filter to your closing period (in this case June 1st - June 30th) click the filter option "No General Ledger Code" and then click apply filters. In this step you are going to work on any of the items that do not have GL codes and enter where you want them mapped. (If you are finding that you consistently have a lot of these issues at the close of a period it would be worth revisiting the GL Code mapping setup as the system should be mapping the vast majority of these automatically based on how the system is being used. )
  9. Once all of your revenue entries have GL codes associated, now you can un-click the "no General Ledger Code" button and reapply the filters, so that you now have all of the revenue entries for the entire period. 
  10. Now that you have this period and all of the GL codes exist, you can export the report as a CSV file and upload that CSV file into your accounting software. This step will input all of the individual transactions into your accounting software. 
  11. Open the AR aging report and choose the closing date of the period you are working on (in this case June 30th) in the Invoices/Payments created on or before: date box. 
  12. Use the Total Outstanding as shown on the summary to make a journal entry OR Register the individual categories (Current, 1-30, 31-60, 61-90, 91+) if you choose. 
  13. Open the Unearned Revenue Report and put the last day of the period you are closing in the "Transactions Created On or Before" date and select the Return Date radio button. 
  14. Use the SUM OF TRANSACTIONS from the top of this report to make a journal entry for your closing unearned revenue balance for the period. 

    • Related Articles

    • Rethinking Closing Ratio Reporting

      Rethinking Closing Ratio Reports in the Motorcoach Industry with TBN In the ever-evolving motorcoach industry, traditional metrics like closing ratio reports are increasingly becoming less effective in providing a complete picture of sales ...

    • TourDriver Reports

      TourDriver Reports Seeing what trips are scheduled is easy with our TourDriver reports.

    • Logging Partial Refunds in TBN

      Partial Refunds Explained There are times where a partial refund is needed against a booking or an Invoice. These steps will help you understand how to do that in TBN- For Bookings where you are not going to operate the trip. Issue the partial refund ...

    • CHEAT SHEET- You are ready to setup your TBN SalesDriver Account

      Great News! Its time to setup your SalesDriver account- Here is a cheat sheet that will walk you through the important things you need to be aware of as you do. Basic Settings for your SalesDriver setup- One of the first things you will need to do is ...

    • CHEAT SHEET- You are ready to take quotes in your TBN SalesDriver Account

      Great News! Its time to start quoting in SalesDriver - Here is a cheat sheet that will walk you through the important things you need to be aware of as you do. Reviewing complex quotes before sending to a customer - Your company has setup "quote ...