All the payments (cheques, debit orders out of your bank account, interest paid on overdue bank accounts, etc), which is paid out of a specific bank account is entered in the payments journal for the bank account from which the money is paid out. The transactions entered into the Payments Journal will always decrease the bank balance if it is a positive bank balance. Should your bank balance be an overdraft, the transactions entered into the Payments Journal will increase your negative bank balance.

The source documents used to enter transactions in a payments batch are cheque counter foils or cheque requisitions. All the payments and charges will be displayed on the bank statement and must be reconciled (usually on a monthly basis) with the payments journal. You may find other transactions, such as monies paid directly out of your bank account by debit order, bank charges, interest paid on an overdrawn bank account, etc. on your bank statement which are usually dealt with when the bank reconciliation are done.

To Enter your Payment Transactions:
Click on the speed button or icon. You may also press the key on your keyboard. Alternatively you may press the and and keys on your keyboard. The Batch Type screen will be displayed.
Select the Payments Journal for the specific Bank Account, in which you wish to enter the payments or debits. Click on the button. The Batch Entry screen for the selected Payments Journal will be displayed.
The first time you enter a transaction in the payments journal you should set it up according to your requirements. This should be done for each journal, but only needs to be done once, unless your requirements change. If you have not yet set the payments batch up, click on the speed button or icon to set your batch up. Note that for the Payments Journal, the Amount Entry field should be set to debit.
Capture the payments from the cheque counterfoils. It is also important to link these payments to your source documents received from the parties whom you have paid. This could possibly be cash slips, etc. This is important if you are registered as a VAT vendor and you claim input tax. You still need a valid tax invoice or other acceptable source document from a registered VAT vendor to claim the Input Tax.

 

You would record the cheque number, date of the transaction, details of the transaction, the creditor or other applicable ledger account, input VAT (if you are registered for VAT) and the amount you have issued the cheque for - including or excluding VAT, depending on your requirements.



After entering the payments, you need to balance the batch transactions and before you wish to post the batch.



If any amounts for an Open Item Creditor account is linked on the Open Item Selection screen, the transaction will be displayed in a yellow background.

Click on the speed button or icon press the key on your keyboard. TurboCASH will create the balancing entry to the bank.

TurboCASH will generate balancing entries to the Sales Account and the Input VAT – Capital Goods and the Input VAT – Standard Rate and the Bank Account. If the Consolidate balancing option is selected in the Setup Options for this batch, the description for the balancing entries or transactions, will be displayed as "BALANCING ENTRY Payments Jnl". It is a good idea to overtype this description as it is not very meaningful to an outside auditor or accountant. If you overtype these it will definitely make it easier to trace and reconcile transactions.

• Overtype the VAT description with "VAT – Capital Cheques 105" in the description column.
  
  
• Overtype the VAT description with "VAT – Standard Cheques 106 - 108 " in the description column.
  
  
• Overtype the description with "Payments Cheques 105 - 108" in the description column.
  
  
• Do not overtype the ******** as it will indicate that these are contra transactions.

 Click on the speed button or icon or press the key on your keyboard to change the alias. This will help you if you wish to identify a specific batch, if you wish to generate a batch type report or if you wish to export posted batches to a file.
Click on the speed button or icon or press the key on your keyboard to list the batch. It is a good idea to list the batch and check the entries on the batch thoroughly. If there are any errors, you may edit the batch before posting the batch.
Click on the speed button or icon or press the key on your keyboard to post the batch. TurboCASH will post the entries to debit the individual General Ledger and Creditor accounts, Input VAT – Capital Goods and Input VAT – Standard Rate accounts, and credit the total of all the cheques to the Bank Account when the batch is posted to the ledger. The transactions will be displayed as follows in the accounts:

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If the Consolidate Balancing Entries option was not selected when the options for this batch was set, the individual transactions would have been listed or posted to the Bank and Input VAT account.

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You can enter transactions in a batch daily and only post at the end of the month. Exiting the batch, or even TurboCASH, will not cause these transactions to be lost. You may also choose to post after every entry.

TurboCASH allows you to reconcile your Bank Accounts before posting your Payments and Receipts journals. This will allow you to easily correct any errors found, when doing the bank reconciliation. Please note that you cannot reconcile unposted items created on the "client machines" if you are working on a network version of TurboCASH.

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Any transactions which is already reconciled with a bank statement, (which is marked or selected as reconciled items or transactions), will be displayed in a blue font colour.

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If you have any repeating entries setup for your payments batch, you need to copy them to the normal batch as they will not reflect in the Cash Book for a specific period when doing the Bank reconciliation.

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Before you wish to post the batch, please ensure that you have checked the transactions and that you have changed the alias, print a list of the entries in the batch.

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Capture your cheques from your cheque stubs in your cheque book or from your cheque requisitions, using the cheque number as the reference number. If the cheque numbers may at any point of time overlap with the deposit numbers, it is recommended that you prefix the cheque number with a C and prefix the Deposit numbers with a D. If you have pre-numbered deposit slips and they may at any time in the future be the same as your cheque numbers, it is wise to prefix your deposit number with a D. You may also prefix your cheque numbers with a C.

All the items purchased and paid with the same cheque must have the same reference number. For example, if you have purchased or paid for more than one item and the items has to be allocated to different accounts (e.g. petrol and repairs) or if different Tax codes is applicable to the different items, you would enter more than one line with the same reference number. This is very important. If this is not done, bank reconciliation will be difficult, if not impossible.

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It is important to type something similar to "Payment on account" in the detail column, as this will appear on the creditor's remittance advise and it must be useful information for the creditor. Do not select tax on payment to creditors as you have already paid Input VAT when you captured the purchase for the creditor.

If you have many transactions with descriptions of a repetitive nature, you may assign a key on your keyboard as an abbreviation. For example, if you assign the key on your keyboard for the description "Payment on account", you only need to type the key and press the key in the description field. The full description (e.g. "Payment on account") will be transferred to the description field.

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Should you have any Open Item Creditors, an Open Item Selection screen will appear listing all credit transactions as well as the opening balance for the creditor you have selected in the account field, if this creditor account is created as an Open item Creditor. You need to select the specific supplier invoice or transaction for which, you are making the payment.