Newest KB Articles in Invoices/Statements

Invoices Settings

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:26:44 GMT

The Chabad Management System has the ability to generate individual or batch invoices. For details on printing invoices see Invoices.

To customize setting for the invoices go to Tools>Options and select the Invoices tab.

Show/Hide Check or Uncheck any of these items to show or hide them, respectively, on the invoice.

Payment Options is the box that a customer can indicate check, cash or credit card. If you are showing the Payment options you can also indicate which credit carts your organization accepts.
Hebrew Date will show the Hebrew date in addition to the English date.
Invoice Type is the category of the Invoice.
'Office Use Only' box is a grey box that will appear on the invoice labeled 'Office Use Only'.

Invoice Description:
There is a description on each line of the invoice that describes what that item is. There are two options how the descriptions is entered on the invoice:

Automatic
Manual

Automatic will have the description calculated automatically based on the Category and Subcategory entered for the bill. Manual will check if a description was entered in the Description field of the Bill. If a description was manually entered, that description will be used. If no descriptions was entered, it will be calculated automatically (as in Automatic).

Invoice Footer Lines:
These lines will appear at the bottom of all invoices. When running batch invoices, you do have an option to enter other footer lines (See Invoices). If no footer lines were entered at that time, these footer lines will appear.

~~Use Simple Bills Screen:~~
~~Check off this box to use the simple bills screen.~~

Location and file name of the Custom Reports Database:
Enter the location and name of your database containing your custom reports. This is for banquet reports and custom designed invoices and statements.

Fiscal Year:
Enter the month and day that the fiscal year begins.

Invoices and Statements

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 23:55:19 GMT

An invoice is a notice you send to a contact about a bill they have. The invoice will include any payments the contact may have made and deduct it from the balance due. All this is automatic as long as you properly apply the payment to the bill.

There are two ways to send invoices: Individual or Batch.

Individual Invoice

To send an individual invoice, go to that contact, Click on the Transaction tab and select the bill. Click the Invoice buttpn on the right side to print an invoice. If you don't see any bills, click on Transaction Type on the top and click on bills to view the bills.

Batch Invoices

To send a batch of invoices, click Tasks > Invoices & Statements.

The first step is to choose the Output and the Job. The Output can either be Screen, Word Merge or Custom. For custom, you can custom-design an invoice or statement and then link to that database in the options found under the tools menu. Custom requires Access Report Design knowledge. Tech support can design this for you if needed for additional fees. Contact tech support for details.

The available jobs are:

Invoices
Invoice envelopes
Invoice labels
Statements
Statement envelopes
Statement labels

By default, all invoices that are outstanding will be generated. You can define which dates should be included in this batch. You can also limit the resulting batch to a specific category or subcategory.

Past or Upcoming Dates:
By default, only bills that have a date prior to 30 days from the current date are included in the batch. To include all bills, regardless of their date, uncheck the Past or Upcoming Dates box.

If you uncheck the Past or Upcoming Dates box, CMS will require that you choose dates to include in the batch. There is a variety of choices or you can input custom dates.

Outstanding Balances:
By default, only bills that have an outstanding balance will be included in the batch. To have all bills show up, regardless of their balance due amount, uncheck the Outstanding Balances box.

Categories and Subcategories:
Here you choose to limit the invoices to one or more categories. To limit the batch to one or more subcategories, check the Show Subcategories box and select the subcategories you want. To include all categories and subcategories, don't select anything from this list.

Footer Lines:
Click the footer lines tab to enter text in the three available footer lines.

The footer lines in an invoice are three lines at the bottom of the invoice where you can write a short message to the contact such as: "Thank you for your business." Or "Have a Happy and Kosher Passover." If you leave the footer lines blank in the Batch Invoice screen the default footer lines will be used. If you enter footer lines here, they will be used instead of the default lines.

Other:
You can choose to limit an invoice or statement to an individual contact. Uncheck the All box and choose a contact to limit the invoice/statements to.

Year Comparison Solicitation Letter

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:48:44 GMT

Click here for a video tutorial (2:30 in the video)

Click Tasks > Year End Letters.

This feature allows you to select complex summary criteria based on date range and categories to generate a solicitation letter that has the Total Amount contributed in any two years. This tool can be used toward the end of a year to solicit those whose contributions this year did not yet meet last year's mark.

Choose Criteria

There are two tabs in the Year Comparison Letters window. Dates and Amounts, and Categories. If you don’t make any changes to these options, you will get contacts that have contributed anything last year but this year have contributed less than what they contributed last year.
You can adjust these default settings as needed. For example: you can…

Change the definition of Previous or Current Year to include a different year. (Use this if you're generating the letters after January 1).
Adjust the Total amount limit of the “previous year” to $100.
Adjust the Total amount for the “current year” to a fixed amount. For example: < $100.
On the Categories tab, you can click Clear All and then check the Donation category. This will exclude all other payment categories such as Tuition.

Generate the letters

IMPORANT: before clicking OK, you must be on the "Dates and Amounts" tab, or an error may occur.
After specifying the criteria click OK. This will open the “MS Word Templates and Documents” window.
Click the Select Template button and select the Year End Letter template (that was saved to the CMS\Templates folder -. Or choose another template that you created.
Alternatively, you can use an existing Word Document or create a new document from scratch (not based on a template).
Click OK.

Executing the Merge

When Word opens, you'll be on the Mailings tab. (Word 2003 has a Mail Merge toolbar, instructions below are for 2007/2010 but the same principles apply in 2003).
If you want, you can click the Preview Results button to View the Data and then navigate between the records using the navigation buttons.
Click the Finish the Merge button and choose Print Document to print the letters. (Do not use the regular Print button. That will print just one page!)
Or, click Finish the Merge button and choose Edit Individual Documents to create a new document with all the letters and then click the regular Print button.
If you want to customize individual letters by adding a P.S. or some other personal note, you must merge to a new document.
In some cases, you may want to use Word’s “If” field (click Rules > If...Then...Else...) to display different text in the letter depending on the Amount contributed. For example, you can tell Word to put “Generous” if the amount is over $500, and put “Kind” if it’s less than that. Or, if Amount is “empty” (there were no contributions), put “we did not receive your contribution for this year yet” and if Amount is not empty, put “thank you for… would you like to increase your gift to equal or exceed last year…”

General: Customizing the Templates

If you double-click a template file, it does NOT open the file; rather, a new document is created with the same design as the template. To open the Template for modification, right-click the file and choose Open.
Make sure that whatever changes are made to the template, the fields remain intact.
You can insert your letter head and any logos as needed.
Fields cannot be put into a Text Box. Use Tables instead.

Custom Invoices and Statements

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:35:02 GMT

You can personalize your invoices as well as your statements. This is only compatible with Batch Invoices and Statements under the Tasks > Invoices/Statements (not the individual invoices).

Your customized statements and invoices "live" in a separate Access database. That being the case, making these customizations require you to have a full version of MS Access (not Access Runtime) and the basic knowledge of Access Report design. Customization in this area is not included in any support plan and is available for additional fees. Please contact tech support if you're interested.

The location of this Access Database is in the C:\Chabad Management System folder. The name of the file is called CustomReports6.04 (or a different number depending on the version). Open the database and make customizations as needed. If you're afraid of "messing things up," make a copy of this file before making any changes.

You can move this file to any location on your computer (or network, in a multi-user environment). In any case, you must "tell" CMS where this file is by clicking on Program Setup > Options > Invoices tab and click the Open button to the right of the "Custom Reports" field.

When you generate batch Invoices or Statements (Tasks > Invoices & Statements), you have an option to use Output to "Custom". Choosing this option for either Invoices or Statements will allow you to select your custom designed Statement or Invoice (you can design more than one). When you click OK, the Custom Reports database will open and you can print you invoices/statements from there.

Statements via Word

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:57:35 GMT

You can now generate statement with a Word Merge.
Click Tasks > Invoices & Statements

Choose Word Merge from the Output Drop-down, and then under 'Job', select Statements (beta).

You can choose other options from the other tabs, as needed.
Click OK.

In the following screen, choose your predefined Word Template for statements.
A sample template (statements.dot) is located in the C:\Chabad Management System\Sample Templates folder. You can copy this file to your Documents\CMS\Templates folder and make changes to it as needed, or create your own Template and insert the fields as they are in the sample.

Using this feature, you have full control of the look and feel of your statement. In fact, you can make it look like a letter, with a small stub at the bottom of outstanding bills.

Here is what the sample looks like:

The HisEmail and HerEmail fields are included in the statement merge allowing you to merge your statements into an email message.