End of Year Tax Letters SofterWare, Inc. Version 7.0
Table of Contents Table of Contents Introduction...3 Setting up the Year to Date (YTD) Calculation...4...6 Printing the Year-To-Date Payment Summary Report...6 Printing or Emailing Invoices Listing all Account Transactions for the Year...8 Printing or Emailing Invoices with a YTD Payment Field...8 Printing or Emailing Insta-Merge Letters with YTD Payment Info...8 Version 7.0 Page 2
Introduction Introduction Many centers send parents a letter during the month of January that shows all of their payments from the previous tax year. While not always required by the I.R.S., such a letter is a convenience to the parents during tax preparation time for tracing approved child care expenses. To help with this, has a number of ways of printing or emailing letters, invoices or reports with the total payments from the previous tax year. The process is as follows: 1. Set up the Accumulate YTD Payments feature in Office Administration. This allows to calculate a running total of all payments in the year for each parent. 2. Communicate the YTD payment info to parents in one of the following ways: Print out the Year-To-Date Payment Summary report and send it to parents. This report supplies a detailed list of payments. Print or email an invoice listing all account transactions for the year. Add the YTD Payment field to your invoices with our optional Custom Report Writer module and print or email an invoice listing the YTD Payment total. Print or email a personalized Insta-Merge letter that includes the YTD Payment field. Version 7.0 Page 3
Setting up the Year to Date (YTD) Calculation Setting up the Year to Date (YTD) Calculation The Accumulate YTD Payments screen allows you to calculate the sum total of all Year-to- Date payments and store that total in a field in the database. This total is displayed and updated automatically on the Ledger tab. To accumulate YTD payments 1. Open Office Administration, Chapter 4 (Accounts Receivable Setup), and select Accumulate YTD Payments. The Accumulate YTD Payments dialog box appears. 2. Select the cabinet you want to set up YTD payments for, and click the Select button. The Accumulate YTD Payments screen appears. 3. In the Include Ledger Entries section, enter a From Date and To Date to define the range of transactions for the appropriate year (for example, 1/1/2010 and 12/31/2010). 4. In the Include Categories section, select the Show Payment Categories Only check box to see only the payment categories in your system. If you don t select this check box, you ll see all of your A/R categories. 5. Select the categories you want to include in the YTD Payments total. Transactions within these categories will be included in the YTD Payments total. Note: Not all payments are necessarily IRS-approved child care deductions. Payments for things like clothing, books and overdraft fees may need to be excluded. Version 7.0 Page 4
Setting up the Year to Date (YTD) Calculation 6. Click on OK to save your changes and close the present dialog box. Click on Cancel to close the dialog box and return to the previous screen WITHOUT saving any changes. When you click on the OK button, the YTD Payments total will be updated to reflect these settings. This might take some time to complete for all ledgers in the cabinet. Version 7.0 Page 5
Once you have set up the Accumulate YTD Payments feature, so that is calculating the year-to-date total payments for each parent, you need to send that information to the parents in one of the following ways: Printing the Year To Date Payment Summary Report Printing or emailing invoices containing the YTD Payment field. Printing or emailing Insta-Merge letters containing YTD Payment information Printing the Year-To-Date Payment Summary Report The Year-To-Date Payment Summary report provides parents or other payers a listing of all their charges, credits and payments for the year or another time range you specify. Predefined options allow you to break down the totals by child if you wish. You can also print a message to include on each family s summary. To print the Year to Date Payment Summary report 1. From the A/R menu, select A/R Reports. 2. In the Report Library, select the Cabinet you want to draw data from. 3. Select the Year-To-Date Payment Summary Report from the Report List. 4. Click the Print button. The Report Options screen appears: Version 7.0 Page 6
5. Under Include Ledgers, select the ledgers you want to include in the report. 6. Under Ledgers, you can select All to print records from all accounts, or select One to print records from only one account. Select the account from the list below. 7. Under Transaction Dates, enter a Start and End date for the transactions you want to include in the report. 8. Under Report Layout, select one of the following options: Detail: Prints out a record of each payment transaction, along with a total for the specified time period. Summary: prints out only the total for each family over the specified time period. 9. If desired, you can enter a Message to Print in the field provided. This message will appear for every family in the report. 10. If you do not want to send reports to every family in your system, you will need to set up a Selection that selects only those families you want to send the report to, and select that Selection in the standard options for the report. See Setting Standard Report Options in the User Manual for more information. 11. To print the report: a. Make sure that in the standard options for the report, Send To is set to Printer. b. Click the Print button. Version 7.0 Page 7
c. Select the printer you want to send the report to and click the OK button. You will be returned to the Print Options screen. d. Click the Done button to return to the Report Library screen. If you changed the settings for the report, you will be prompted to save the report along with its settings under a new name. Note: The Year-To-Date Payment Summary Repo rt cannot be emailed out to families from within at present. You can print each family s report to a PDF file, however. This would allow you to send the family an email message through your regular email program, and include the PDF as an attachment. Printing or Emailing Invoices Listing all Account Transactions for the Year You can generate an invoice that lists all account transactions for a given year by selecting the 1/1/YYYY to 12/31/YYYY date range in the Invoice report options. For details on printing or emailing invoices, see Sending Out Invoices in the Using the Accounts Receivable Module chapter of the User Manual. Printing or Emailing Invoices with a YTD Payment Field It is possible to send out customized invoices that contain the YTD Payment field. This requires you to first set up a customized invoice, then edit it with the Custom Report Designer to add the YTD Payment field, and finally send out the resulting invoice to parents and other payers. For details on setting up a customized invoice, see Printing Customized Invoices in the Using the Accounts Receivable Module chapter of the EZ- CARE2 User Manual. For details on how to edit the invoice report to add the YTD Payment field, see the Editing Reports with the Custom Report Designer section of the Custom Report Writer Guide. For details on printing or emailing invoices, see Sending Out Invoices in the Using the Accounts Receivable Module chapter of the User Manual. Printing or Emailing Insta-Merge Letters with YTD Payment Info Insta-Merge allows you to generate a mail merge document from any record using Microsoft Word. You can use this feature to send out letters and emails that contain the YTD Payment information that is calculated by. To do this, you must carry out the following steps: Version 7.0 Page 8
1. Create a Merge Template for Insta-Merge that contains the YTD Payment information. 2. Edit your letter in Microsoft Word, making sure that you include the YTD Payments field. 3. Print or email the letter for all of your parents and payers using the Select-A- Merge feature. For details on these steps, see Insta-Merge Module in the Optional Modules chapter of the User Manual. Version 7.0 Page 9