Short of actually doing your bookkeeping, we provide unlimited help and support for implementation, training, accounting questions and system functionality.
Our monthly fees are designed to be break-even for development, support, and infrastructure costs. Our "bread & butter" is custom work.
In the first year, extensive implementation training and support are required to get you up and running smoothly. After that, the support needed is for infrequent activities like changes or additions to your business, or when you hire new staff. Because of this, we hope you stick around for years to come.
We hope you quickly see the benefits of a custom solution and continue to purchase our customization services for years to come.
Setup is found under the Admin dropdown navigation. Setup should be reviewed in detail in order to get the most out of Bean Cruncher.
Bean Cruncher comes pre-loaded with a default chart of accounts. The most commonly used accounts are included, however, you should review the accounts first.
Asset accounts use the number range 1000 to 1999 and are set up in order of liquidity. Subcategories such as Cash & Bank, Accounts Receivable, and Fixed Assets are used for reporting subtotals.
Liability accounts use the range 2000 to 2999 and are set up in order of due date. Subcategories such as Accounts Payable, Lines of Credit, and Long Term Debt are used for reporting subtotals.
Equity accounts use the range 3000 to 3999 in order of share level. There are no subcategories.
Revenue accounts use the range 4000 to 4999 and are set up in order of amount with the largest revenue source first. Subcategories such as Commissions, Product Sales, and Rental Income are used for reporting subtotals.
Expense accounts use the range 5000 to 6999 and are set up in alphabetical order. Subcategories such as Advertising & Marketing, Salaries & Wages, Vehicle Expenses, and Overhead are used for reporting subtotals.
Range 7000 to 9999 can also be used for Expenses.
Accounts can be extended to six digits if desired.
Companies represent the legal entities for which a complete trial balance is required for tax and financial reporting. All companies within one database will share the same chart of accounts, entities, and items. All companies must be related. If only one company is set up, users will not have to select it during data entry as it is automatically selected.
Locations are used to generate separate P&L's and analysis reports. Most commonly, locations represent physical offices, but can also include storage units, home offices, or any other places that you would like to produce financial reports for. Each database must have at least one location. If only one location is set up, users will not have to select it during data entry as it is automatically selected.
Entities represent any business, person, or organization that you receive money from, or pay money to.
Exporting and importing the accounting data from your old system to Bean Cruncher can be done if you wish to include multiple years of historical data. Or trail balances can simply be manually entered when ready. Entity info can also be entered manually.
Data conversion includes account mapping for trial balance importing, plus payables and receivables importing.
All data conversion support is included with your subscription.
Starting a new accounting system can often be a great opportunity to clean up your chart of accounts. Bean Cruncher helps you achieve this by allowing you to map your old accounts to your new accounts providing an importing guide and lookup for experienced users who need to know what to use going forward (some account numbers can be so ingrained in one's head that you'll have muscle memory for the keystrokes to enter it). In this case, you should use the same numbers.
Once your prior system trial balances are reconciled and closed. You will need to import (or manually enter) at least one open trial balance. However, for comparative reporting purposes, you can import as many prior months and/or years of trail balances that you like.
If you are going live on a month other than year-end or December 31st, you will need to import the months between your prior year-end and the go-live month end.
For testing purposes, you can load and delete the trial balances as many times as you like.
If you have large lists of customers or vendors in your current accounting system, you can export them, clean them up, then import them into Bean Cruncher.
Frequently accounting conversions occur at year end; however, you can convert at any month end if desired. If a date other than the year end is selected, simply import multiple trial balances from the prior year end to the most recent month end.
You will be actively working in both the old accounting software and Bean Cruncher until the month end procedures are complete.
Transactions dated PRIOR to go-live must continue to be recorded in the old system as normal.
Transactions dated AFTER go-live must be recorded in Bean Cruncher.
Once the accounts receivable and payables are complete for transactions prior to go-live. The aging reports can be printed. Each open invoice is then re-entered into Bean Cruncher. Both sales and expense invoices are entered using one detail row, no inventory items, no taxes, just the total invoice amount, using a suspense account. Once complete, a journal entry will be necessary to zero out each subledger account balance (usually 1200 and 2000) to the suspense account. Once the trail balances are loaded the subledger balances will be created. The aging report will highlight any outages.
For payments received or checks paid after go-live, you have two choices:
Once all transactions dated prior to go-live are recorded in the old system. The trial balance can be imported.
The old system must then be locked down to prevent further data entry. All reports should be printed, saved to PDF, and exported. Exports of the complete transaction history to excel or a csv file is necessary as it will often contain addition data that may not be included in the printed documents. Additionally, it can be searched.
Activities that are performed on an infrequent basis are best completed using an instruction manual. Adding a location or a company may only happen once every few years, therefore, in order to ensure setup is done correctly, it is recommended to use this manual when performing system maintenance.
The users set up in the accounting module are only the users who need to access an accounting module. Admin staff, bookkeepers, and executives are the primary users. Admin staff primarily manage daily accounts payable and/or receivable. The bookkeeper takes care of the general ledger and bank reconciliation. Executive staff will need to log in to review financial reports and dashboard alerts. Although admin staff can print reports for the exec's, logging in directly allows the executive to drill down on reports to quickly analyze their financials.
If a user no longer needs access, the user must be set inactive. Users cannot be deleted. It is not recommended to change a user name and password for a user taking over a position, as this will associate all historical activity with the new user.
Due to the privacy related to financial information, there are a number of security settings available. Users can be restricted to specific companies or vendors. They can be restricted to only the accounts payable or receivable modules and from viewing specific reports. Users can be prevented from adding or modifying vendors.
Locations are used to generate P&L and other transaction reports for management analysis. A location should represent a physical location such as an office or warehouse storage.
Companies represent legal entities. Only related companies should be added to the same database.
Accounting procedures are the steps that must be followed to ensure the resulting financial, tax, and management reports are as accurate as possible. Prior to releasing reports to stakeholders, the following procedures must be followed. Due to the natural delay in receiving information regarding revenue, expenses, bank and credit card statements, and other pertinent information; accounting reports will use a prior month-end date for which the procedures have been completed. This delay can be anywhere from 15 to 45 days. Therefore, it is important to complete these procedures in a timely manner.
Keeping up with the routine procedures will significantly reduce the time it takes to complete your month-end procedures.
Depending on the size of the office, routine procedures will often be performed daily. Recording transactions as they happen significantly improves accuracy and richer data as users can enter notes, take photos, etc. in real time while it's happening.
Entering invoices should be done as real-time as possible in order to get paid as quickly as possible. The sooner you send an invoice, the sooner you will get paid.
When you receive a payment on an invoice, you should apply it as soon as possible to the account. If you need to deposit the check to the bank prior to entering it in the system, you can.
Applying payment in a timely manner, will allow other users view the account balance as necessary.
Expenses should be entered as they are received. Even if you don't plan to pay it until a later date, it is best to keep the accounts payable up to date. If people run any real-time reports, it's best to have all the expenses in so it does not create any false expectations.
Checks can be printed and mailed, or a link can be emails allowing the vendor to print the check themselves. Any electronic payments should be recorded as they are made.
Positive pay files can also be generated and submitted to the bank.
Payroll transactions are recorded directly to the general ledger from your payroll system.
Month end procedures are generally performed by the bookkeeper or more senior admin staff.
Bank reconciliation can be performed more frequent basis than one per month. However, this procedure is often performed at month end.
The reconciliation process takes the actual bank statement and records the dates the transactions cleared the bank. As is common with a printed and mailed check, it takes time for the check to clear your account. By recording the date the check clears the bank allows for a reconciliation report to be generated for any date required - most commonly at month end.
Reviewing the accounts receivable and payable aging reports should be performed more frequently than month end, the reports should at least be reviewed at month end for completeness and accuracy. Ensuring all expenses and payments have been entered and applied.
If inventory balances are a material amount and fluctuate significantly, monthly inventory counts should be performed and reconciled back to the account's balance. All adjustments required should be entered into the GL monthly.
The trial balance is the primary report accountants rely on for complete company analysis. Each asset and liability account must be able to reconcile to an external third party document or schedule. The primary accounts that have its own reconciliation tool are the bank accounts (see above). However, technically every account should be reconciled. Inventory to a physical count, investments to account statements, loans to statements, etc. Every account must balance to something.
Once the trial balance is reconciled, the balance sheet, income statement (profit & loss), and cash flow reports should be reviewed by owners and executives.
The year-end procedures include all monthly procedures plus the amortization, tax, and interest review.
Amortization (aka depreciation) is the calculation of the amount of the annual expense to be recorded for the reduction in value of your assets. This amount is often only calculated annually at tax time.
Taxes are filed annually with the calculated amount entered once taxes are complete. The total tax from the prior year should be used as an estimate for monthly accruals to record a tax expense each month.
Interest paid on loans or interest earned on investments must be broken out separately on the financial statement. The interest amounts should be broken out on each payment made or received, however, the correct amount is not always known. As such, at year-end, the interest-bearing investments and loan balances should be matched to the account balances. Any difference should be booked to interest accounts.