Month End- Based on the Entire Month End Wizard

Month End Wizard

Right, all the checks are done, we are ready to go! Make sure you are not interrupted

Other users can carry on using Palace however Transactions will be unavailable and the other users will be locked out of this area. Every other part of Palace is still useable. 

• Click on Financial (Left Side Menu)
• Then click on Month end
• A box will pop up asking you to enter the Month End date. Normally you would leave it as the date it says.

 

• However, if you are closing off early enter the date that you require.
• Click Begin, the system will also check itself for any problems. Then it will start Month End.

Note: The order below is based on a full month end-setting in Palace, it may differ slightly from yours if you have removed steps or changed the order. 

Down the side of the Month End wizard, you will see each step and a green tick will appear as you successfully complete each step.

Review Balances

This screen shows you the owners that are Overdrawn or on Hold - If you have checked the report previously, there will not be any surprises here. If you do find an Owner on Hold who should not be, then click on the drop-down arrow next to Owner and select the new payment type. This will take them off hold.

 

 

There is a Generate Button at the bottom of the screen, which you can use to generate a Keep back report. You do not need to download any of the reports at this stage as all reports save in your Historic- Insights area after Month End. 

Click Next on the top right of the screen.

Pay Bonds

• Click on Process Bond

 

• The payment bond screen will appear (If this area is empty, then you do not have any Bonds to pay, closeout and click the 'Go To Month-End' button to be taken back to the wizard, where you can click NEXT to proceed to the next step
• Otherwise, check the bonds that are showing, and check them against the paperwork you have.

• If paying by cheque enter the Cheque number into the REF number area
• If paying direct (online) change the payment type to Direct
• If a bond is showing that you do not want to pay, simply untick the transaction
• Check the total and click Confirm
• Then click Process - Download the remittance slip as this goes with your cheque and the signed bond forms to the Bond Centre (Print 2 copies so that you have one for your records)
• 'Go To Month-End' button to be taken back to the wizard
• Click NEXT

Pay Suppliers 

• Click on Process Supplier
• A screen will appear, if you pay any suppliers by cheque, then enter the next available cheque number here
• Check the date
• Click Process
• A screen might appear showing you a list of owners and their properties with invoices. This shows you that the Owner has more invoices than he has money, Have a look at the screen and change it if needed. Then click Process

 

• You will have a screen of supplier payments showing. Click on the Print button (Next to the Export to Excel button and the top right of the screen) This is the Unprocessed Transaction Report and must be printed.
• Once printed - go back to transactions and click on Process.
• Click on Download Report - Your printed remittances will then be downloaded to your computer to be printed later. Once that is done Close the Download Report box and click on ONLINE FILE - You will see a list of creditor payments and the bank accounts showing on the screen - Click on the Print button (Top right of the screen) This is the Direct Credit Report - The total of this, must match the total of the Direct column on the Unprocessed Transaction Report.
• Once this is checked then click 'Generate' on the Online File screen – Name the file, Name it Supplier payments (Do not date it) with the extension your bank uses eg .CSV or .ABA on the end and click Download. You have now generated the file that you will upload to the Bank. (If you don't upload a file then you can skip this step)
• Click "Clear" to clear the online file
• Then click "Go To Month-End' button (top of the screen) to be taken back to the wizard
• Click NEXT to proceed to the next step

Reconciliation Report

• Click on Generate All
• If you want to print all of the reports, then click on generate, next to the report you want to print. As per above if you just click generate then these will save to your Insights and you will be able to print these at a later date. If you wish to save them to your Desktop then you will need to download these reports.

 

• The generate function will turn into a Download button
• Click on download, it will show the report and you can print it as normal or save it to PDF
• When finished - click on NEXT

Owner Statements

• Make sure you have the right Diary Group selected to attach your supplier invoices to your owner statements.
• Note: If you are using External File to link your invoices then you must select a group to link them to in the diary and that must be the same as the diary group showing on this screen.
• If you use the Payment Expense transaction and attach invoices that way, then make sure you change no to yes, so those attachments are included in the statement run
  
  
• Click on Collate: This will gather that data and sit them in the background for you to run after month-end is completed.
• Once it has generated the statements, it will say completed. You can now click on Next

Please Note: The actual function for printing and emailing the statements is now at the end of Month End.

User Statements

This step is only needed if you have commissions set up against a User.

You have the option of printing a full statement (Which will show each and every transaction) or printing just a summary. (You can change the setting by clicking on the drop-down box)

Once you have made your choice, you can click Generate
Once the Report has generated, the Download icon will come up, click on that to open and print the report.

Once the statements have printed click NEXT

Ledger Statements

This will print out a transaction report on each ledger. Select the ones you want (The management fees ledger is a very long report and you may not need it, most can be reprinted later if required)

 

Click on Generate at the bottom of the screen to get the Download button. From here you can save to your desktop to Print or can leave until a later date.

Once finished click NEXT

Owner Payments

• Click on Process Owners
• A pop-up screen might appear asking you to clear the online file - YOU ALWAYS SAY YES TO THIS
• A screen will appear, if you pay any Owners by Cheque, then enter the next available cheque number here

• Check the date
• Select the frequency - if you pay all of your owners out at the month-end, then you can leave it as All. Otherwise, if not all owners are being paid at Month End then this must be changed to "Month".
• Properties to "Net Off" to pay Owner balances - This is automatically ticked on depending on your strict audit settings. 
• Click Process  

NOTE: If you get a message "Unable to proceed", this means that Palace is unable to "net off" a negative property balance against other property balances because the property with a negative balance is linked to its own bank account. Palace cannot take money out of a bank account - only put it in. You will need to close out of the month-end procedure, edit the property and link it to another bank account. Restart the month-end procedure, step forward into the owner payments step, then try again. After the month-end has been completed, remember to reset the property to its original bank account.

• You will have a screen of Owners payments showing. Click on the Print button (Top right of the screen) This is the Unprocessed Transaction report and must be printed.
• Once printed - go back to transactions and click on Process.
• Once completed this will take you back to the month-end wizard

Month End: Owner Payments: After identifying a specific workflow that caused issues with bulk Owner Payments within month end, which saw specific Owners not being prompted to the User to be placed on hold (due to a phrase in the Owner name), we are now glad to report we have resolved this issue. Owner payments within month end should now process successfully as expected, with Owners who are needing to be placed on hold being identified correctly to the User.

 

 

• Click on ONLINE - You will see a list of Owner payments and the bank accounts showing on the screen - Click on the print button (Top right of the screen) This is the Direct Credit Report - The total of this, must match the total of the Direct column on the Unprocessed Transaction Report.

NOTE: If there are any entries on this screen that are showing unticked, this means that there is no bank account entered (or it may be entered but not linked to the property) you can right-click and modify the existing bank account, but if the bank details have not been entered or it is the link to the property that is missing then you will need to close out and go and relink the property. You can then re-generate the file. See below.

• Click Generate - It will bring up a download screen – type your file name e.g. ownerpayments.csv (Do not date it and remember to put .csv at the end) click Download. You have now generated the CSV file that you will upload to the Bank. (If you don't upload a file then you can skip this step)

 

• Click "Clear" to clear the online file
• Then click Close, and back to month end wizard
• Click NEXT

User Payments

This step is only necessary if you pay commission based Property Managers

• Click on Process (or if you are skipping this step click on NEXT)
• In the pop-up screen - enter in a cheque number if needed. Click OK

 

• The list of agent payments will appear on the screen
• Click on the print button (Top right-hand side) and print the report
• Then click Process
• The money has to be transferred out of your Trust to your Trading Account so that tax can be applied.
• Then click 'Go To Month-End' button (top of the screen) to be taken back to the wizard
• Click NEXT to proceed to the next step

Ledger Payments (Company Income)

• Click on Process Ledger
• If you pay the commissions by Cheque then enter the cheque number here otherwise click on OK.
• The list of ledger payments will appear on the screen, you can unselect any ledger payments you do not want to pay.

 

• Click on the print button at the top right-hand side of the screen to print out the Unprocessed Transaction report
• Click on Process
• If you say yes to the print box, it will print one page showing each of the individual payments.
• Click on Online File - The ledger payments will be showing there (If they don't show here, it means you have not entered your Trading Account details into the Trading Account area under Ledgers)
• Click on Generate - This will generate your file, Name with the file extension on the end eg .csv
• Click Download
• Click go to month end on the top toolbar 
• Then click 'Go To Month-End' button (top of the screen) to be taken back to the wizard
• Click NEXT to proceed to the next step
•  

Final Trust Reports

Remember you should have already reconciled before starting your month-end, you are only accessing this area now to print the reports

• Click on Bank Reconciliation - This will take you through to the Reconciliation Screen - You may need to enter in a closing bank account balance.

 

 

• Enter in the closing bank balance and make sure you still reconcile
• Click on Reports – Top right-hand side
• Click on Trust Account Reconciliation - Print (You may need to print 2 copies)
• Click on Daily Reconciliation and Generate this also.

Note: If you are in Australia, you can change the wording of the Trust Reconciliation report to suit your specific Tenancy Act. Click on Print. (You may need to print 2 copies). All users should keep this report with the month-end reports

• Print any other report that you require
• Cancel out when ready and close out of Reconciliation

Close Month

This is the step that will actually close off the month and roll into the new one. (Double-check the date of the month you are closing to make sure it is the correct one),

• Click on the reports that you want to download (these are also available from Insights - Historic reports.
  
• Click on Process, it will say generating and then say completed
  Note: If you have any transactions presented in the wrong month or you have not generated owner statements you will get a message and it will not let you roll the month.
• Click NEXT

Audit Reports

Print the Audit Reports

Note: These are very big reports and will print each and every transaction that was made during the month. These reports are available any time under Insights- Historic Reports with your other Month End reports so only print them if your auditor requires them. 

Final Screen

 

 

Month End is complete.

You will see a box with a date in it, this is preset to the next end of the month. The ONLY time you would change this is if, for some reason, you are going to do month-end early, For example, in December you may do month-end on the 22^nd. So you would receipt up to the 21^st and your month-end date close off would be the 21^st Dec.

Time to run your Owner Statements:

Click on Owner Statement Report and it will take you to the Owner Reports area - Owner Statements. 

OR you can run them any time under Owner Reports

Owner Statement Run.

 

 Check that the correct Month End is showing or click the drop-down box and pick up the correct month

 Check that "Email Owners" is selected to YES if you wish to email your owners out. 

If you wish to email out Invoices with your statements ensure the "Include Invoice Documents" toggle is also set to YES. 

You can change your Global Message at this stage if you wish. This will put a message on every owner's statement. 

If you wish to change the Email Template you can also do so from this screen. This is where you can add a message to the Body of the Email they receive that has the Statement attached.

When happy click on Generate. You will get a pop up telling you that you will be notified once the process has been completed.

The Emails are now being sent behind the scenes and you will receive an Email telling you this has been completed.

Once you receive this email, if you want to print any statements please go to Insights, then History and they will be sitting in there as a bulk PDF for you to print. The name of the file will be OwnerStatements_All.pdf - as per the below screenshot. This includes the Statements for the Owners that have Paper or Email and Paper set as their media type

During this time you can carry on as normal

 

Issue fixed 10/02/2023

Reports: User Statements: For our Australian clients attempting to generate User Statements within month end, good news - we have fixed the issue that saw User statement generation producing an error. These will now generate as expected for you, within month end.