how To Set Up Your Network e-Banking Facility

To use the e-Banking component in Sage Line 50 across a network, so that your bank transactions are saved on the server, you must run the e-Banking setup program after you have installed Sage Line 50. If you do run the setup program, the files will be stored on your client PC. Note: You should not begin to enter transactions using the E Payments or E Reconcile option before you set up the network e-Banking facility. 1. From within Windows Explorer, locate the Sage Line 50 directory. For example, if you choose the Express Install option when installing Sage Line 50 the directory is c:\Program Files\Line50. Within this directory is a sub-directory called e-Banking Within the e-Banking sub-directory, locate the setup.exe file. 2. Double-click on the setup.exe file. The Sage Ebanking Setup procedure begins. 3. Follow the on-screen instructions, until you get to the ‘Choosing a program folder for Bank Specific Files’ window. The window displays the location where your e-Banking files will be stored. 4. To find the location of your e-Banking files on the server, click Browse. The Choose Folder window appears. 5. Choose the correct server folder and click OK. The Destination Folder shows the new folder you chose to store your e-banking files. 6. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the Network e-Banking installation. To Configure your Electronic Banking Facility 1. From the Sage Line 50 toolbar, click Bank. 2. Select a bank account from the list and click Record. 3. From the Bank Record window, click the Bank Details tab. From the Type drop-down list, select the on-line bank service that you use. 4. Click Configure. The Sage e-Banking Configuration window for the selected bank type appears. The information required to configure the electronic banking facilities depend on the bank type you have selected from the drop-down list. 5. Enter the relevant information: Note: The following options may be inaccessible depending on the banking software and whether the Override common directory checkbox is selected. Common Directory, Statement Reconciliation Service, and Payment File Options. 6. Click OK to accept the e banking configuration details. The E Reconcile Option If you have bank software that is compatible with Sage Line 50 installed on your PC, you can use Sage Line 50’s E Reconcile option. Sage Line 50 connects with your bank’s on-line banking program to enable you to view your on-line statement and reconcile these transactions, with those in your Sage Line 50 program. Note: To enable the E Reconcile feature you must: 1. Select the Enable E Banking checkbox on the Company Preferences tab. 2. Prepare your Bank records to allow for on-line reconciliation. For more information see To Add Bank Details to Your Bank Account Record. 3. Import the file from your bank software. For more information see Importing Bank Transactions. There are two ways of reconciling your on-line bank statement against your Sage Line 50 statement: using the ‘automatic’ options or by reconciling manually. We recommend that you use both, using the ‘ automatic’ options to match the bulk of the transactions, before using the manual method to match any outstanding transactions. Use the following steps to make sure that all of your transactions are correctly reconciled. 1. Import your bank statement. 2. Use the Match Full option to match any transactions where the amount and reference are the same, and then use the Confirm option to verify the matches. 3. Use the Match Amounts option to match any transactions where the amounts are the same, and then use the Confirm option to verify the matches. 4. Use the Match Refs option to match any transactions with the same reference, and then use the Confirm option to confirm the matches. 5. Match all of the outstanding transactions manually, and then use the Confirm option to verify the matches. 6. Reconcile. As you use the E reconcile option, the transactions are highlighted as follows: Yellow - selected transaction but not matched or confirmed. Blue- selected but not matched or confirmed (focus on the transaction). Green - matched but not confirmed. Grey - matched and confirmed. When performing an automatic match, if there is more than one possible candidate, the Duplicate Transactions window appears, allowing you to select the correct transaction. For more information about the ‘Automatic’ buttons, and to find out how to automatically reconcile your transactions, refer to the procedure, To Automatically Reconcile your Bank Statement using the E Reconcile Option. Using the manual reconciliation method you can individually match transactions in your Sage Line 50 program transactions list with the transactions in the actual bank account list. By using the manual reconciliation method, you can also reconcile one transaction in one list against many transactions in the other. To see how to manually reconcile your transactions see To Manually Reconcile your Bank Statement using the E Reconcile Option. To Automatically Reconcile your Bank Statement using the E Reconcile Option 1. From the Sage Line 50 toolbar, click Bank. The Bank Accounts window appears. 2. Select a bank account from the list and click E Reconcile. The Amend Bank Statement Details Window appears. 3. Enter the Statement End Date and Statement End Balance details in the relevant boxes, then click OK. The Reconciliation window for the selected bank account appears. The window shows the following information: (Bank Transactions/Sage Transactions) To No (Tran No.), Ref, Type, Date, Details, Payments, Receipts, Match With, Conf? and Rec Amount. The following values are also displayed: Opening Balance, Book Balance at Date, Difference, Uncleared Items, Reconciled Balance and Statement End Balance. 4. Select one of the three ‘Automatic’ buttons: Match Full, Match Amounts or Match Refs. If there are no matching transactions, a message box appears. You will not be able to reconcile your Sage Line 50 and bank transactions using the ‘Automatic’ reconciliation facility. Choose OK to go back to the Reconciliation window. Note: If there is more than one matching transaction the Duplicate Transactions window appears. Select the transaction that you want to match and choose the Confirm button. The window closes and the two selected transactions will be confirmed. If you do not want to confirm the matching transaction but want to carry on with the automatic matching process, click Next. To close the window without matching any transactions, click Cancel. Matching transactions will be highlighted in green. The ‘Matched With’ column displays the number of the transaction that has been confirmed as a match. The values in the grey boxes will also update to display the values if you choose to confirm this reconciliation. 5. To verify the matched transactions, click Confirm. The matched transactions are removed from the list. You can view your confirmed transactions by selecting View from the option bar and then choosing Confirmed. Only your confirmed transactions will appear, highlighted in grey. Alternatively, you can view every transaction by selecting the View All option. 6. If you want to reconcile the confirmed transactions, click Reconcile. If you do not want to reconcile the confirmed transactions, click Discard to exit from the window without saving any of the matched transactions. A confirmation message appears. 7. Click Yes to reconcile the matched transactions. Click No to stop the reconciliation process and return to the Reconciliation window. The matched transactions are marked as reconciled in the Bank module and will no longer appear in the list of Sage or bank transactions. If you have accidentally reconciled a transaction in the bank list, it is possible to reverse the reconciliation process so the transaction appears in your bank list by using the Amend Bank Transactions option. For more information see Amending Bank Transactions. To Configure your Electronic Banking Facility 1. From the Sage Line 50 toolbar, click Bank. 2. Select a bank account from the list and click Record. 3. From the Bank Record window, click the Bank Details tab. From the Type drop-down list, select the on-line bank service that you use. 4. Click Configure. The Sage e-Banking Configuration window for the selected bank type appears. The information required to configure the electronic banking facilities depend on the bank type you have selected from the drop-down list. 5. Enter the relevant information: Note: The following options may be inaccessible depending on the banking software and whether the Override common directory checkbox is selected. Common Directory, Statement Reconciliation Service, and Payment File Options. 6. Click OK to accept the e banking configuration details. To Make Bank Payments using the E Payments Option 1. From the Sage Line 50 toolbar, click Bank. The Bank Accounts window appears. 2. From the Bank Accounts list box, select the bank account you wish to use to pay your supplier, and then click E Payments. The Send Payment window appears, displaying all outstanding supplier payments for the selected bank account with a transaction reference of ‘BACS’. This also displays the name of the selected bank account. 3. If you want to restrict the transactions that appear to a certain date range, select the Date Range checkbox and enter the date range you require in the From and To boxes. 4. Select the transactions you want to send to your bank. 5. Click Send. The transfer of information between Sage Line 50 and your bank account will begin. A confirmation screen appears to show you the payments that are going to be made. For more details about the payments, choose the Show Details button. 6. Choose the OK button to confirm the payments to be made. The information will be transferred from Sage Line 50 to a file, ready for your bank software to use. To Set Up the E Reconciliation Options You can use the Options window to specify how you want the match facility in the E Reconcile routine to work. 1. From the Bank window click E Reconcile. 2. From the menubar, click Tools 3. From the drop-down menu, select Options. The Options window appears. 4. Select the following options: Match each Bank transaction to transactions in the Sage list or, Match each Sage transaction to transactions in the Bank list and Automatically confirm Manual Matches. 5. Click OK. The selected options are applied to the E Reconcile option. IMPORTING E-BANKING TRANSACTIONS Before you can begin to reconcile your bank transactions, you must import your bank data. The software supplied by your bank will save your bank information into a file on your PC. You must import this file, so that you can use the E Reconcile option. Note: Your banking files are not backed up as part of the Sage Line 50 backup routine. 1. From the Reconciliation window, select File from the menubar. The File drop-down menu appears. 2. Click Import Bank Transactions. The Open window appears for the bank software that was selected in the Configure option from the Bank Details tab for the selected bank record. The window displays two panels. The left-hand panel displays the files on your PC (or on your network if applicable). The right-hand panel displays any bank statement files that are found in the selected folders in the left-hand panel. 3. In the left-hand panel, find the folder where your bank software file is saved. 4. Select the file type you want to view from the Check Type of Files drop-down list. You can select either CSV files or ‘All Files’. Note: Not all bank software saves files in a CSV format. Selecting All Files will select any bank statement files from your bank software, that is not in a CSV format. When the correct folder is opened in the left-hand panel, the right hand panel is updated with the following information: Filename, Updated and Details. 5. Select the file you want to import from the list. 6. To import the selected file information, click Open. To exit the window without importing any file information, click Close. The bank information is imported into the E Reconcile option so that you can reconcile your transactions, and the window closes.