This method allows you to mirror the details that you capture in Uplifter within your accounting program. This method requires either a significant amount of work manually or third-party tools that allow you to keep these elements synchronized. This method allows you to have increased visibility of your financials within your accounting package. You can simplify this method to either record all revenues under a single customer (like perhaps an Uplifter web customer and just store invoice numbers) or all revenues under three or four basic subaccounts (registrations, products, subscriptions and optionally invoice level discounts).
Before you begin with this method, you will need to ensure that:
- You are clear if you want to record customer (or member) details in your accounting package. If so, you may need to have a separate process that allows you to create customers in your accounting program. If not, be sure that you have created a separate “Uplifter Customer” that all invoices will be imported into.
- You have decided if you want to create separate products for sale within your accounting package to track your revenues and to what details / degree these products are mirrored between Uplifter and your Accounting package.
- You are able to have customer accounts that can have receivables if you are taking installment payments.
- Your tax accounts are properly setup in your accounting program.
- If you are using third-party software to import or synchronize your entries, investigate how the software handles updates to existing invoice records
Using this method will also require discipline and communication across your team that has access to your data what accounting periods you want to adhere to. After a certain period has elapsed, you will want to enforce that certain elements are not updated in Uplifter that may affect your revenue reporting. For other tips, check our article Uplifter Accounting Best Practices. With this method, you will record all of your payments into Uplifter (ie, when you receive offline payments, mark them as “Paid” in Uplifter) but use your accounting software to reconcile your bank accounts.
STEP 1: Record Your Sales Invoices & Receivables
On a regular basis, pull a report either summarized by invoice (Invoices – Summary or Invoices - Detailed) or a detailed line item report (Revenue Report – Details by Invoice Line Item). The most accurate detailed revenue report will be determined by filtering date ranges for “Invoice Line Item Created After” and “Invoice Line Item Created Before”. Note that if you are pulling one of the Invoice reports, it will return back the full details of the invoice even if only some of the invoice was edited or added to - keep this in mind that you don't re-record data into your accounting program if some of the details of an old invoice have already been captured. If you are using a third party tool to import these invoices with the detailed revenue report, you can use invoice number to determine how to group and import these values. The full amounts of these invoices should be posted as a receivable to be paid later and any taxes should be posted to the according tax account.
STEP 2: Record Any Payments Processed Against These Invoices
On a regular basis, pull a Payments report. Use date ranges for Payment Processing Time. See How to Reconcile Payments Against a Bank Deposit for details on how to pull these payment reports. Record these payments against the invoices accordingly or use a third-party tool to import these payments based on invoice number. You can also use the Invoices - Detailed report to see payments in context of the invoice details.
Tips & Pointers for this method
- Always ensure that all your invoices balance
- Stay on top of recording your payments in Uplifter
- Once you have recorded an invoice in your accounting package, be sure that any updates to the invoice line items on the invoices are also adjusted accordingly in your accounting program
- You can use reports like your Financial - Aged Receivables report to see if your receivables account in your accounting package balances against the amounts you see outstanding in Uplifter
- You can use the periodic revenue summary reports grouped by the same methods in which you are capturing your revenues in your accounting package from the very beginning of your fiscal year to see if the balances match and make adjusting entries as required