Financing Receivables: Exporting to Business Manager (R)
We have had a couple of inquiries about exporting data to Business Manager. Private Business, Inc. (www.privatebusiness.com) facilitates relationships between community banks and small businesses with their online services and Business Manager product.
In reviewing their specifications for importing data, we determined that all the required information is available (or can be tracked) in Big Business and exported to Business Manager. This Solution provides several recommendations for tracking and exporting the required information, using the Business Manager specifications dated January 1999. These recommendations should also prove valuable to anyone wishing to export Receivables information and/or finance Receivables.
Please note the following use of Capital Letters:
Big Business field and tool names are capitalized, e.g. Field Name
Business Manager fields are written as one word with a Cap in the middle, e.g. fieldName
Generic words are without caps, e.g. "checking" refers to the actual account; "Checking" refers to a BB account of Type, "Checking." (3494)
The specification sent to us by Private Business (www.privatebusiness.com) for their Business Manager product did not include recent improvements (such as importing tab-delimited text). Additionally, it appears their system incorporates powerful filtering capability, and the setting of defaults (see transactionType below).
We came up with several recommendations:
1) Big Business exports Tab-Delimited text, which supports commas within fields. If Comma Separated Value (CSV) format is required, open the export file in an intelligent spreadsheet (such as Excel) and Save As... CSV. Excel will AutoFormat the tab-delimited file (making uniform columns and rows) and insert quotation marks as needed to preserve commas within fields.
2) All Customer Import fields are available and exportable. Additionally
there are twelve Custom Fields in BB, which may be used. If, for
example, you are using "Customer Type" for your own purposes,
Custom 1 could be used to track your Retail/Commercial.
3) BB contains a Customer Prefs setting for Unique Customer Codes (should be turned on; see item 5, below).
4) How to map First Name, Billing Name, Shipping Name from BB needs some consideration to:
a) ensure First Name is avail for Retail (if you extend credit to individuals)
b) Billing Name should be last name for Retail customers to map to your "customerName"
So, BB Customer Billing Name and Address would read:
Big Company (Billing Name) ->customerName
A/P Dept. (Billing Addr1) ->address1
123 Main St. (Billing Addr2) ->address2
or
Bond (Billing Name) ->customerName
James Bond (Billing Addr1) ->address1
123 Side St. (Billing Addr2) ->address2
5) Map Customer Listing to "customerCode" for the Customer Import to match the Customer Listing on the Invoice export. Invoices in BB list the Customer Listing, not the Customer Code. However, on the Customer Card (and in Cust. Prefs) you can set Customer Listing to display Customer Code (to support Unique Codes).
6) You may need a method to track "transactionType" (S,D,C,R,etc.), a Business Manager field which identifies Sales, Debit Memos, Credit Memos, etc. Assuming the default is set to "S" for Sale, you need only mark the others. Big Business Invoices can be all of the aforementioned (e.g. a Return is an Invoice with neg. qty's). Our suggestion would be to use the Private Comments field at the bottom of a BB Invoice. Private Comments is nonprinting and is searchable, but requires opening an input dialogue. If your import filters characters after the first, it may be possible to sneak this field in somewhere else (e.g. Shipping Methods could be S-Fed Ex, S-UPS, Return, etc. if it is certain all transactions will be Invoices--as opposed to Misc. Sales which don't have Line Items and lack fields like Shipping Method.
The Private Business representatives we spoke with were knowledgeable and needed only some sample exports from Big Business to create filters for the import files.
Once the mapping (and filters) are clarified (item 5 being most important), you just run your exports on a periodic basis using carefully considered search criteria. For example:
7) Customer QuickSearch: "Terms Not 'Cash'" (More Choices) "Terms Not 'Credit Card'" to find all Customers with Credit Terms. Last Invoice Date might be a useful criterion for subsequent Customer List updates. Business Manager filters duplicates.
8) Invoice QuickSearch: "Date Is On or After/ On or Before..." will find transactions in a specific date range (to ensure duplicates are not submitted. "Balance", "Paid Amt.", or "Terms" may be useful for eliminating Cash, etc. sales from the export.
The remaining considerations are how to handle the bookkeeping of financed receivables. Our recommendation is to create a Bank Card of Type "Loan," to represent a Liability to the lender (your bank). A typical scenario:
9) You submit $100 in Receivables. The bank deducts its fee (10% for this example) and deposits the difference in your checking account.
10) The bank reports a deposit of $90 to your checking account; you record a Transfer from the Loan account to your regular Checking. You also record a $10 Balance Adjustment, Misc. Check, or Make a Payment (with EFT checkbox checked) specifying "Finance Charges" as the offset.
11) When the bank reports a Customer payment of $100, you record a Receive Money and Deposit it to the Loan account.
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