Introduction

Syrinx has two related features to assist in managing non-account customer payments.  Firstly, you can set up Cash Tills, so that an opening cash till balance can be set, and the system can inform on how much cash should be in the till at the end of the day.  Secondly, non-account payments can only be transferred to certain accounting systems (such as Sage 50 and Sage 200) so that the invoices will be flagged in the accounting system as paid as appropriate, and the accounting system will know how much money should be in the till at the point of the last reconciliation.  The Cash Tills feature may be used on its own, but if the non-account payments transfer feature is used then the Cash Tills feature must be used.

**If you use “VAT Cash Accounting” as your accounting method, you should not use this feature as you will not be able to automatically generate your VAT return in your accounts package.  The posting of payments should only be enabled if you use “Standard Accounting” as your accounting method.

Cash Till Configuration.

To use the Cash Tills feature, you must use the General/Cash Tills menu option in the Syrinx Configuration program to enter names for the cash till(s):

The typical scenario is a single till on the hire desk, so a sensible name would be ‘Hire Desk Till’.

When you then start the Syrinx program on each PC, it will request selection of the till that is associated with that PC:

Setting the opening Till Balance.

After the till name(s) have been entered, and BEFORE you start entering the transactions, you must set the opening balance on each till.  To do this, use the Accounts / Reconcile Till menu option:

The system will recognize the fact that there are no known balances for the till, and prompt for the opening balance, as shown above.  You simply enter the opening balance in the Transfer Money’ box and press Confirm.

Adding Payments to Hire Contracts / Advice Notes.

The method of adding payments to contracts/advice notes is unchanged; the system will automatically assign each cash transaction to the appropriate till according to which PC was used to enter the transaction.

End of Day Reconciliation.

The suggested mode of operation is that at the end of each day’s trading, the cash contents of the till should be added up, and then reconciled against the system, by using the ‘Cash Till Reconciliation’ option on the Syrinx Accounts menu:

The amount of cash in the till should match the ‘Carry Forward’ figure.  If the figures match up, and if no cash is to be removed from the till prior to the next morning’s trading, then you can simply press the ‘Confirm’ button to indicate that the ‘Carry Forward’ figure is what will be in the till at the start of the next trading period.  If the amount in the till does not match up, then the ‘Report’ button may be used to list the individual transactions:

…and this can, for example, be compared with the print-out from the till to identify any discrepancies.

If there is a problem with reconciliation that is caused by payments put against the wrong type (Cash/Card/Cheque) then these may be fixed using the Cash tab on the Query Hire Contract / Advice Note / Service Job screens.  The Source Doc column in the above report contains the number of the associated contract/note, with a single letter prefix indicating the type of document.

If there is any correction required – for example if there is some money missing from the till - then this can be entered in the ‘Post Correction’ box, and a reason must be entered.   If money is being removed from the till (e.g. to be paid into the bank), then this can be entered in the ‘Transfer Money’ box.

Note that if non-account payments are being transferred to the accounting system, then any correction amount entered will be posted as a bank payment/receipt, but any ‘Transfer Money’ amount will not be posted.  For the latter, it is the responsibility of your accounts department to enter an appropriate bank transfer at the time that the money is paid into the bank.

When the ‘Confirm’ button is pressed, the system saves the new opening balance.

Reconciliation Report.

The ‘Cash Till Reconciliation’ screen has a ‘Previous Reconciliations’ tab that can be used to reprint the latest reconciliation report:

It is recommended that your accounts department run this report each morning for the previous evening’s reconciliation.

The ‘Req Post?’ tickbox on the report indicates that the payment is yet to be posted to the accounts.  If the payment has been posted, then the Accounts Transfer column notes which transfer is was posted in, and the Amount Posted indicates the amount that was posted.  

The tickbox on the right highlights any payments where the amount posted was not the same as the total payment amount.  There is one scenario where this is expected and normal:  if there is more than one cash payment against the same contract/advice note on the same day, then these are combined as a single payment during the posting, e.g:

Here, a £50 deposit was left but the hire was only £11.75, and both the deposit and refund were cash transactions.  The ‘Total’ column shows the individual transactions, the ‘Amount Posted’ column notes the actual posting value, and the tick on the right is highlighting the fact that the transaction amount is different from the posted amount.  Combining the transactions in this way avoids unnecessary postings that are required for refund transactions.

Posting Adjustments/Transfers during the day.

If money is taken from the till (or added) during the day (i.e. prior to the end of day reconciliation) then this may be noted using the Accounts / Enter Adjustments option:

Again, a ‘Post Correction’ amount entered will be posted as a bank payment/receipt, but any ‘Transfer Money’ amount will not be posted.  

Configuration of Payment Posting - Options.

There is a system option that needs to be set to enable the posting of payments to the accounting system, plus a further 2 options to set the nominal codes to use to post till corrections – one for money lost from till, and another for money added to the till.  Advice should be taken from your accountant on which nominal codes to use.  For Sage 50 Accounts, it is common to use a nominal code in the overheads section of the chart of accounts – e.g. 8500 – Till Discrepancies.  These options can only be set using a patch provided by Point of Rental.

Configuration of Payment Posting – One Single Cash Customer record in the accounting system

There must be a single customer record in the accounting system to which all non-account customer transactions will be posted. If your existing setup has separate customer records for the payment types (cash, cheque, card), then a new customer record should be created, and then the Depots screen should be used to configure this new cash account number in Syrinx.  You should then move any unpaid invoices from the old customer record to the new customer record (within your accounting system) so that the final payments can be allocated to the correct invoice.

Configuration of Payment Posting – Bank Accounts.

A separate bank account record needs to be created in the accounting system for till cash payments, for credit card transactions, and (optionally) for cheque payments.  These are the bank accounts that will be credited with the invoice payments and debited with any refund payments.  These bank account numbers must then be entered on the ‘Amend Depot’ screen.   Note that you may elect to not transfer cheque payments over, by simply leaving the corresponding setting blank:

This may be appropriate if cheque deposits are often left in the till to be returned to the customer, or if company cheques are often issued to a customer by way of a refund.  In this case, it will be simpler for the corresponding invoices to be posted as unpaid, and then any banked cheques to be entered directly into the accounting system.

Posting payments

The transfer process is run in the normal way.  The payments are posted in 2 stages.  Firstly, as the sales invoices are posted, any payments for the invoice are posted and allocated to the invoice.  Secondly, after the invoices are posted it then posts any remaining (un-posted) payments via an additional ‘Post Non-Account Payments’ step (shown below).   This 2^nd step is typically posting any deposits as payments on account, plus any till corrections.

Note that this 2^nd step cannot be run on its own – i.e. you cannot take over payments without posting the invoices as well.  Note also that this step will always appear in the list of tasks.

Payments entered after till reconciliation are not posted during the transfer.  Also, non-batch Sales Invoices dated after the last reconciliation are not taken over to the accounts.  This means that after the transfer, the cash till bank account in Sage should match the cash till reconciliation report for the previous night’s reconciliation.  Your accounts department can then complete the reconciliation of the accounting system vs Syrinx by posting a bank transfer for any money taken from the till for banking.

Re-Posting in the event of restoring an old backup of your accounting system data

If you restore an old backup of your accounting system, and then repost the same set of transactions, it should be noted that the transfer is not able to check whether existing deposits, payments, etc have already been posted.  Hence care should be taken to ensure that the correct posting runs are marked for re-posting. 

Supplemental Information

A configuration checklist that can be used when preparing the system for implementation of this feature is available in the Cash Tills and Posting Non-Account Payments Deployment Checklist guide.

Examples of transactions in Sage 50 and Sage 200 when posting non-account payments are available in the Cash Tills and Posting Non-Account Payments Posting Examples guide.