KevMcCord

Multi Year Balances

Sometimes I just need to see how my General Ledger balances are flowing from one year to the next.  So I wrote a query to show me balances in each year over the entire time we have used the Shelby v5 General Ledger.

Nothing I had or Shelby had provided a look at multiple years.  This query works best as deployed to a pivot table.  Each row shows the beginning balance, current year activity, and ending balance for a single balance sheet account for a specific year.  The Pivot table can put multiple years on a single line side by side.

Among other things you can see how account names are changing from year to year, you can also check your ending balances against your opening balances very quickly.  Of course, being able to see all years is also helpful.  My issue today was with a new account midway through last year that had an opening balance inserted rather than added via Journal Entry.

 The query below is free for other Shelby v5 General Ledger users.

Download Multi-Year-Balance-Sheet

Emailed Payroll Vouchers

Thanks to Shelby Inc. we now have the ability to email our staff with an attachment containing their payroll direct deposit voucher.  This saves money (no paper stock to buy), and time (nothing to print, fold, stuff, distribute).

The whole process hinged on leaving one little bitty checkbox checked that for years we have left "unchecked" as part of our process.  That checkbox doesn't have the word "email" associated with it in any way so we were confused as to how to do emails until someone shared this secret that only customers who subscribe to a secret SSTips publication can know.   No, the publication isn't secret.  The secret is the fact that it contains VITAL information to take advantage of features our support should cover. Seriously, I'm grateful for the functionality, but couldn't we call the checkbox "Print or Email Plain Paper Vouchers"?

I am so glad Marci is willing to try new things in this area of our finance ministry.  The balance of this post is for ShelbyPayroll users....

The process is simple.  Just follow the prompts during the print checks process.  Along the way you are instructed as to how to send emails.  People get their voucher via email and they can open it with the last 4 digits of their social security number.

The only glitch we had so far today is the margins set to 0 all the way around and we need to fix that next time.

Only one of our Direct Deposit employees doesn't have an email on file. The workflow in ShelbyPayroll handles this well.  Our procedure does involve saving the plain paper vouchers to pdf twice.  Once to email then again to have a hard copy on file in case it is requested.

• Wish we had control over the saved message that is inserted into body of the email.  We can change it each time, but it would be nice to set it our way.
• Wish we had the ability to add an image to the plain paper vouchers.  I don't see a "modify voucher option".  Am I missing it?

My assistant needed confidence so we did a bunch of trail runs.  We could have (maybe should have) used a test Shelby database, but in stead we just manually selected a few employees to pay that reflected our different scenarios (no direct deposit, no email, email, bad email).  We then gave them each 1 hour of work and ran payroll all the way through clicking cancel at the very last moment so nothing "saved".  This is actually a very effective way to train someone on payroll (as long as you cancel!).

If you aren't emailing statements, I recommend it as a time saver.

Staff Changes Report

Each month I prepare a summary of significant events for the church leadership.  We're at a size now where there are 4 or 5 employee changes in any given month.  A change can include hiring, re-hiring, releasing an employee.  Since most of the changes happen in our part-time, support staff, I'm not always involved in the details.  I want our Church Council to know all that transpires in this area though since they will often know the folks personally.

This question alone wouldn't take long to research.  However, it is one of about 30 pieces of information I need monthly to create my summary.  So I want to get this answer quickly and acurately without wasting my time or my assistant's time.  As with many such things the solution is a single-click report.  The report is on my dashboard under "My Queries".

If you use ShelbyPAYROLL you can borrow my report by clicking the link below to use it for your church. 

Download staff_changes.txt

Note:  I'm not affiliated with Shelby Inc in any way and this report is not endorsed or supported by them.