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Advanced Fund
Management Solutions
June 2007
Hi Everyone,
One of the things municipalities do is tax their populations on real and personal property. The Property Billing module makes it very easy to accomplish this important task. Read an introduction to it in this issue.
Sometimes the same organization gets added multiple times. And, each copy may have accumulated history. Learn how to make it all right in this issue!
As always, if you have any questions regarding an Accufund® issue, please contact me at
(318) 253-8556, or email me at jgarv@afmss.com
Thanks,
Judy Garver
Property Billing
The Property Billing module is designed to assess companies and individuals with property taxes and other charges. This article introduces you to how to add a property owner, associate him or her with the appropriate “area” (usually expressed in geographical terms), and to generate taxes associated with the area in which the property resides.
Properties are easy to add to the “tax rolls”, as shown below:
A property number and owner are entered. Then, if the property is mortgaged, the mortgage holder is entered in the “Mortgage” field (the mortgage holder must be on the organization list). If the “Bill Mortgage” check box is checked, the tax bill will be sent to the mortgage holder. This property is Real property, and not personal property such as a vehicle.
On the General portion of the form, information describing the property is placed.
The Tax Years portion of the property has two tabs on it, Assessment Values and Tax Amounts. As seen below, one entry is made for each year being taxed. The Assessment Value shows the market and assessed values of the land and improvements upon it. The Tax Amounts tab, shown in the next image, shows that the property is in District 2, which has a specific tax item associated with it (FD Roxborough). The mill rate of 11/1000 for that item is multiplied times the new value of the property (of $104,000). When next year’s information is entered, the assessed value and mill rate could change, resulting in a different tax amount.
Any number of notes may be added to the property, as shown above.
Finally, multiple images of the property may be attached for appraisal or other purposes, as shown below:
The tax area to which the property belongs (District 2, in this case) determines which tax items apply to it. In the image below it can be seen that the tax item assigned to District 2 is FD Roxsborough, with a tax rate of 11 mils. Multiple tax areas can be created, as well as multiple tax items (each with its own tax rate).
To generate the taxes (and charges) due, proceed to Browse Property tax activity and then click on the new button. The last image shows the form that opens and lets you generate the taxes.
You may then print the tax documents, using the Reports/Form designer to create the statements, for delivery to the appropriate companies and individuals.
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Combining Organizations
When more than one person is working in AccuFund, it’s possible that the same organization can be added more than once (remember, an organization is an entity with whom you have a financial relationship, such as customers, vendors, employees, etc.). For example, someone working in accounts payable may add an organization and the receivables clerk could also add the same organization. The names may be entered with slightly different spelling, but they are the same organization. Now, you have two organizations accumulating history. You would really like to have one organization accumulating all of the history. AccuFund has a way of solving this problem—it’s called Combining Organizations. We’ll demonstrate how to do it in this article.
We will assume (in the AFSamples database) that Public Service of Colorado and Colorado Department of Revenue are really one in the same organization and it has been added twice. Both versions of the organization have accumulated history. We’ll assume that Public Service of Colorado is the version we wish to keep. That means the history of the Department of Revenue will be added to Public Service, and we will delete the Department of Revenue from the list of organizations. After the combination is completed, there will be no evidence that the Department of Revenue ever existed.
Note: to accomplish this task you must have administrator rights.
Before we do the combination, however, let’s look at the history of (Accounts Payable) Bills for each organization. There is other history, but the Bills will be representative. The Bills portion of each organization is shown below:
Note the “Now Due”, “Amount” and “Paid” amounts for each organization. We’ll look at them again after the “Combining” is completed.
To combine the organizations, proceed to Browse Organizations, as shown below. We show one of the organizations highlighted, but it doesn’t matter which organization is highlighted—any on the list is OK. Then click on the “Combine” button on the right side of the form. The following form opens:
The history we wish to move (the “Source”) is the Colorado Department of Revenue, so that organization is selected from the drop down list. The target for the history is Public Service, which has been selected from the drop down list at the bottom of the form. In between, all of the check boxes that represent various pieces of information that could be on the two records have been selected. Be careful about combining—if, for example, both organizations have a primary phone number, the resulting (target) organization will end up with both primary phone numbers. Test the process in a copy of your database or the AFSamples database. The last check box will cause the source organization to be removed after the process is complete.
Note the warning shown in red text at the top of the form. Make sure your entries are correct!
Click on the “OK” button to accomplish the task.
The “Combining Statistics” report will appear, as shown in the image below:
Now that the combining process is complete, browse the target organization (Public Service of Colorado) as shown below:
Note that the Bill history now shows the entries from both organizations. The source organization (Colorado Department of Revenue) is no longer on the list of organizations.
It’s not uncommon for organizations to be entered more than once, and for each entry to collect its own history. You have a simple tool available to combine organizations into one. But, remember, it’s a one way trip!
Did You Know...?
Accounts Payable. Each organization (a vendor, in this case) may be assigned its own accounts payable account. This way its payables amount could be assigned to a specific fund or department, and/or its own object code (i.e. 2101, 2102, etc.). The normal expense account that should be used for the vendor may also be assigned. Then, when a bill is entered, the expense account automatically pops in (in can be changed, if needed).
Allocations. Allocations use a programming type language, and because of this they can be very specific—you will be able to allocate amounts any way you wish. Built in to the module is the ability to use distribution tables to allocate calculated results. Once the tables are created (in the Allocation module), they may be used multiple times.
Court Fines. This module is designed to track citations from their issuance to final payment. Each citation may have one, or more, violations (such as speeding, and faulty tail lights). Vehicle, officer, court and any other information may be recorded on the citation. When the citation is paid, bills may be generated which will disburse the funds to multiple organizations.
