Fore! Sell FAQ

General Setup

What exceptions do I have to make in my firewall for processing with ETS?

The list contains the current list of IP Addresses and domain names that are required outbound from the merchant location.

IP Addresses
216.109.70.32/27
65.207.75.0/24
209.120.173.0/24
65.213.222.0/26
205.178.152.165
65.220.43.192/27
65.220.43.224/27
65.221.14.0/26

Domain Names
*.emoneygc.com [Processing, Browser Access]
*.etsms.com [Processing, Browser Access]
*.etsemoney.com [Processing, Browser Access]
*.emoney2k.com [Processing, Browser Access]
*.networkgls.com [Processing]
*.etsemoney.ca [Processing, Browser Access]
*.pmoney.com [Processing, Browser Access]
*.eftregistration.com [Browser Access]
*.losethewallet.com [Browser Access]

Ports
80 [Egress]
443 [Egress]

It is always recommended to do domain name filtering as the IP address do change.

What is the Credit Card Retention Policy?

As a requirment for PCI Security, Fore! Reservaitons allows you the user to set your Credit Card Retention Policy. This tab controls if and for how long credit card numbers are stored in Fore! Reservations.

Reservation retention is the amount of days after the reservation to keep the credit card. If the reservation retention is set to two days, and today is October 10, 2010 and a reservation is made for January 4, 2011, the credit card will remain in Fore! Reservations until January 6, 2011. Select Always Retain to keep the credit cards in the reservations permanently.

Customer Profile retention determines if a credit card can be stored in a customer‟s profile.

Customer History retention is the amount of days to keep credit card history in the customer history table. Select Always Retain to keep the credit card history permanently.

Payment History retention is the amount of days to keep the credit card information after an invoice is completed. Select Always Retain to keep the credit card payment history permanently.

Offline Processing Offline Processing retention is the amount of days to keep credit cards while in offline mode. If your offline processing retention is set to 3 and you are processing credit cards in offline mode for five days, when you activate credit card processing, only the three previous day‟s transactions will be processed (the first two day‟s credit cards were cleared). Select Always Retain to keep the credit card information in offline mode permanently.

Customer Billing retention determines if a credit card can be stored in a customer‟s profile. This option will always override the Customer Profile retention policy. When this option is enabled, credit cards are only stored in a profile if the “Charge Card” option is selected for customer billing statements in the customer‟s profile.

Why do I need to create a separate user in the system for each employee?

Having separate users for each employee creates a sense of accountability to employees and promotes proper security. If each employee has a login, you can track your sales by the employee. Unusualy sales can be monitored and discussed directly with the employee responsible. Fore! Reservations does not limit returns, voids, and no sales, but we do provide you with the reports to monitor thier occurences. Identifying the employee is crucial to creating responsibility. Having individual logins also allows you to better identify your best selling employee or is necessary to distribute tips.

How do you suggest I account for Rainchecks?

Fore! Reservations does have a raincheck system that can issue them by dollar amount. The cashier can choose to give a specific dollar amount or the system will figure a pro-rated dollar amount to issue based on the original green fee purchased and the number of holes played.

Fore! Reservations does provide a report of both issued and redeemed so that they can be audited individualy if necessary. The golf course has the option to implement an expiration date.

Because such a large percentage of reainchecks are never redeemed, most courses do not track rainchecks as a liability. Instead the entire green fee collected on the day of play is declared as income, and the raincheck issued is ignored. When redeemed the raincheck redeemed item is mapped to the Green Fee income account and reduces the overall green fee income for the returning day of play. Because this is the industy standard, Fore! Reservations does not list the raincheck issued item in the general ledger entries on the two accounting reports. The raincheck redeemed sales item does apear in the general ledger entry on the General Journal report and when mapped to the Green Fee income account will reduce the amount of gree fees taken on the returning day of play.

In the event that your accountant does want to monitor it as an outstanding liability, the amount issued is included as a note on the Cash Shortage and Overage report. The accountant would have to make a manual entry to reduce Green Fee income and increase the Raincheck Liability account. Then the raincheck redeemed sales item should be mapped to the Raincheck Liability account so that the liability is reduced when the item is redeemed.

What is the purpose for Fiscal Periods?

Fiscal Periods are used for reporting purposes. They can be customized to the courses own fiscal year and are created automatically when ending a new a fiscal period.Fiscal Periods are used for reporting purposes. They can be customized to the courses own fiscal year and are created automatically when ending a new a fiscal period.

What are two considerations when creating Departments, Subdepartments, Categories and Subcategories?

The first purpose of departments (etc.) is to organize reports for the manager. There should me a method to the structure so that the manager can quickily see important totals on which they can base administrative decisions. The second purpose is to map the departments (etc) to the general ledger package. This is usually done at the category level so it is important to create the categories so that map to one or more general ledger accounts. If your category needs to map to more than one GL account, you need to create multiple categories in Fore! Reservations.

How do you change a tax rate and what is the most important part of the instructions?

Go to File | Setup | Tax. On the tax window change the rate of the tax that needs to be change. It will automatically create an inactive tax which will be used for historical purposes. DO NOT inactivate the tax and create a new one as that will require the staff to go through and set up the tax for each sales item. File | Setup | Tax – there change the rate of the tax that needs to be change. It will automatically create an inactive tax which will be used for historical purposes. DO NOT inactivate the tax and create a new one as that will require the staff to go through and set up the tax for each sales item.

How do I set up Comeback Coupons?

Follow these steps to setup Comeback Coupons at your facility:

1. View | Fore! Sell
2. File | Setup | Sales Item
3. Choose “New” and create a new sales items based on the coupon that you want to set up (eg: $20.00 Weekday Green Fee called “Comeback Green Fee”). This sales item will be what is automatically brought into the shopping cart when the staff rings in this coupon.
4. Write down the sales item number
4. Hit OK
5. Go to File | Setup | Coupons
6. Setup a new comeback coupon by placing your mouse next to the star (the comeback coupon name is for your records only)
7. Enter the sales item number of the item you just created
8. Type in the comeback coupon text on the right side of the screen. This coupon will be what the customer will receive and bring in to redeem.
9. Hit OK
10. Go to File | Setup | Sales Items in Fore! Sell
11. Find the sales item(s) that you would like the comeback coupon to print after
12. Choose Detail
13. Choose Receipt Options
14. Check off the comeback coupon that you just created
15. Hit OK

Until you “uncheck” the comeback coupon in the receipt options, every time you ring in the sales item you activated it for, the comeback will print out after the receipt.

How do I set up an Awards Program?

Follow these steps to setup an Awards Program at your facility:

1. Log into Fore! Reservations, and go to View | Fore! Sell.

2. File | Setup | Options.

3. Place a check in the Awards checkbox.

4. If the awards balance on receipts is desired, click the Receipts tab and check the Print Award Balance checkbox.

5. Click the OK button.

6. Close Fore! Sell with File | Exit.

7. Close Fore! Reservations with File | Exit.

Setup Awards Category and Redemption Item

1. Create a Category for Awards.

2. Create an Awards Redeemed Item, a non-inventory item with a retail price or -$9,999.00 and a maximum discount of 100%. Enter 100 % in the Awards field.

Setup Item Percentages

1. Log into Fore! Reservations, and go to View | Fore! Sell.

2. File | Setup | Sales Items.

3. Enter in the Awards percentage for one or more items by using the Detail or the Sheet view. There are many tools to sort items in the Sheet view for easy editing. Make sure that the Awards Redeemed item is set at 100 in the Awards field.

4. Once a percentage has been assigned to all items, click OK to save changes in the Sheet view.

Earning and Redeeming Award Dollars

Any time a customer is entered in the shopping cart, the appropriate percentage of each item in the transaction is tallied and allocated as award dollars. To redeem those dollars earned.

1. Log into Fore! Reservations.

2. View | Shopping Cart.

3. Identify the customer in the Name field, by searching by last name, phone number or pull-down menu.

4. After all the items for purchase have been placed on the screen, pull up the awards redeemed item.

a) If the balance of the customer‟s awards account is equal to or greater than the total of the transaction, then the full amount of the transaction appears as a negative value in the unit price of the awards redeemed item, thus zeroing out the transaction. Hold the mouse over the Redeemed item to display the balance in a balloon.

b) If the customer‟s awards account balance is less than the total of the transaction, the full amount available from his/her account appears as the unit price for the awards redeemed, leaving a balance of the transaction to be carried out as normal. Hold your mouse over the Redeemed item to see the balance in a balloon.

5. Carry the transaction through as normal, tendering a payment, if necessary for any amount due.

At any point the price of the awards can be changed. More details on the awards balance is available by clicking on the Customer tab, then the Sales tab, then the Awards subtab to see awards invoices. A report can be printed from this screen.

Earn Awards Dollars, Calculate Balance, Print Report

1. Identify the customer in the Name field, by searching by last name, phone number or pull-down menu. Click on the Customer tab, then the Sales tab, then the Awards subtab to see the invoices that have affected the awards balance as shown above.

2. Hold the mouse over each receipt to see the details of each transaction.

3. If the customer wants a print out of his balance, click the Print Awards Report button at the bottom of the screen.

4. When the report appears in the Print preview window, click on the Printer button to print the report. The report shows the date, amount and invoice number of all the transactions that influenced the awards balance.

5. Close the print preview with the Windows close button in the upper right corner.

6. If further detail of a specific transaction is necessary, click the Invoices tab, click on the receipt and click the Print Receipt button at the bottom.

7. If balances for all customers are needed, select View | Reports | Awards from Fore! Sell.

Clearing Awards Balance

Awards balances are never cleared, but instead are calculated from a certain date. To set awards to expire on an annual basis, change the awards start date. For example, if awards for 2007 expire December 31, 2007 then from the Fore! Sell option screen (File | Setup | Options) select the awards date of January 1, 2008.

Setting up Sales Items for Awards

Awards are set up per the sales item that is rung in through the POS and not based on the customer type (eg: members will only receive awards on carts because they are rung in with the sales item “Member Carts”)

1. To active a sales item with awards, go to View | Fore! Sell | File | Setup | Sales Item
2. Choose the sales item you would like to activate awards with
3. Choose “details”
4. Type in the percentage of awards you would like on the bottom left
5. Hit OK

Ringing in Awards

1. Bring the customer into the shopping cart as you normally would.
2. Ring in the sales item “Awards – Redeemed”
3. This will automatically generate all the awards that specific customer has.
4. Change the amount of awards they would like to use (if different then amount) by changing the “Unit Price”

Checking A Customer's Awards Balance

1. View | Customers
2. Pull up the customer
3. Choose Sales
4. Choose Awards
5. Find the total rewards at the bottom left hand side of the screen
6. Awards are also set up to print at the bottom of each receipt

Sales Items

Why is the naming of Green Fees important to the efficiency of the golf shop?

Naming fees appropriately is important so that there are not too many in any one lookup. If you have too many in any lookup, it takes the staff too long to scroll through them. For example if you have 5 weekday fees and 5 weekend fees, do not start them all with GF, start them with WD and WE to segregate them. Thus the staff can find the weekday fees quickly by typing in WD to get to 5 in a list rather than scrolling through 10 fees. It gets a little more complicated when you have the same fee across mutliple seasons but with a little planning they can be organized to make it easier on the shop staff.

What are the two methods of changing rates across seasons? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

Method 1 is to change the price of each green fee on the day of the change. The advantage is that this is easy to do and can be changed at any moment, allowing management to decide quickly when to change prices. The disadvantage is that there is no method of running an annual report and deciding what green fees were sold in what season. It would require multiple reports based on date to see what green fees were sold in what season. It also requires a manager to make the change on that day. There is no communication to the staff from the tee sheet on what the correct rate is at season change.

Method 2 is to create green fees for each season. There you can associate a different course to the different seasons. The advantage is that management can look at one annual report and distinguish what green fees are sold in what season. In addition, the difference courses on the tee sheet will communicate the staff the exact rate of the day. The downside, is that for the golf shop to be efficient, you need to create different courses for each season. Then you will have to modify schedule to get the default to appear when the season changes. This is easy if you know and stick to a date well in advance. If the management wants to play it by ear, it will require some purging and loading at the time they want to change.

Why do you recommend against having Green Fees discountable?

Fore! Reservations recommends that you do not have your normal green fees discountable. Because each green fee usually has a large quanitiy of sales, it is not easily apparent if each green fee was rung up for full price. If you do not allow your normal fees to be discounted, you make a cashier choose a different green fee or a negative item to make the discount. These items will appear on the sales reports and you can easily track when your staff is giving out discounts and make the judgement on whether or not it is applicable for them to do so. In addition, making the discounts appear on another item (green fee or offsetting item) is an easy method to get a full total of the amount discounted over a period of time.

Why do you name inventory items with the Vendor name first?

Similar to the green fee discussion earlier, it helps segregate the inventory list. For example, naming items with the vendor reduces the list. Example of shirts, you may have 10 different vendors at 3 different styles a piece, thereby creating a pain to look through 30 shirts. Where you may have just 3 different styles of Ashworth, you can name reduce the lookup to only a few items. The one exception to this may be Titleist where it has such a huge selection of products that it may not help. But for most vendors this is a huge help. In addition, if the tag is lost off an item, you can usually distinguish what vendor it is and then perhaps choose the correct item.

How does cost averaging affect my list of items?

Cost averaging is a feature of our purchasing and receiving. Doing so will allow you to reduce a large number of shirt styles to approximately 3 or 4 different price points. As opposed to having an entry for Ashworth AM3456 and then having another item Ashworth AM4456 which is a very similar style of shirt, you can just cost average them into an Ashworth Solid shirt. This reduces the lookup of items and also makes purchasing and receiving a little easier.

Why set up an inventory item with an approximate cost but no quantity?

It is important to set up the cost with an item so that a good estimated cost might be realized if the item is sold before it is received. If the cost is close, then it will not negatively impact the cost averaging that is done when the items are received. You do not want to put in a quantity, because that will not make the quantity accurate when it is received.

What are two reasons for creating tag along sales items?

The first is to improve the efficiency in the golf shop. If a high percentage of golfers ride, you can tag along a cart fee to make it easier on the staff. If you sell the tag along more often than not, then you spend less time deleting when you don’t want it than looking for it if you do want it. The second is to improve sales with suggestive selling. You can tag along range buckets to promote the staff to ask the golfer if they want to buy a bucket of balls

What are common examples of packaged items?

The most common example for a non inventory package items is an Outing Package that would include a green fee, cart fee, and usually some combination of range balls, prize fund, food and bev charge and maybe even a gratuity. I would choose to hide these items in a package because you do not want to discuss the “necessity” of these items with the customer. They just want to know that the outing will be $75 per player. Creating a package allows you to both hide the items from the customer and lets management disburse the income to different revenue centers.

The most common example of an inventory item is a dozen balls, composed of the sleeve inventory items with a quantity of 4. There is no need to hide these items as you may want to promote the discount to the customer. .

When is it a good idea to and not to use UPC Codes?

UPC Codes are a good idea for high quantity items, especially when those items are reordered, like sleeves of golf balls and golf gloves. It is not a good thing for items that are very single in nature, like shirts or apparel as they have individual UPC items for each size and color and you would spend a great deal of time putting in individual UPC coded to a cost averaged item just to sell one of it. Instead, use the cost averaged item and print out labels from Fore! Reservations.

What is the MSRP field? If you change it from MSRP to a different name, besides the label, where else will that name appear?

The MSRP field is an informational field only that will print on the label. Some people use it as MSRP or some use it as Member Price or some other customized price. Once you change it in the lable setup screen it will appear changed in the Sale Item Detail View.

Point of Sale Implementation

What is the most efficient method of checking in the second player in a foursome?

Make that second player the actual player for the spot. This can be done in several ways based on the default method of taking reservations. The most common is to type in the first few letters of the person’s last name and hit Enter on the keyboard. This will bring up the list of customers. Highlight the actual player and choose Post. This will place the customer in the actual field. There you can either hit enter on the keyboard or right click on the customer and choose Collect Fee, thereby bringing up the customer and the correct default fee associated with the customer type. As a bonus, this also associates the sale to the customer, which can be later used as valuable data when analyzing your business.

Why does a fee always populate in the shopping cart when you click on the tee sheet, can’t it just be blank?

Once fees are set up properly in the software, it is meant to reduce the amount of work the shop staff has to do. The software is designed to populate the correct fee based on the customer type and the time of the reservation. Defaulting to a correct fee can be more efficient and will eliminate mistakes by the staff member for undercharing a customer.

Why does Fore! Reservations allow a user to void a sale?

Fore! Reservations has a general policy to enable the cashier to perform thier duties with little or no restrictions, but gives management the reports necessary to monitor and audit their employees.

It is our experience that restricting pos entries, whether it be voids, returns, or no sale transactions, to a manager is not practical, is often inconvenient to the customer and in the end creates the potential for fraud.

For example, a customer comes in to make a return. The employee has to radio out to the manager who is on the course attending to a pace of play issue. Two options exist for the manager. They can make the customer wait which could exascerbate an already bad experience if the return is due to a mis-ring by the employee. The more common scenario is that the manager gives the top secret code to the employee. Usually that occurs over the radio so that everyone now knows it. Even if it is in person or is only given to one paticular employee, the security is now gone. And worse yet, you may have a false sense of security that no employee knows the password and all the time they are using it fraudulently.

Fore! Reservations believe in training your staff and monitoring thier behavior rather than giving a false sense of security of a restriction to which your staff will look to work around.

Food and Beverage

What is the purpose of Fast Pass?

PCI Security Standards require users to implement strong passwords, which must be a minimum of 8 characters, and must contain at least 1 number, 1 uppercase letter and 1 lowercase letter. Because passwords are more complicated, it is nearly impossible to have users login for every transactions as is common in most food and beverage settings. Therefore, a user can set thier own 2-4 digit number which can be used as identification on a per transaction basis after they have logged in with their full user name and password. This process is both PCI compliant and efficient for the end user.

What is the focus of your food and beverage product?

Our software works best in a snack shop. We do have some features required for a bar and grill, like modifier ordering, kitchen printing and splitting checks. However, we do not have many of the necessary functions for fine dining or banquet establishments.

What type of food and beverage items do you typically inventory?

We inventory packaged whole goods. We do not inventory bread, tomato slices, draft beer, liquor, etc. We have no method of receiving a gross of a product and selling it in proportions based on the ordered item. For example, ground beef is ordering in gross and different amounts are used in different dishes. Fine dining applications with recipe inventorying is required to do that properly. In addition, we do not have any method of accounting for waste. Trying to track non packaged items in our system does not add value to process and often causes unnecessary work.

Some courses choose not to even track pre-packaged items. Unlike golf shop merchandise which is typically seasonal, food and beverage items are received almost daily. Many find that taking the time to check that into inventory is not worth the cost of the control. They instead track inventory as a percentage of sales. If the cost of goods maintains a consistent percentage, it a pretty good reflection on the business.

Cash Close

When would you suggest a course to close by user vs. close by machine and vice versa. What steps are necessary in the way that the golf shop is operated?

If a course is interested in the highest form of employee tracking then they should use User closes…this requires the pos login, each user have his or her own bank, and assumes no one rings in any sales under someone else’s user name. The most common use of this is in restaurants where individual employee tracking is necessary for tip calculation.

Closing by machine (area) ignores which user made the sale and just calculates the total based on each sale rang into that computer (area). This is the most common method and is what is done in most golf shops. What is required for this method is to perform a cash close on the computer that has made a sale and designate that a machine close.

Why is the close part of CashClose a misnomer?

Performing a cash close does not end the days’ sales. Older systems had a function in them to change the date – programs now use the Windows clock. The Cash Close should be thought of as a deposit with the end user being able to perform as many as necessary on a day. Subsequent transactions will not be pushed to the next day's sales.

What is the purpose of the Variance report?

The Variance Report shows you the difference in money between what the software has calculated and what the users deposited during the Cash Close.

How do you handle the situation when a cashier makes a mistake on the cash close?

They have 2 options. They can perform an adjusting Cash Close in addition to the incorrect one to balance out the mistake. For example if they wanted to put $100 in cash but they only typed in $10 in cash, they could do another cash close for $90 to add up to the $100.

The second option is to perform the Cash Close properly and inactivate the incorrect close. While this option is easier, it lends itself some opportunities for mistakes if someone running the reports after you did not see that one of he closes was inactivated.

Where would the accountant get the information to post a GL journal entry for cash deposits and for income breakouts?

They accountant can post a Cash Deposit general ledger entry as noted on the bottom of the Cash Short/Over (Cash Variance) report. This report shows you all the deposits and the income is dumped into a credit entry to a holding account called Sales Exchange.

The Income can then be broken out using the Journal Report. This report will make a debit entry to the Sales Exchange holding account and then credit entries to all the Income accounts. If everything ties out, the two entries to the Sales Exchange should wash out.

We designed this two step process using the Sales Exchange account becuase some accountants require daily entries for the Deposits so that they can track cash flow but do not make an incomed deposit until weekly or even monthly.

Inventory and Purchase Reveiving

Why use Purchasing and Receiving and not just change the cost and quantity of an item manually?

The most important purpose is to create an audit trail of inventory. When an item comes into the shop you should cross reference your inventory receipt out of Fore! Reservations with the invoice from the vendor to produce a trail for the accountant. Purchasing and receiving is also the easiest way to figure the cost averaging of multiple items and allocate costs across multiple items.

When is it best to skip the purchase order and do a straight invoice receive?

Using a straight receive without a purchase order is usually done for spontaneous purchases, where a rep will stop in a show a new product or when the rep will deliver car stock to the course as fill ins. Anytime you do not “plan” to purchase the item, you can do a straight receive – purchase orders are not necessary.

When do you recommend using purchase orders?

Purchase orders can be done in the fall /winter when most facilities are slow or closed. This allows most of the work (creating a sale item, creating a purchase order) to be done when it slow. When they are receiving items in the summer and it is extremely busy, all they have to do is recall the purchase order and move it to invoice, making it quick and easy to receive inventory. The purchase orders also help the golf course in their order planning for the year.

Is it ever necessary to use the packing slip feature and not directly to invoice?

If the invoice is lagging behind and the merchandise is in demand, you can use the packing slip to show that it has been received and get it on the floor to be sold. When the invoice does arrive, you can move the packing slip to invoice to update the cost of the remaining items in stock. This does not occur often. Most vendors mail the invoice before the product will arrive, or they will fax upon request, there is rarely a need to receive by packing slip.

When would you create multiple rows of the same sales item in a purchase order/vendor invoice?

I would create a purchase order/vendor invoice with multiple rows of the same sales item when the item is two different items coming from the vendor with two different costs. For instance if I was cost averaging two different style of shirts into one shirt in the point of sale, I would need receive one row at one cost and another row at a second cost. Similar with clubs. They often have promotional purchases where if you but a dozen drivers, you get one free. So you would receive 12 at the regular cost and then 1 at 0 cost so that it will cost average all 13 to a lower price than the norm.

What are the three methods of handling special orders?

# 1 - Create a sales item for every special order – helps put the revenue in the correct income accounts, and is very accurate for that one sales item, but the down side is that it creates a lot of items that have to be discontinued.

# 2 - Create a sale item for every category – helps put the revenue in the correct income accounts, but may be a little inaccurate on the cost as the cost averaging may be going across two different items with a substantial difference in cost i.e $350 cost driver to a $50 wedge. It averages out in the end, but may appear goofy while the orders are in stock.

# 3 – Create a non inventory item and just track the sales of it. May be the simplest but is not an accurate way to track inventory – may have to do manual accounting on the GL side to show cost of goods.

What is the difference between a full and a partial inventory?

A partial inventory changes the stock quantities of all items for which you specified a count in the inventory process. If you did not put in a count for an item, the item will remain at the count prior to the inventory.

A full inventory changes the stock quantities of all items for which you specified a count in the inventory process. If you did not put in a count for an item, the item will go back to 0.

What is the basic premise behind the inventory variance report?

The inventory variance report will show the difference between what the computer believes you should have in stock and what you actually counted as being in stock. This difference is usually referred to as the lost and stolen expense.

What is the inventory history report and when would it be used?

The inventory history report is a report that figures the inventory as of a current date based on an inventory that was done on a different date. The software does its best at taking a bench mark of an inventory and then adding or subtracting sales and purchases to come up with an estimated inventory based on that date. This report is often used when people forget to perform and inventory at the end of a month and then later in the next month the accountant comes looking for it. If they had done an inventory on the previous month, the software can do its best to figure what the inventory would have been at the end of that month.

Accounts Receivable and Billing

What are some different situations when you would use Accounts Receivable?

The most common situations are for member billing, corporate memberships or third party billing.

How do you set up billing classes? What are the two purposes of billing classes?

In Fore! Sell, File | Setup | Billing Classes. Set the credit details and if necessary assign minimums. They allow for customers to be segregated for billing purposes and to allow for different credit limits.

Describe how you set someone up with Accounts Receivable?

Ensure billing classes are setup properly. In modify customer menu go to sales tab then setup tab, check active box, select corresponding billing class from pull down menu, fill out other fields as needed.

Why can a customer still make AR payments when the Active checkbox is unchecked for AR?

Payments can be made by those customers that may be behind and are no longer allowed to make additional charges.

What is a secured account? How is it set up and why is it used?

A secured account is an account that allows charges only after payments are made. You can give the customer a billing class of $0 or anyone is allowed to charge to the AR after a payment is made to create a “credit” balance. It is allowed for the convenience of customers without exposing the golf course to the risk of having customers not pay off their AR. Some believe that allowing customer to put it on account promotes more spending.

What is parent – child charging and what are some examples?

Parent is the main account and child is someone with privileges to charge to that account, which allows for more detailed accounting. It could be used verbatim, a father who is the head of the account and a child or other family that all may charge to that account. Another example is a corporate account that wants to keep record of which employee is making what charges.

What are the three options for the email statement checkbox?

Checked is for email, unchecked is for paper, filled is for both.

In the account tab, what are the red dots on the left of the invoice? On the right?

Red dots on the left indicate invoices from the billing wizard. Red dots on the right are from a child account.

Why do you recommend using AR for Outings?

The main reason is because it is more accurate. You can track everything as it is sold, thereby reducing the chances for a mistake or forgetting an item on a manual tab. Printing the statement is often quicker and more efficient as well as a more professional appearance. In addition, it allows the course to track the revenue on the day of play even if the Outing chooses to pay for it after the day of play.

What are the purposes of the following: customer types vs. billing classes vs. customer categories?

Customer type is primarily for driving rates to the shopping cart.

Billing classes are to set credit limits, minimums and for diversifying customers for billing.

Customer categories are primarily for segregating customers for marketing. They can also be used to identify billing customers that span billing classes, commonly for things such as handicaps, range, locker etc.

What is the process to use credit card billing? How is the balance figured is the end date is not today and why would someone ever use a different date?

Credit card billing is used to automatically charge the customers balance to the credit card. If the end date is not the current day, the balance is figured by taking the balance at the end date and crediting any payments or any creditd for items returned since the date. This is done by golf courses to promote the payment by another method (i.e. check) before the balance is processed, which saves the course credit card fees on those charges. It is used as a security so that the golf course is sure to get thier payment.

What are the three type of AR statements and what are their differences?

Invoice detail – shows balance, invoice details broken down, and payments made during the period.

Ext. Invoice Detail – shows the same as above but breaks the individual invoices down further including other tenders if used, tips and taxes.

Invoice Summary – shows balance info, individual invoice totals, and payments made in date range

What is the process of charging minimums to customers?

Ensure that the correct minimum is set for each billing class and each billing class is set for each member. Make sure that all applicable items are associated with each minimum. Run the minimum report and it will give you a report on each customer that did not reach the minimum and by how much they were short. These additional charges must be made manually in the shopping cart as shortfalls are not automatically billed. Fore! Reservations has chosen not to make automated minimum billing because there are commonly too many exceptions.