Fore! Reservations can export both cash receipts and sales. Most find that manually performing this process is just as easy as through the export, but the setup is virtually the same. For more advanced users, accounts receivable detail and accounts payable information can also be exported to a general ledger. Fore! Reservations supports exporting to both QuickBooks, Peachtree, and BusinessWorks Accounting.

Cash Receipts and Sales Reporting to General Ledger
Fore! Sell includes reports that simplify recurring journal entries in your general ledger. Manual entry of recurring journal entries is more desirable to some because it creates a natural audit. If the audit trail is less of a concern, there is an automated general ledger interface in Fore! Reservations. The following example is the set up necessary for daily cash deposits and periodic sales postings. It supplies the accounts receivable totals since the detail is handled within Fore! Reservations.

General Ledger Set Up
Set up the following accounts in your general ledger. For specific instructions on creating or modifying accounts, please see the Help file in your general ledger package. Each account listed must be associated with the specific account type. Subaccounts can be set up for more detail, but this simplified example does not use subaccounts. A sample below is a chart of accounts from QuickBooks, with Peachtree and BusinessWorks looking similar.

1) Create Bank accounts - in our example:

          a) Cash – for cash and checks.

          b) Credit Cards – for Visa and MasterCard since they have the same processor - additional accounts
               or subaccounts can be set up for other credit cards with different processors, like American
               Express or Discover.

2) Accounts Receivable – account type of Other Current Asset (Not Accounts Receivable).

3) Sales Tax Payable – account type is Other Current Liability – This must be a different account than the sales tax account associated with automated sales tax applied to invoices from the general ledger. If collecting multiple taxes, create different sales tax payable accounts.

4) Sales Exchange – account type of Income.

5) Cash Shortage Overage – account type is Expense.

6) Income Accounts – account type of Income – these income accounts are later put in Fore! Reservations:
          a) Green Fees.
          b) Cart.
          c) Memberships.
          d) Merchandise.
          e) Food and Beverage.
          f) Other Revenue.

7) Gift Certificates – account type Other Current Liability.

8) Deposits – account type Other Current Liability.

9) Inventory – account type Other Current Asset.

10) Cost of Goods – account type of Cost of Goods Sold.

11) Marketing Expense – account type of Expense.

12) Miscellaneous Expense – account type of Expense.

Fore! Reservations Set Up
The goal is to associate departments, subdepartments, categories or subcategories with the appropriate accounts in the general ledger. If the general ledger uses numbers rather than the name of the account, fill in the appropriate account numbers in Fore! Reservations. In this example, we use the names of the accounts.

1) In the Fore! Sell Facility screen, set up the following:

          a) Sales Exchange # field enter the GL account name - Sales Exchange.

          b) Cash Shortage/Overage Acct # - Cash Variance.

          c) Facility Tax – State Tax – Sales Tax Payable.

         

2) In the Payment Media screen, type the name of the QuickBooks account in the Account Number field for each media marked as active. This example includes:

          a) A/R Payment – Accounts Receivable.

          b) Account – Accounts Receivable.

          c) AmEx/Encore – Credit Cards.

          d) Cash Account Number – Cash.

          e) Check Account Number – Cash.

          f) Gift Card – Gift Certificates.

          g) MasterCard – Credit Cards.

          h) Visa – Credit Cards.

         

3) Associate the Income Accounts in the general ledger at the appropriate level of departments, subdepartment, categories, or subcategories in Fore! Reservations. You can use multiple levels, but for simplicity use one. In this example, six income accounts are associated at the category level:

          a) Cart

          b) Food and Beverage.

          c) Green Fees.

          d) Memberships.

          e) Merchandise.

          f) Other Revenue.

4) Associate the Cost of Goods and Inventory accounts from QuickBooks to the appropriate category. To simplify the process, only two accounts are used: Cost of Goods and Inventory. More detail can be included if it is tracked in the General Ledger, i.e. Golf Ball COGS, Golf Ball Inv, Apparel COGS and Apparel Inv etc.

5) Associate any Current Liability or Expense Accounts at the same level. Those set up at the category level for this example are:

          a) Category of Awards – GL expense account Marketing Expense.

          b) Category of Paid Out – GL expense account of Miscellaneous Expense.

          c) Category of Gift Certificates – GL current liability account of Gift Certificates.

          d) Category of Deposits – GL current liability account of Deposits.

         

Reporting for Manual GL Postings

Cash Receipts – Daily
Daily accounting of the cash receipts is done to manage cash flow. Depending on your closing procedures, run the Cash Shortage and Overage report for each individual or for the facility as a whole. If your cashiers make independent deposits that are taken to the bank individually, make individual entries to the General Ledger to simplify the reconciliation of the bank deposits. If your facility does one mass deposit, run the Cash Shortage report for the facility as in the following example. Select the sales date at the top of the window and the deposits or cash closes corresponding to those sales from the list.

The result is a report that has a journal entry at the bottom for a quick posting to the General Ledger.

Sales Postings to General Ledger – Daily, Weekly or Monthly
Posting the cash receipts daily increases the Sales Exchange account. To distribute sales into different General Ledger Income Accounts, you will make an entry to offset the amount in the Sales Exchange account from the Journal Report.

This entry can be done daily, weekly or even monthly, depending on the detail needed in the General Ledger and how often management wants to see reports. Because daily posting precision is overkill and creates unnecessary work, do this sales posting weekly. Weekly postings create a natural audit trail comparing Sales Exchange credited from Cash Postings to that debited from the Sales Journal postings. If all postings are accurate, the Sale  Exchange account balance is $0.00 after posting Sales.

Automated Sales Postings into General Ledger
To automate the General Ledger postings, use the Data Management module in Fore! Sell. It is easy to post both the total Cash Receipts and Sales at the same time.

Creating Fore! Reservations Export File
1) Log into Fore! Sell.

2) Utility | Data Management and then click on the Export tab.

3) Select the general ledger system, QuickBooks in this example.

4) Check the Sales and Cash Receipts checkboxes.

5) Select the Start Date and End Date of the sales to be exported.

6) Check the Include checkbox for all Cash Closes that represent deposits for the desired date.

7) Click the Export button.

8) Click OK to the Success dialog box. The export files are created and sent to the C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Fore! Reservations\GL Import on XP computers and C:\ProgramData\Fore! Reservations\GL Import on Vista/7. If the date range is one day, the files are named FaciltyNameCashYYYY-MM-DD.iif and FacilityNameSalesYYYY-MM-DD.iif where YYYY represents the year, MM represents the month, and DD represents the day. In this example, the files are named Fore!NationalCash2010-10-10.iif and Fore!NationalSales2010-10-10.iif. If the date span is multiple days, the files are named Fore!NationalCashYYYY-MM-DD-YYYY-MM-DD.iif and Fore!NationalSalesYYYY-MM-DD-YYYY-MM-DD.iif.

Importing Files into QuickBooks
1) In QuickBooks, go to File | Import | IIF files.

2) Click on the pull-down menu next to the Look In field and select the C drive.

3) Double-click on the Program Files, then Fore! Reservations, then GL Import folders.

4) Click on the Cash file and click Open.

5) Click OK to the button that the file has been imported.

The GL entry detail resembles the GL Entry at the lower portion of the Cash Shortage and Overage report as noted in the previous section. Perform this manual audit for every automated entry.

Do the same steps for the Sales file to get the following general ledger entry, which looks very similar to the General Journal Report as printed in the previous section. Again, perform this manual audit for each import.

Sales Exchange has two entries that offset each other. After posting the Cash Receipts and the Sales for the same time period, the Sales Exchange Account has a balance of $0.00. Perform this audit at the end of the import.

Notes about Cash Receipts and Sales Postings

• Redeeming rainchecks is done using sales items. Set up rainchecks in their own category. Associate the raincheck category with the Green Fee Income account from the General Ledger. When a raincheck is used to offset the green fees, it decreases the income in the Green Fee income account. This is correct since the income is overstated because the entire green fee is not used on the day the raincheck is issued. There is no need to identify any ledger entry when it is issued.
• Paid Outs are included as a sales item associated with the Miscellaneous expense account in the General Ledger. Alternatively, treat Paid Out as a tender associated with the Miscellaneous expense account. If the amount of Paid Outs gets too high, the accountant can adjust the entry to the correct expense account based on the purpose of the paid out as instructed by the cashier or manager.
• If using subaccounts in the General Ledger, use the following convention: ParentAccount:Subaccount, i.e. the Credit Card subaccount of American Express is: Credit Card:American Express.
• On the General Journal report, a “No Account Specified” number is commonly caused by one of the following:

                    o A sales item is sold and its category does not have a sales account, inventory account or
                       cost of goods sold field specified in the category setup. Check to make sure all categories
                       in File | Setup | Item Category are filled. Similarly check General Ledger accounts
                       associated at the department, subdepartment or subcategory level.

                    o A sales item does not have a category assigned. To find such, go to File | Setup | Sales
                       Items and sort the sales items by category by clicking on the Category header in the sheet
                       view. Those items without a category sort to the top.

Accounts Receivable Detail to General Ledger
Fore! Reservations has a full Accounts Receivable package to bill members, print statements and manage aged receivables. Posting to this AR from other applications is possible using the Fore! Reservations Property Management Emulator. However, if accounts receivables needs to be managed from a third party accounting package like QuickBooks, individual transactions can be exported directly from Fore! Reservations. The following example uses QuickBooks. Additional examples for Peachtree are available from Fore! Reservations Customer Support.

GL Set Up
Prepare the GL as noted previously for Cash Receipts and Sales, except for the following:

1) The Accounts Receivable account must have a type of Accounts Receivable. If you have already created it above with type of Other Current Asset, you must rename this account and create a new Accounts Receivable account with account type Accounts Receivable.

2) Add an AR Exchange account with the account type of Other Current Asset.

3) Set up each customer with charging privileges in Fore! Reservations with an individual account in QuickBooks. Most facilities do not give their customers numbers, but reference everything by the customer name. If these accounts are not already set up, Fore! Reservations can bring over this
information and auto-generate these accounts on first import.

Fore! Reservations Set Up
1) In the Payment Media screen, change the account to represent the newly created QuickBooks AR Exchange account for both the A/R Payment and Account media (see screen on following page).

2) For each customer, associate the GL Account field in Fore! Reservations with the Customer Name in QuickBooks. Go to the GL Account field in Fore! Reservations by selecting View | Customers, highlighting the customer, positioning to the account field and clicking the Change button. The GL account field must match the customer name exactly, including numbers and letters, but is not case sensitive. If it does not match, a new account is created in QuickBooks at import. New accounts are automatically created by combining the Last Name, First Name and Cust ID number from Fore! Reservations.

Posting Accounts Receivable Transactions into General Ledger
Once individual charges and payments occur in Fore! Reservations, move them to your General Ledger Accounts Receivable using the export from the Fore! Sell Data Management Utility.

Creating Fore! Reservations Export File
1) Log into Fore! Sell.

2) Utility | Data Management and then click on the Export tab.

3) Select the general ledger system, in this example use QuickBooks.

4) Check the AR checkbox.

5) Select the Start Date and End Date of the transactions to be exported.

6) Check the GL Acct# radio button and select a due date to appear on the QuickBooks statement.

7) Type the name of your Accounts Receivable parent account, the account created earlier in this procedure was Accounts Receivable.

8) If this is the first import and customers are not set up in QuickBooks, or Fore! Reservations customer demographic information is more accurate, uncheck the Exclude Customer Information checkbox. Check this checkbox if QuickBooks customer information is not to be overwritten requiring manual
entry of QuickBooks with any new information.

9) Click the Export button.

10) Click OK to the successful completion dialog box. The export file is place in the C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Fore! Reservations \GL Import folder on XP computers and C:\ProgramData\Fore! Reservations\GL Import on Vista/7. If the date range is one day, the file is
named FacilityNameARYYYY-MM-DD.iif, in this example Fore!NationalAR2010-10-10.iif. If the date span is multiple days, the file is named FacilityNameARYYYY-MM-DD-YYYY-MM-DD.iif.

Importing Files into QuickBooks
1) In QuickBooks, go to File | Import | IIF files.

2) Click on the pull-down menu next to the Look In field and select the C drive.

3) Browse to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Fore! Reservations \GL Import folder on XP computers or C:\ProgramData\Fore! Reservations\GL Import on Vista/7.

4) Click on the AR file and click Open.

5) Click OK to the button that the file has been imported.

Each individual transaction is posted to the appropriate Account. The two transactions are displayed with balances above.

Notice how AR Exchange has a $0.00 balance and the $100 outstanding balance has been moved to the Accounts Receivable account. The AR import with two transactions has offset the two GL entries when posted to Cash Receipts. The $0.00 AR Exchange balance is an audit performed at the end of the import.

Accounts Payable Detail to General Ledger
To make payables more efficient for the accounting staff and to improve the accuracy of accounting inventory at the category level, export your Fore! Reservations Accounts Payable Invoices. Most utilize this process because they track category levels of inventory, i.e. apparel, gloves, clubs, etc. The export
debits the individual inventory accounts and credits an accounts payable exchange account. Because the export/import handles the details, the accountant only offsets the vendor payment with an Accounts Payable Exchange entry and needs not break out each invoice into appropriate inventory categories.

GL Set Up
Prepare the General Ledger for Cash Receipts and Sales as noted above, except for the following:

1) Create more detailed merchandise accounts, for sales, inventory and cost of goods, i.e. Apparel COGS, Apparel Inv, Golf Ball COGS, Golf Ball Inv, etc.

2) Create an Accounts Payable Exchange account with the account type of Other Current Liability.

Fore! Reservations Set Up
Associate the detailed merchandise accounts from QuickBooks for sales, inventory and cost of goods (as noted above) to the correct Item Category in Fore! Sell. In this example everything is set up at the category level. Assume the general ledger has a higher level of detail in accounting sales, inventory and cost of goods at the category level. To simplify this example, only golf balls and apparel are noted in both Fore! Reservations and QuickBooks.

Posting Fore! Reservations Vendor Invoices into General Ledger
If the golf shop staff breaks out each invoice into the appropriate inventory categories when received, then this information is exported by the Vendor invoices Export/Import feature. For example, on the following vendor invoice, the first three sales items are associated to the Golf Balls category and the Cart Mittens are associated to the Apparel category. Thus the appropriate amount is allocated into the appropriate category for exporting.

Creating Fore! Reservations Export File
1) Log into Fore! Sell.

2) Utility | Data Management and then click on the Export tab.

3) Check the Vendor Invoices checkbox.

4) Select the general ledger system, in this example QuickBooks.

5) Select the Start Date and End Date of the invoices to be exported.

6) Type the Accounts Payable account name, in this example Accounts Payable Exchange,

7) Click the Export button.

8) Click OK in the success dialog box. The export file is created in the C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Fore! Reservations \GL Import folder on XP computers and C:\ProgramData\Fore! Reservations\GL Import on Vista/7 folder with an iif suffix. If the date range is one day, the file is named FacilityNameVendYYYY-MM-DD and in our example Fore!NationalVend2010-10-10. If the date span is multiple days, the file is named FacilityNameVendYYYY-MM-DD-YYYY-MM-DD.

Importing Files into QuickBooks
1) In QuickBooks, go to File | Import | IIF files.

2) Click the Look In pull-down menu and select the C drive.

3) Browse to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Fore! Reservations \GL Import folder on XP computers or C:\ProgramData\Fore! Reservations\GL Import on Vista/7.

4) Click on the Vend file and click Open.

5) Click OK in the file has been imported dialog box.

The end result of the import is the following GL entry:

By loading the export into the General Ledger and creating an Accounts Payable Exchange entry, the accountant need not allocate each invoice item by hand. The accountant then simply pays the vendor bill and uses an offsetting entry to Accounts Payable Exchange and the respective inventory accounts are accurately allocated. Crediting the checking account by $793.33 and debiting the Accounts Payable Exchange results in a $0.00 Accounts Payable Exchange balance. The export/import process increases the efficiency of the accountant and ensures the accuracy between QuickBooks and Fore! Reservations
accounts.

Troubleshooting

Blank Account or No Account Specified in Report / Export

If you see a blank account name on the Cash Variance report or the Cash export, then a payment media, the sales exchange, sales tax payable or cash over short account is left blank. Fill in the appropriate GL accounts as documented in the setup portion of this procedure.

If you see the No Account Specified on the General Ledger report or in the Sales export, and it occurs in the top half of the report with a credit balance that indicates a sale with no account, one of two things has happened:

1. A Category (or Dept, Sub Dept, or Sub Category based on which level you were setting up the GL information) is not defined for an item that was sold,
2. The Category (or Dept, Sub Dept, or Sub Category based on which level you were setting up the GL information) is not assigned a General Ledger Account in the account field.

If you see the No Account Specified on the General Ledger report or in the Sales export, and it occurs in the bottom half of the report where there is a credit for Inventory or a debit for Cost of Goods, then one of two things has happened:

1. A Category (or Dept, Sub Dept, or Sub Category based on which level you were setting up the GL information) is not defined for an item that was sold,
2. The Category (or Dept, Sub Dept, or Sub Category based on which level you were setting up the GL information) is not assigned a General Ledger Account in the Inventory or COGS field.

To ensure that a category is defined for each sales item:

1. View | Fore! Sell
2. File | Setup | Sales Items
3. Find the Item Category heading and click on it twice, to sort all by category in ascending order.
4. Any item with a blank category will appear at the top.
5. Fill a category for each sales item and then re-print the report to verify

To ensure all categories have GL accounts in the correct fields,

1. View | Fore! Sell
2. File | Setup | Item Categories
3. Review all categories and the associated Account, COGS and the Inventory fields.

All categories should have a GL account in the Account field for sales. You may want to fill in a “fake” GL account in the COGS and Inventory fields for Categories that you do not anticipate having and cost of goods. Occasionally a sales item may mistakenly get created with a cost. In such a case, filling in a “fake” GL account will help you identify which category of sales items to review to find the mistake. For instance, create a GL account of “GF COGS” and “GF Inv” for the Green Fee category so that it will be evident when a green fee mistakenly gets created with a cost. You can then go back to that sales item and remove the cost. Please note that cost is determined at the time of sale and that changing the sales item will not be backward compatible with the previous sales. A manual adjustment will have to be made to the General Ledger once the export is posted.

You must specify a Vendor name for the sales tax account in QuickBooks

This error occurs on the Cash import when the Sales Tax Payable is listed as the same Sales Tax Payable account/item that QuickBooks uses to charge tax when using it’s invoicing functionality. You can confirm this by:

1. Login to QuickBooks
2. Edit | Preferences
3. Choose Sales Tax in the left window
4. Choose the Company tab at the top
5. Identify the Account/Item that is being charged tax

To correct the issue, create a new account for sales tax with the type of Other Current Liability. Doing so, you will have to make sure that the new account is the same name as that setup in Fore! Reservations in order for the import to match correctly. You can do so by either:

1. Changing the name of the existing sales tax account in QuickBooks and creating the new account with the same name as what is in Fore! Reservations,
2. Changing the name in Fore! Reservations to match the new account created, as described in the setup portion of this procedure

If you do invoicing from QuickBooks in addition to what you sell from Fore! Reservations, your accountant may have to do an adjusting entry at the end of the quarter to combine this sales tax account with the one that QuickBooks uses for the invoicing.

Transaction split lines to accounts receivable must include a customer on that split line in QuickBooks

If you receive this error when importing the Cash import, then the Accounts Receivable account has the wrong type. For the import to work correctly, the Accounts Receivable account in QuickBooks must be set up as a Other Current Liability type account. By default, most Accounts Receivable accounts are set up with type of Accounts Receivable.



You may not be able to change the type from Accounts Receivable. Therefore, you may have to set up a brand new account. Doing so, you will have to make sure that the new account is the same name as that given to that from Fore! Reservations so that the import will match correctly. You can do so by either:

1. Changing the name of the existing one in QuickBooks and creating the new account with the same name as what is in Fore! Reservations or
2. Changing the name in Fore! Reservations to match the new account created.