Postage

In order to fully use the Postage functionality in Midnight, several tables and fields must first be set up. Most of these setup screens correspond directly to the accounting integration and export files that can be generated from Midnight. Some of these tables were discussed in the Company Information article.

When postage checks are received in Midnight, they need to be recorded against specific accounts in order to export appropriately to your specified Accounting System. There are two pieces to the setup of this particular transaction in Midnight.

The first is the Postage Account administrative table, which is located in the administrative settings of Midnight.

This administrative table controls the debit account that postage payments will affect when they are exported from Midnight. The tabs on this screen are:

Name: Short name of postage payment account
Description: Description of your postage payment account
Item code: Item code to use in exporting the postage payment to the accounting system
GLID: The General Ledger Account number of the postage payment account
Default: Whether the Account is the default account when being selected.
Active: Whether the Account is active and shows up in the fields across midnight.

Note that If the GLID field is left blank, and a postage check received is entered using this Payment Account, then that postage check will not create an export file. Multiple Payment Accounts can be established so that different type of postage receipts can be directed to different Cash accounts if necessary.

In order to make sure that you have the correct default accounts available for use in the process of receiving payments from customers, there is a field in the Customer screen to attach the postage account.

The Postage Types screen in the Administration tab is an integral part of the order-related postage reconciliation functionality. The list will not be added to, but should to be set up with the proper general ledger accounts for funds applied to postage and service balances on orders.

Postage Types of Postage and Service are used when funds received from a customer are applied to postage and/or services on an order via the order postage tab apply funds process. Therefore, these types of postage application need a corresponding GLID and Inventory Item in order to integrate with your accounting package correctly.

The GLID and Inventory Item will indicate how to direct those applied funds to the invoice export file. This is what allows the invoice file to be imported with the actual balance due from the customer. A normal entry in this field is the Customer Postage Deposits liability account, though this can certainly vary, depending on your company’s account structure.

Receive Payments

The Receive Payments functionality allows users to enter payments received from customers into Midnight, indicating what to do with the funds at that time. The Receive Payments screen can be accessed from either the postage module or the orders screen.

Customer: Customer drop-down linking to CRM/Customer list
Check Number: Customer’s check number – will populate export file as document number
Order Number: If Earmarked is selected in the Bucket field, an Order # for the customer must be
entered. Drop-down will be populated with all orders for customer selected.
Deposit Account: Customer Postage Account to use in recording the payment
Amount: Enter the amount of the check
Check Date: Defaults to current date – Enter the date the check is received for tracking purposes.
Earmark/Escrow: From the Postage Type admin table – Select where you want to allocate the funds: Escrow or Earmarked for a particular Order
Memo: General check memo

The "Save & Close" button will save the current check and clear the screen in preparation for the next check received. The Cancel button will take the user back to the default menu and will NOT save the check information entered.

Apply Payments

The Apply, Payments tool allows you to apply payments to many different orders without having to access them individually.

Once a customer is selected from the drop-down, the list of checks that the customer has a balance for will display.

When clicking on the check number, the grid below those details will outline all open orders with a postage balance. The Apply checkbox on the left of each order will allow the user to choose which orders to apply the postage balance to.

When you click the Save & Close button, the system will take the available funds and apply them to postage for that order, covering the total postage balance if possible, or just the full amount of funds available to apply if there is not enough Funds to cover the postage balance.

Adjustments

The tab next to Apply Payments is the Adjustment tab. This is where users will be able to make any necessary adjustments to how a check has been applied to that point in the system. Examples of reasons to make adjustments include:

Applying postage funds on the wrong order
Applying the wrong amount to an order
Applying to postage instead of services
Earmarked for the wrong job
Needing to put money back into escrow after an order was deleted.

Like the Apply Payments screen, you will first need to select your customer, and then a list of checks to choose from to adjust.

Below the general check information, the grid will display the details of the check status, including the amount available in escrow, and any amounts applied to jobs for postage or services, along with any amounts earmarked for specific orders.

If these details are wrong in any way, the blue pencil at the end of the row is used to adjust the order. For instance, if we applied the money to postage on the wrong job, we can change the order number by editing the second line and changing the number. You can save the adjustments by clicking the dark blue disc save icon at either the top, or the bottom of the row. Once the save button is clicked, the check record will be update so that the funds are correctly applied to the new order number.

If you change one of the amounts in the transactions, and fail to either enter a new transaction or
adjust the escrow by the appropriate amount, the check detail total at the bottom of the screen under amount could be different than the check amount.

View Balances

The View Balances tab in Postage allows you to get a snapshot of all customers who have a positive or negative postage balance with you, or to get the high-level picture of where a specific customer stands with postage.

The columns on the screen are:

Customer: The customer who the Postage balance belongs to.
Escrow: display of total amount sitting in escrow for customer at that point in time
Earmarked/Applied: sum total of all amounts both earmarked for jobs and previously applied to jobs
Used On Orders – sum total of all amounts of postage used on orders for the customer
Balance – positive balance means that the customer has money on-hand that has not been used;
negative balance means postage has been consumed, so the customer owes money.

Postage Inventory

The Postage Inventory tab shows a list of postage transactions. The extended search screen at the top shows a simpler search function.

Clicking on the edit button on the right side of the grid allows you to edit the details of the Postage transaction.

Postage Reports

The reports tab holds the postage reports available to run for viewing the postage balances for customers, along with other transactions directly related to postage funds received for jobs in Midnight.

To access the Reports viewer, Click the page icon to the left of the Admin menu.

A useful one is the Postage Balance Customer summary report, which shows all transactions for a customer within a selected transaction date range. To run the report, go to the Postage reports section in the Reports Module, and then click the Postage Balance Customer Summary report.