Understanding Account Reporting

Chapter 1. Introduction

Accounts are a way to establish temporary credit for certain customers. For example, imagine your local city hall regularly orders take out or delivery from your business. Because these orders are after hours for city meetings, the person ordering the food may not be the person who ultimately pays the bill or has access to the city hall credit card. Hence, keeping a running tab for your city hall can simplify the process of ordering and payments. You can also establish some agreement with your city hall that they will settle up their tab at the end of each month.

Before you start using accounts, you need to set up a few things:

1. Set Account-related Pay In reasons.

2. Set which staff types can do Pay Ins.

3. Set which staff types can manage accounts.

4. Set up actual accounts for your customers.

5. Configure your End of Day to report on Accounts and Pay ins.

6. Set your Cash Register screen to do Pay Ins/Payouts.

In addition to how to set up TouchBistro to handle accounts, this help guide will also walk you through a simple charge to an account, how to accept payment on the account, and how to read your end of day reporting so you can understand how your cash drawer/credit card receipts for the day need to balance out.

Chapter 2. Set Account-Related Pay In Reasons

Pay Ins are a way of accounting for funds added to your cash drawer without affecting your sales figures. When a sale is billed to an account, TouchBistro logs the account payment as a sale. When a customer later comes in to settle the account, Pay Ins allow you to log the settlement for your end of day without making it appear like the funds from the account settlement was an actual sale.

To set up pay ins you can use to log account settlements, do the following:

1. Tap Admin | Admin Settings | Menu | Payout Reasons.

2. Tap the Add + icon to add a reason.

3. Enter a name that will help you identify the pay in as a payment on an account. Tap Save.

4. We suggest creating pay in reasons that help identify how the payment was tendered (cash, Visa, MasterCard, Amex, Check, etc.).

Chapter 3. Set which Staff Types Can Do Pay Ins

You may not want all staff members to have the ability to flag funds coming into your business as pay ins. You can enable the ability to do pay ins at the Staff Type level.

1. Tap Admin | Admin Settings | Staff | Staff Types.

2. You may want, for example, only those assigned a manager staff type to be able to do pay ins. If so, tap you Manager staff type.

3. Scroll to the bottom and enable Can Perform Pay Ins.

4. Tap Done/Save to save the changes to this staff type.

Chapter 4. Set which Staff Types Can Manage Accounts

Although all staff members can bill orders to accounts, you can enable/disable which staff types can create new accounts and log payments. To enable a staff type to manage accounts, follow these steps:

1. Tap Admin | Admin Settings | Staff | Staff Types.

2. You may want, for example, only those assigned a manager staff type to be able to do pay ins. If so, tap your Manager staff type.

3. Enable Can Access Accounts and tap Done/Save.

Likewise, you might want to double check your other staff types and disable account access for staff types you don’t want to have the ability to create accounts and take payments.

Chapter 5. Set Up Accounts for Your Customers.

If you want to allow some customers to bill guest checks to an account, you need to first create an account for the customer.

1. Login as Admin.

2. Tap Admin | Customer Account List.

3. Tap the Add icon to add a new account.

4. Usually for the Account Number, we advise entering the account’s phone number.

5. In the Notes field, you might want to put a note about how/when the account typically settles up or who is allowed to charge bills to the account.

6. Tap Done.

Chapter 6. Configure your End of Day to report on Accounts and Pay Ins

Since you’ll be using Accounts and your Pay Ins frequently, you need to make it a part of your End of Day report.

1. Tap Admin | Reports.

2. Tap Cancel.

3. Tap Load Template.

4. Tap End of Day.

5. Tap Accounting and add the Accounts Report and Detailed Account Report to your list of reports.

6. Tap Accounting and tap Payouts Report.

7. Tap Save Template.

Chapter 7. Set Your Cash Register Screen to Do Pay Ins/Payouts

1. Tap Admin | Admin Settings | Advanced.

2. Scroll to the bottom and tap Change Register Buttons.

3. Tap one of the quick pay buttons you may not use like Smart 3.

4. Tap Pay In/Out.

5. Tap Done/Save.

Chapter 8. Working Through an Example

We’ll work through an example of two highly simplified business days. Day 1 you have one order. City hall comes in, places an order, and charges it to an account. You have no more orders that day and close your business day. Day 2 you have no orders but it’s the day city hall comes in to settle up the account balance. After settling up the account balance, you have no more orders and you close your business day.

This example will demonstrate how orders billed to accounts and payments made to settle up accounts get reported in TouchBistro and help you balance out your cash drawer and sales.

Section 1. Day 1

Let’s imagine you’ve opened your business day. A person from city hall comes in and gets a take out order.

1. Create the Order.

2. Tap Checkout.

3. Tap the Information icon associated with Pay on Account.

4. If you wish, you tap Print Account Signature Slip and print a signature slip (pictured above) to present to the city hall person for confirmation they’ve agreed to the charge.

5. Tap Pay on Account to charge this bill to City Hall.

6. Tap the account.

7. Tap Pay in Full or a total amount that includes any offered tip. In this case, city hall is charging an extra $44.45 to the account as a tip, making it an even $600.00

8. Tap Pay and close the order.

9. If you return to your Accounts page, you can see the order has been properly billed to the City Hall account.

10. Open the account and tap the Information icon associated with the bill to see details about the order billed to the account.

11. Do not apply any payment yet. Tap Print Preview if you wish to see a preview of the guest check.

12. Tap Done. Tap Done again.

13. As noted, imagine your city hall order is the only order you received all day.

14. You close your day. So tap Admin | Perform End of Day.

15. Generate your end of day report and close your day.

16. We’ll now examine the End of Day report (pictured above).

17. Under Sales Totals we can see our single order for the day. We sold $491.64 of product. We will need to remit to the government $63.91 in taxes for that day.

18. Under Payment and Refund Totals we can see we had one order. With tax the order came to $555.55. You may now wonder “where did that order come from? I can’t see $555.55 in the cash drawer. I can’t see a merchant copy of my credit card slips for $555.55?”

19. If we look at the bottom of the End of Day report, we can see the Accounts report, which we added previously, helps provide additional details. We can see $555.55 of the day’s take was charged to accounts. If we had, say, $5,000 worth of sales that day, we would know not to expect $5,000 in our cash drawer or in credit card receipts. We’d know to expect $4444.45 ($5,000 – $555.55).

20. If you recall from the example where we charged the city hall order to the account, the person signing for the order added a $44.45 tip (making the total amount charged to the account $600.) The Credit Card Tips report logs tips added to accounts. This ensures the server is properly tipped out for the day.

Section 2. Day 2

We now open our restaurant the next day. We’ll also assume it’s the end of the month and someone from city hall comes to settle up their tab.

1. Open Admin | Customer Account List.

2. Tap on the appropriate account.

3. Tap Apply Payment and select the method of payment. In this example we’re using an integrated payment solution.

4. If you are using an integrated payment solution with a swiper, tap Charge by Signing on Slip.

5. Follow the onscreen prompts.

6. Select Pay in Full or enter a lesser amount and tap Charge.

7. You’ll be returned to your Accounts screen. Note the balance has been reduced to zero (or by the amount paid).

8. Tap View Payment Log at any time to see what payments have been made to this account. Integrated payments can be cross indexed via their Authorization Code.

9. If we examine our End of Day after accepting a payment on the account, we can see TouchBistro does not record the payment as a sale. Logically, the sale was realized when it was charged out to the account. If TouchBistro logged the account payment as a sale also, TouchBistro would be double reporting the sale.

10. You will also notice the Accounts Report is blank. As mentioned before, this report only provides details about what was charged to accounts for the given business day. It does not indicate outstanding account balances to date.

Chapter 9. Using Pay Ins to Capture Account Payments in Your End of Day Report

Since the payment log in accounts is not part of your iPad or cloud reports, account payments (notably if they’re in cash) might confuse you when you try to balance out at the end of the night. Imagine someone from City Hall came in and paid the account with $600 in cash. At the end of a busy day, you find an extra $600 in your cash drawer. You may have forgotten the extra $600 is there because of a cash payment on an account. To capture account payments in your end of day, use the Pay In feature.

1. Tap your cash register.

2. Tap the Pay In/Payout button.

3. Enter the amount of the payment. Select one of the Pay In reasons you previously created. Enter the name of the account in the Comment field. Tap Pay In.

4. Print a receipt for your records.

5. If we assume this was the only customer we had that day and we looked at our End of Day, we would see zero sales but under the Payouts Report we would see the $600 account payment logged. This report would help us understand any excess cash in the drawer or credit card receipts that do not seem to match up with food/drink sales.

Chapter 10. Related Articles

Customer Account List

Generating Accounting Reports

Setting Up a Pay It Forward Account

Taking and Closing Deposits for Future Orders using Accounts