v.5: Clean Up Your v.5 Financials for the Move to ShelbyNext Financials

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1 v.5: Clean Up Your v.5 Financials for the Move to ShelbyNext Financials (Course #V125) Presented by: Carmen Dea Shelby Consultant 2017 Shelby Systems, Inc. Other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of the respective holders.

2 Objective Converting financial records and data from one system to another needs to be approached thoughtfully and with precision. Some tasks need to be completed in Version 5 (v.5) prior to the conversion, while other tasks can be accomplished post conversion. The focus of this session is on what needs to be done in v.5 before converting. This session presents the following topics: Run Database Utility Executable What to Convert (and what not to convert) Do you Balance? Is it time to use Bank Reconciliation? How to Purge and Restore Old Years Merge & Delete Old Purpose Codes Inactive Old Pledges Employee SS # s for Conversion Are five users enough? Starting Over with Modules What Happens to v.5? 2

3 Run Database Utility Executable The Database Utility Executable file is provided after your kick off call with your Account Manager. It is designed to verify your data integrity before migrating from v.5 to ShelbyNext Financials. Gather Information about your v.5 data. 1. From any menu in v.5 select Help > About. 2. The About window appears. 3

4 3. Make note of the following fields. Data Path: Database Server: Database Catalog: v.5 Check Database Utility Install and Run the Check Database Utility. The Check Database Utility is available from a private download page in the Shelby Community. You must be a community member to access the download page. To join the Community, open the following address in your browser: This is a non destructive process. The utility does not attempt to alter your existing data. The utility can be run as many times as needed. Select Companies to Convert. The Companies page appears. By default all companies are selected. Uncheck any companies you do not want to convert. Once you have completed all the necessary steps, a confirmation page displays. This displays all the selected values from the previous pages and which actions are taken during the conversion. If the Check Database Utility finds any financial errors, Notepad opens with the details. Any issues listed should be resolved prior to continuing in order to ensure a clean conversion of your financial data. 4

5 What to Convert (and what not to convert) Many of our customers have been using Shelby v.5 Financials for decades. Discussions should begin early in the process regarding the following: Which Companies, if you have more than one, need to be converted? In Shelby v.5 Financials, a Company is a separate set of books most often used when there are separate Fiscal Periods or entities with separate Employer Identification Numbers (EIN). Over the years additional companies may have been created in your v.5 Financials for Foundations, Schools, even test companies that are no longer in use. If it has been several years, or the financial data contained in these companies is not good history, then you should consider NOT converting those companies. How many Years of Financial History should be converted to ShelbyNext Financials? This includes General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Payroll, etc. How many Years of Contribution and Pledge History should be converted? Keep in mind that ShelbyNext Membership contains the Contribution (Giving) and Pledge History. o In ShelbyNext Membership, you pay per record per month. In ShelbyNext Financials, the cost is per user and applications purchased. IMPORTANT! Communicate these decisions, and any other exceptions you want to make with your conversion, using a message posted on the Writeboard. Your Account Manager provides the project and Writeboard access to you. The Conversion Team reads these messages. A good rule of thumb is to list all the companies and years of history you DO want to convert and those you DO NOT. Be clear and specific. Include how many years of Financial History to convert. 5

6 Do you Balance? ASSETS = LIABILITIES + CAPITAL Every Shelby v.5 Financials customer has a balance sheet (even if you are not sure what it does). In order for your financial data to be converted, your balance sheet MUST be in balance. Go to General Ledger > Reports > Monthly Reports > Balance Sheet and then click the OK button. Sample Multi Fund 6

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8 What if I am not in Balance? Do all your Income and Expense Accounts have Closing Accounts? The Balance Sheet does not report the correct Current Year increase/decrease unless all income and expense accounts have closing accounts. Check the Account Structure. It may be that the Account Type is wrong or a Total Level is missing or in the wrong place. You can quickly check this. One method is to go to General Ledger > Account Information, scroll through the Account Structure looking for missing Closing Accounts, and check your levels. If you are still unsure what to look for, contact Shelby Support. You can also contract with your trainer to help you with this task. 8

9 It may be that the Balance Sheet was never in balance. Version 5 Financials has a back door to the opening balances for each balance sheet account. Instead of journaling the opening balances, as is required in ShelbyNext Financials, the opening balances were often manually entered. Unfortunately, this task was often not completed and, consequently, the balance sheet has always been off. All customers can be brought back into balance by simply adjusting the opening balance. If you are unsure how to bring your balance sheet back into balance, consult with your trainer who can help you determine the best course of action. It is often not difficult to bring it back into balance. However, that does not mean the balances are accurate. 9

10 Is it time to use Bank Reconciliation? If you have been reconciling properly, and the Bank Reconciliation balances to the General Ledger account balance, you are good to go! If the two amounts do not reconcile, this needs to be corrected. If there are years of unreconciled checks, withdrawals, or deposits many customers agree they don t have the time or resources to go back and reconcile each month and delete all the old items manually because it is too time consuming. Here are two options to begin using the Bank Reconciliation module right away. Before you begin, you need A good list of outstanding items (checks, withdrawals, and deposits). This is Critical! Below is a list of tasks to consider. There may be more or less depending on what cleared items you have in Shelby as well as for how long and how thoroughly you have been clearing them. Option 1 Abandon the old Asset Account! Can be done in v.5 or ShelbyNext Financials. Switch to using this account at the beginning of a particular month (e.g., 7/1). Create a New Asset account in the General Ledger. Set up a new Bank Account in the Bank Reconciliation module for the new account. You need to re connect the new bank account to purpose codes, payroll, etc. Set up the check design, where needed (e.g., A/P, Payroll). Create a journal entry to transfer the balance from the old asset account to the new. Add the ending balance from the last bank statement as the opening balance in Shelby. When it is time to reconcile in the following month, add the outstanding checks, withdrawals, and deposits. Option 2 Wipe out the old items in your existing bank account with a Sequel Statement! You have to work with support or a trainer to run the sequel statement that removes all the items (checks, voids, deposits, withdrawals) through the end of a specific month. Can only be done in v.5. This must be done before you convert if you choose this option. Print a list of all items before running the SQL statement! Print a list of all outstanding items for the past 6 to 12 mos. It removes all items from the existing bank account through a specified date (e.g., 5/31). Add back the outstanding items through the specified date. Reenter the opening balance as the ending balance from the prior month s statement. 10

11 How to Purge and Restore Old Years Purging History is an option to consider before running the conversion. Purged data does not convert to ShelbyNext Financials. Some organizations only want to include a certain number of years of data or may purge data as a way to decrease the size of their hosted database. In addition, it may be that some of the v.5 data was used for auxiliary purposes where the data (possibly a company or year) had another purpose that is no longer needed. IMPORTANT! Please create a backup of your v.5 data before converting your data or running any utility. Refer to the Backing Up Shelby v.5 ( Knowledge Base article for detailed steps on backing up your v.5 data. To purge your v.5 data, select the Options for Purging History from the Closing Procedures module. Any purged data is moved to the ShelbyPURGE database and is not converted. Once your conversion is completed, you can restore your purged data in v.5. 11

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13 Changing (Merging) Old Purpose Codes ShelbyNext Membership also contains Contributions, or Giving, as it is called in the program. Purpose Codes in ShelbyNext are called Categories. The following suggestions change your v.5 data, however, many customers have hundreds of old Purpose Codes that they do not want to see in ShelbyNext Membership. Here are two options in v.5. The first is you can Purge Contribution history, using the Purge Utility found in the General module, through a specific date. Once that happens you can delete any purpose codes from v.5 where the last posted amounts were in the purged contributions. The second option is to use the Change Purpose utility in Contributions. Essentially, you are merging several purpose codes into one. For example, you can change Budget Budget to a generic ZOLDBUD Budget Giving prior to The donor s name, date of gift, amount, check#, etc. are still retained. This changes the description to the new code. You could have historical purpose codes for old pledges, missions, general offering, dramatically reducing the number of purpose codes brought over with contribution history. If the old purpose code has been inactivated, it needs to be reactivated in order to use the change utility. Use an existing bank and revenue account code to activate it temporarily so it can be changed (merged). Then, delete the purpose code when the change is completed. The donor history is now on the new code. This changes the history is Shelby v.5 so only change those codes where you do not need the detail in v.5. 13

14 Inactivating Old Pledges Inactivating old pledges does not remove the pledge nor its history. You should only inactivate pledges where you are no longer using the pledge data in reporting. 14

15 Employee Social Security Numbers If you are Converting Payroll history, an error appears if an employee record is missing a social security number. If you cannot locate the number, assuming it is a very old record, just enter Are 5 Enough Users? Currently, each ShelbyNext Financials installation comes with 5 open users, along with the Administrator rights. Is this enough for each employee who needs access to the Financials? This does not apply to Contributions and Pledges. That occurs in ShelbyNext Membership. These rights are assigned to an individual; it is not concurrent users. Portal access for Purchase Orders and individual payroll inquiry does not apply to limit. Starting Over with Modules Was there an attempt in years past to use Accounts Receivable but something went very wrong? If you do not want to have that particular module convert, you can ask for none of this history to convert on your Writeboard. 15

16 What happens to V.5? In the short term, nothing. You still have Shelby v.5 as a Temporary Archive for as long as it is able to run on your computer or server and there is someone knowledgeable who can find and obtain information. You may want to consider printing off key financial data and storing as PDF and/or Excel files on a cloud server, or print and keep in a secure location. These files should periodically be opened and resaved so they can be preserved. Suggestions of files to print for all years you want to keep history: Detail Ledger for all transactions Balance Sheet Budgeted Financial Statement Contributions Statements Pledge File Lists Contributions Analysis Report AP Inquiry Check Register or All Items report from Bank Reconciliation 16

17 Q&A Class Discussion 17

18 Carmen Dea Shelby Consultant Carmen trains at the consultant level on all the Shelby product lines. She has been a trainer and consultant for churches and non profit organizations since Carmen has worked with customers in both the United States and internationally helping them integrate Shelby Systems to meet their needs and their culture. Her experience prior to working with Shelby includes serving as the Volunteer Director for a missions organization and being responsible for the Shelby database and training in a large church.