Chapter 13:  Accounts and Payments without BluePrince Accounting

Introduction

BluePrince Accounting is an invoicing feature that lets you create and track fees collected by the different offices involved in Community Development. It can be turned on or off in BluePrince Configuration. This Chapter discusses the features available when BluePrince Accounting is turned OFF.

When BluePrince Accounting is turned OFF, BluePrince lets you group due fees into an Invoice and then print the due invoice as a bill. At that time or later the Invoice can be posted as paid and printed as a receipt. However, all of this activity is done from the Fee Calculation form.

The Account form is not accessible. This also means that the Search form no longer displays or allows you to search for an Account Number and the Account tab on the Company, Contractor, and Person forms is not visible. Invoices are not tracked as they are when BluePrince Accounting is turned ON.

Invoices can be created but they are only used as bills and receipts. Presumably your jurisdiction has another accounting system already in place to handle invoicing tasks. This is why BluePrince Accounting would be turned off.

When BluePrince Accounting is turned OFF, the Payments Due form is used in a limited way. It only shows one tab containing non-invoiced permit fees. This helps you find any permits for which an invoice was not created. There is no tab showing due invoices or non-permit fees. Your other accounting system should have this information.

There are two methods of processing payments.  For the first, each payment’s unique characteristics is used to access a Process Invoices form.  This method is required for fees not tied to a permit and to access invoices that have been generated. In the second, the Payments button on the BluePrince Main Tool Bar is used to access and process all non-invoiced fees related to permits.

Processing Payments

All payment processing starts from the Process Invoices form.  It is accessible everywhere the Fee Calculation form is accessible, including the Building / Zoning Permit forms and forms that give access to Approvals: Project and My Tasks forms.

It is first necessary to find the permit, project or approval associated with the payment. Building Permit and Zoning Permits are accessible from the Search, Project and Payments Due forms. Open the Valuation/Fees tab on the Permit form and click Invoice.

For fee payments not related to a permit, use the Approval Tab of the Project form or the My Approval Activities tab of the My Tasks form to select an approval that requires a fee. The Invoice Details button will become enabled. Click it to open the Process Invoices form (see Figure 106).

The Process Invoices form is where all Invoicing and Recording Payments are done. The following paragraphs discuss each of the tasks you can do on the form.

Figure 106: Process Invoices Form: Process Payment related to Permit

Create and Print Due Invoice

On the Process Invoices form, click Create Invoice for all Non-Invoiced Fees to create an Invoice for all fees in the table that have a blank value in the Invoice # column. BluePrince will create a single Invoice Number and assign it to each of those fees. The Status of those fees is then changed to "Due". This also enables the Print Selected Invoice button. Click it to print a paper copy of the due invoice. You can use this as a bill.

Waive/Void a Due Invoice

Once an invoice is due, it may be paid, waived, or voided. If the invoice has been paid you may not waive or void it; instead you must back it out using the procedure discussed below. To waive or void a due invoice, you must first identify the invoice you want by selecting a row with that invoice number in the table. It is not necessary to select all the rows containing the invoice number. Click Waive/Void Invoice to open the Select Invoice Status Dialog (see Figure 107).

Figure 107: Process Invoices Form: Waive/Void Invoice

Select Waive or Void. Then click Save to change the status of the invoice. Click Cancel if you want to leave the invoice due. Once an Invoice is waived or voided it is removed from the Invoice # column in the table. This effectively removes the Invoice from BluePrince, however the invoice number will not be reused.

Enter Payment for a Due Invoice

To enter payment for a due invoice, you must first identify the invoice you want by selecting a row with that Invoice Number in the table. It is not necessary to select all the rows containing the invoice number. Click Mark Selected Invoice as Paid to open the External Accounting Payment Description dialog. Enter a Payment Description and click Save to post the payment (see Figure 108).

Figure 108: Process Invoices Form: External Accounting Payment Description Dialog

This will change the status of the fees and invoice to Paid. The Payment Description can be retrieved on certain reports using BlueReport. These reports can be used to reconcile payments recorded in BluePrince with your jurisdiction's accounting system. If this is your procedure you may want to use the Payment Description to store a reference number from the other accounting system. Click Print Selected Invoice to print a paper copy of the Paid Invoice. You can use this as a Receipt.

Back Out a Paid Invoice

Your jurisdiction may have enabled the ability to back out a paid invoice. To do this, locate the invoice on the Invoices Paid/Void tab with the Status column showing a value of Paid. Make sure the blue “P” is showing or click the “N” to enable the Back Out Paid Invoice button. Next, click it to back out the invoice to a Due status. A Confirmation message appears to inform you that the invoice and associated fees will become due again (see Figure 109). Click Yes to back out the invoice, No to return without making a change. The Status column of all rows with that Invoice now shows Due.

Figure 109: Backout External Paid Invoice

Using Payments Form

On the BluePrince Main Tool Bar click Payments to open the Payments Due form. The Payments Due form provides convenient access to all the non-invoiced fees on multiple permits.

Permits with Non-Invoiced Fees

The Permits with Non-Invoiced Fees tab displays a table of all the permits that have Fees that have not yet been invoiced based on the types of permits you have selected from the Show dropdown box (e.g. Building or Zoning). If your normal procedure is to create a due invoice at the time a permit is Applied then this table contains all the permit fees that have been added since then. Fees can be added by amending a permit valuation, charging a re-inspection fee or making a correction to the original fees. Highlight the row containing the permit you want to process. Click Permit Details to open the Building Permit or Zoning Permit form. From there you can create an invoice and/or post a payment as we discussed in the section above.

Alternatively, you can quickly create an invoice and post the payment by clicking the Mark Fees Paid button. This creates an invoice number in the background and opens the External Accounting Payment Description dialog. Enter a Payment Description and click Save to post the payment. This will change the status of the fees and invoice to Paid.

The Payment Description can be retrieved on certain reports using BlueReport. These reports can be used to reconcile payments recorded in BluePrince with your jurisdiction's accounting system. If this is your procedure you may want to use the Payment Description to store a reference number from the other accounting system. When you return to the Payments Due form, the permit is still displayed so that you can select that row and click Permit Details if needed. Note that the Balance Due for the permit is now $0. The next time the Payments Due form is opened, permits with Balance Due of $0 are not displayed.

If you have created an invoice using the Permit form but have NOT marked the fees as Paid, these fees will not appear here. If this is your procedure prior to issuing a permit, you can easily access these by using the Search form by choosing Find: (Building or Zoning) Permit Look For: Permit Status of Applied and selecting the date range of interest. In this case all the permits with a non-zero Balance Due contain invoiced fees that have not been paid.