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Tally-Up! Tips and Tricks
Checking Your Data
Tally-Up! automatically checks much of the data you
enter in the Edit Pages, but there are some ways that errors can
"creep in" without being detected. Tally-Up!
provides several special reports to check and help you correct data
errors.
All these reports can be found by selecting
"Reports," then "Utility Reports" from the menu
on the main Tally-Up! screen.
Expense Entry Check
This little report will provide a detailed listing
of expenses entered on a specified date or date range. It also will
optionally report on duplicate expenses. Most users run it at the
end of each day to provide an audit trail for the day's entries.
There is even a Company Option "Remind about Expense Check
Report on Closing." just to make sure you remember to run the
report.
Duplicate Employees
This report displays information about transferee
employee numbers that exist more than once in the Tally-Up!
database. A user requested this report when he discovered how easy
it is to mistype the employee number when creating a new
record. It optionally searches the Active File, the Storage
File, or both. Note that having more than one record with
identical Employee Numbers is not necessarily an error, nor is it
uncommon, since some employees transfer many times in their career.
The Duplicate Employees report can optionally search only for exact
matches of the Employee Number/Effective Date of Transfer
combinations. Any duplicates found using this criterion do
constitute an error. If you find any duplicates using this
criterion, please contact us for assistance in correcting the
problem.
Duplicate Expenses
This report will display information about duplicate
expenses in the database. It will search the Active File, the
Storage File, or both, and you may choose to report all expenses
with duplicate amounts or just duplicates with negative amounts. You
may limit the search to duplicates of the same expense type and/or
with the same expense date.
Record Rule Checks
This report checks for a number of errors, and in
some cases, allows you to correct them at the end of the
report. These are the options for the Record Rule Checks
report. Note that the availability of some of these options depends
on your Company Options settings.
The "not in list" Options
Tally-Up maintains many lists that make data entry easier
and reduce errors. There are seven Record Rule Check
options to check your data against your lists
Transfer Category not in list
Tally-Up! allows you to define "Transfer Categories"
and set specific tax and Grossup rules for each category. This
option reports any records that have a Transfer Category value
that is not in your defined Transfer Category list.
User field values not in edit lists
You may define "edits" for any of your character
type user defined fields. This option reports any character
type user fields with values not in your edit lists. The
option is not available if you have not defined any edit
lists.
Regular User-Def expense types not in list
Reports any regular user-defined expense types that are not in
your user-defined expense type list.
3rd Pty User-Def expense types not in list
Reports any 3rd Party user-defined expense types that are not
in your user-defined expense type list.
Budget Center values not in list
This option reports any Budget Center fields with values not
in your lists.
Vouchers values not in list
This option reports any Voucher fields with values not in your
lists. Note that if the term "Voucher" has been
redefined in Company Options, the term "Voucher" in
this option will be replaced with your Company Options term.
Payees not in list
This option reports any Payee fields with values not in your
lists.
Local Codes not in list
It is unusual for there to be a local code entered in a record
that is not in your local code list. However, it can
happen if a local code is removed after it has been entered in
a record. At any rate, a local code that is not in your local
code list is an error. This option will show any of these
errors.
Selecting any of these "not in list" options will
allow you to add any of the reported values at the end of the
report.
Record settings differ from Trans Cat
defaults
Tally-Up! allows you to define "Transfer Categories"
and set specific withholding and Grossup rules for each
category. This option reports any records which have settings
that differ from your defined defaults. This condition may not
be an error, because most of these defaults can be changed in
the Edit Pages. Further, a change in Transfer Category rules
does not automatically update existing records.
Why? Because sometimes companies change rules, but want
the changes to be applicable to new transferees, but not to
affect existing transferees.
User field value format errors
When a User-defined field is created, a field type (numeric,
character or date) is determined. This option reports on any
user-defined field with contents that do not match the
definition.
Local Default State different from Local ASB
Tally-Up! allows (but does not require) you to specify a
default state for local taxing authorities. Since most
local taxing authorities use their parent state as the source
for income figures (the Amount Subject Base, or ASB), defining
the default state can be a good idea. It ensures that the
localities selected in the Edit Pages are correctly associated
with their parent state. This option will report any
localities with a defined default state where there is no
state code that matches the locality.
Questionable 3P Expense Payee Names
Tally-Up! uses the "paid-to" name to determine
whether to treat an expense as paid to the employee.
Sometimes, a payee that is intended to be the employee is
misinterpreted by Tally-Up! because of a typo or spelling
error when the payee name is entered. These errors can be
avoided by entering * as the payee name, or selecting the
employee from the payee pick list. This report section
attempts to find such errors. If you select this option,
you will be asked if you want to correct questionable payee
names. If you choose to do so, Tally-Up! will
pause after each record that has questionable payee names, and
allow you to select any that you want to be changed to the
employee name.
Questionable Empl Expense Payee Names
This option causes Tally-Up! to report any expense paid to an
employee that has a Payee name other than the employee.
This condition is quite rare, but has been known to happen
when an error occurs while an expense is being saved to the
file.
Non-Standard User-defined expense codes
Tally-Up! uses a standard set of expense codes to associate
user-defined expenses with "regular" expenses. For
example, the "A1" code indicates the expense is a
transit expense. You may use non-standard codes if you wish.
This option reports any user-defined expenses that have codes
that are not recognized by Tally-Up!
Expense Flag 2 formatting errors
This option reports any expense in the Tally-Up! database
which has a Flag 2 value that is not a date. It is enabled
only if your Company Option is set to use Flag 2 as a date. If
this option is selected, you will be asked whether to erase
bad Flag 2 values.
Expenses changed since closing
When the Withholding Amounts report is run, each processed
expense becomes "closed," and ordinarily, the
expense can no longer be edited or deleted. However,
there is a Company Option "Make no check on closed
expenses." As a general rule, this Company Option
is not recommended, because it allows you to change expense
values that have already been processed for payroll.
This report option displays any expenses that have been
changed since they were processed by Withholding Amounts.
Expense Dates that cross Fiscal Range
There are four dates associated with each Tally-Up! expense;
the Expense Date entered by the user, the Posting Date, which
is usually the later of the Expense Date or the actual date
the expense was saved, the Payroll Date, which is the date the
expense was processed by the Withholding Amounts report, and
the AP Date, which is the date the expense was processed by an
Accounts Payable report. This report option displays any
expenses that have at least one date within your company's
fiscal range and another date that is outside the fiscal
range.
Payroll Base/History values Mismatch
The Withholding Amounts report stores some of its results in
the base (main) transferee record and some in the Payroll
History file. If there is a network or disk write error during
processing, there is a possibility that one file may not be
saved correctly. This report option displays details of any
record where such a "mismatch" has occurred, and
gives you the option to correct the error.
Email formatting errors
This option reports any transferee that has an incorrectly
formatted email address.
Unused Frequent Payee
This option reports any payees in your Frequent Payee List that are
not used by any records in your database.
Unused Regular User-Def Expense Types
This option reports any Regular User-Defined expenses in your list
that are not used by any records in your database.
Unused 3rd Pty User-Def Expense Types
This option reports any Third Party User-Defined expenses in your
list that are not used by any records in your database.
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