How to Pay a Salary Bonus
A question coming up every year is How to pay your employees a salary bonus.
If you just add the gross bonus amount ($1000) to their regular check then the taxes will be taken out for you as in the regular check. This is how you would tax the bonus amount as a regular $1000 added to the check, with taxes:
But if you want the bonus NOT to be taxed, you need to set it up a bit differently, to be Exempt from Taxes:
If needed, enter an additional Shelter Code. Shelter Codes are originally established in the Shelter Code window accessed using the Codes command on the Options menu. The code entered here shelters additions to gross pay from taxation. Additions to gross pay are added when payroll transactions are processed. Shelter Codes entered on this line appear on the Payroll Master Report.
Kevin
System Trainer
Published by Kevin on January 6th, 2009 tagged Training, Tips & Tricks | Comment now »
Computer Performance and Stability Tips
Happy New Year! To help you have a more successful New Year, we offer these 14 tips on improving the performance of your computer. If you are unsure about how to follow the tip, or our instructions do not match what you see on your PC, then find out more information before proceeding.
Tip1: Always leave at least 25% free hard drive space, at very minimum 10%
Why: A hard drive that is nearly full has to work much harder than usual to manage files. Also, during some operations, more memory is required than you have. When that occurs, the operating system uses something called virtual memory, using some hard drive space as temporary memory thus slowing you down.
How: Double-click on “My Computer” and then right-click on each hard drive and choose “Properties”. This will display the size of the drive and how much free space is available. If you need to free up space and are unsure what to remove from the hard drive, go to Tip 3 perform a disk cleanup. Often you can browse thru the directories on your PC and find lots of old files to delete, like pictures or documents you no longer need. Remember not to delete program files directly as this will usually cause you to receive annoying pop-up error windows later due to the missing files – to remove a program, go thru the Add/Remove Programs window (Start > Settings > Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs).
Published by Joe on December 31st, 2008 tagged Training, Tips & Tricks | Comment now »
Printing 1099s
With tax season upon us, here is some timely information on printing your vendor 1099-MISC forms. This post assumes you already have some working knowledge of the Cougar Mountain accounting program.
The Current Year End that the 1099’s use are found in AP Module Preferences window. If it shows the wrong date, the Current Year End is changed by doing the period end procedures and selecting Reset YTD Vendor’s. This needs to be done before processing any payments for the New Year. Once this is done the year end date in the window will change to the next year. The second red circle area in the picture below shows where the Payer’s Federal Identification number is located in Module Preferences – while the Recipients ID number is entered in the AP Vendor window (see step below).
Published by Joe on December 29th, 2008 tagged Training, Tips & Tricks | Comment now »
5 Star Review for FUND Nonprofit Software
Cougar Mountain Software starts 2009 on top with ANOTHER 5 Star Review from CPA Technology Advisor. This award goes to our CMS Professional FUND software. The review highlights Not-For-Profit Accounting Software and praises CMS Professional FUND software for its ease of use, multiple features and value. Anna M Sheets writes;
“Cougar Mountain Software offers CMS FUND for Nonprofits as part of its CMS Professional 2009 lineup. As the vendor’s flagship product with over 25 years of experience serving small and mid-sized organizations, CMS FUND continues to expand its comprehensive account-ing system with many specialty tools for nonprofit users.”
Read our 5-Star Review in full from CPA Technology Advisor’s January 2009 issue.
Published by Joe on December 23rd, 2008 tagged Marketing | Comment now »
Backup your files. I will say it again. BACK UP YOUR FILES!!
This is drilled into every businesses head on a very constant basis, but not every business takes backups seriously. A backup will save a great deal of time and money should something go wrong with the accounting system.
What if your system crashes? Westtech Rigging works with Cougar Mountain Software’s SinglePoint server, which allows them to work from multiple locations. In September, they encountered a situation where their system simply shut down. It would not restart. Cougar Mountain was quick on the case to replace the faulty server and get them back up and running, but if they had not backed their files the previous night, they would have lost important data and time trying to recover them.
Instead, they went to their backed up files that they kept stored on a laptop, and were up and able to continue working, that same day while their SinglePoint server was fixed. Their back up precautions made it easy for Cougar Mountain to correct the error and restore their system.
There are several ways you can back up your data; manually backing it up from the CMS Main Menu, or setting up the CMS Backup Scheduler for doing it automatically, or even by using some third party solution that backs up the complete hard-drive. The question also arises about how often you should back up your data, and a good rule of thumb is to back it up as often as you feel the loss would be too hard to recreate if you needed to. Normally the backup interval is daily, but it might be more or less often depending on your situation.
Cougar Mountain Software includes a CMS Backup Scheduler, which means that you can schedule the back up of your data, reports, and images, then forget about it. Program your software to backup after you close at night and you will be able to come in to work the following morning and know that all of your data is safe. CMS Backup Scheduler takes a snapshot of all that company’s data - and restoring that backup puts the company data back the way it was in minutes.
Published by angie on December 17th, 2008 tagged Tips & Tricks | Comment now »
Automatic Purchase Orders
Cougar Mountain Purchase Order module will automatically create PO’s for you, based on the amount of inventory stock you currently have on-hand. And its easy to set up!
First you need to have it set up to operate correctly. In the IN Stock window (INV > Stock > Stock Item Maintenance), there are two fields in the Qty/Price Info tab called Minimum and Maximum. The Minimum field is the minimum quantity that you wish to have on-hand, while the Maximum field is the amount that you never wish to exceed.
Next, open the Purchase Order module to find the handy PO Generate from Inventory window (PO > Enter POs > Generate POs from Inventory).
Read the rest of this entry »
Published by Joe on December 15th, 2008 tagged Training, Tips & Tricks | Comment now »
Exporting to Excel
Cougar Mountain Software allows you to place your information into Excel, and there are two common ways to do it. The most common way is to use the Spreadsheet Export feature in GL:
Published by Kevin on December 11th, 2008 tagged Training, Tips & Tricks | Comment now »
Paying Commissions in Payroll
Our system trainer was recently asked how to set up payroll with employees who are paid both a regular pay rate, and are paid a commission. Kevin replied:
This is the #1 question asked of me in the payroll module! There are so many different ways that companies use commissions, and this is how we do it. In Payroll we make the commission as an addition in Benefits and Deductions. I am not aware of any software “automatically” doing a commission because the customer wants to dictate the way it is done.
Setting up Commissions.
Paying the commissions for a salesperson. The exact commission amount was figured out in an excel spreadsheet or database, then the dollar amount entered in Payroll.
Kevin
System Trainer
Published by Kevin on December 9th, 2008 tagged Training, Tips & Tricks | Comment now »
POS Software Information
Do you use POS Software, or maybe are thinking about it? We would like to recommend to you a website that provides lots of information about retail software: www.possoftware-info.com.
- POS Buyer Guides
- POS Checklists
- POS Directories
- POS Organizations
- POS Hardware
- POS Blogs
The main gist of the website is to help you find a POS solution that is right for you…
Joe
Marketing
Published by Joe on December 3rd, 2008 tagged Tips & Tricks | 1 Comment »
Purge Open Items in AP
A customer asked about the process of Purging Open Items in the Accounts Payable module: “What does “purging” actually do? Does it remove zeroed items from reports only? Can you still look up these transactions in the history file?”
The Purge Open Items utility will remove all items with a $0 amount remaining. For example, an invoice that was entered and subsequently paid will have an amount remaining of $0. You can review the items with $0 amount remaining by clicking the Aging tab on the AP Vendors window or by running the Aging report.
Once you have purged open items the purged payments will no longer be available for payment correction. If a correction needs to be made and the payment has been purged, you will need to do a balance adjustment in Accounts Payable and then void the check in Bank Reconciliation.
BACK UP YOUR DATA BEFORE PURGING OPEN ITEMS. Once you have purged this information, there is no way to retrieve it without a backup.
The details of purged items will not be available to view if you select the invoice from the History tab of the AP Vendors window. Keep in mind that when you purge open items, the details for those items are no longer available.
- Select Purge Open Items from the Period End menu.
- Select the date for the Purge Up Through This Date end. All items with a $0 amount remaining will be purged up through and including the date you specify.
- In the Vendor Number boxes, select the Vendor Number range.
- In the AP Code boxes, select the AP Code range.
- Select OK to proceed, or Cancel to exit without processing.
This utility is normally run for the last day of the previous quarter, but you can use month-end, year-end, or any other date that is appropriate for your business. I suggest this be done every 6 months, unless it is an account that is used regular, then at least every 3 months. It does NOT remove the History of the company. To do that Purge History… which is on the lower part of the “Period End.” I teach in class that before doing any History purge a history company should be made.
Kevin
System Trainer