Accounts Business Features

Accounts

An account is a ledger of financial transactions carried out between the Business and its contacts or the Business and its merchants/service providers.

Account key features follow:

• A unique number is assigned based on a numbering scheme

• A classification that can be used in various business rules to differentiate what the account owner is/is not allowed to do (e.g. classifications with higher credit limits)

• Credit Terms

  • Credit Limit: How much the account owner can owe the Business

  • Payment Terms: determine how an invoice's due date will be set

• Currency: Contacts can have multiple accounts, BUT each must be of a different currency. In any case, the account's currency must be one of the Business's supported currencies.

• Ability to specify the account which is Primary (and default)

• State

  • Active: Contact can perform transactions, place orders, and subscribe to services.

  • Suspended: Temporarily suspended for example due to outstanding debt or fraudulent transactions. During this period, the contact cannot make any transactions apart from payments.

  • Terminated: Contact can no longer make transactions and cannot re-activate the account. A new account should be created in this case. Terminating the account requires all "account-based" entities to reach a final state, e.g. Subscriptions should be cancelled, and Orders should be completed or cancelled. On terminating the account, contacts are prompted to manage their balance (only if the account is in credit)

Account owners

Within a business setup, an account owner is either:

• a Contact (person or company) or

• a Merchant/Service Provider of the Business set up in its internal Business Network

The Business and Venues cannot have an account.

Journal entries

A Journal Entry represents a transaction that debits or credits an account or the CRM.COM Wallet. Each journal:

• Has an accounting type; debit or credit

• Performed for either an Account or the CRM.COM Wallet

• It might be related to a financial or a rewards transaction, e.g. an invoice, OR it might be manually created to adjust/correct the balance.

• Has notes

• Has a set of custom fields. Two set of custom fields supported; Account and Wallet Journal Entries custom fields

Journal entries are kept in Mongo DB for analytics purposes. The financial Events screen in the backend utilises Journals collection information. In addition, dedicated Web APIs can be used to retrieve and create journal entries.

Credit Terms

• Credit Term Rules define the business default Credit Limit and Payment Terms.

• Additional rules can be set up to differentiate the default credit terms per account classification.

• Credit Limit: Shows the account owner's credit, i.e. the maximum allowed running balance

• Payment Terms: How an invoice's due date will be set

  • Net D, D stands for days

  • A pre-defined list is supported starting from Immediately Due, Net 7, Net 14 etc. The list can be modified, but only these values can be set to accounts.

Accounting Periods

An accounting period includes a set of debit and credit journals posted within a district period of time.

• Monthly accounting periods that begin on the 1st of each month and up until the last date (inclusive)

• A period closes automatically on the 5th of a following month

• Once a period closes, then no more financial transactions can be posted having a posted date within the period's time frame

• A business can keep up to 6 accounting periods open. This means that on the 7th month, the period six months ago is closed. This is useful for Businesses that might record delayed financial transactions

• During each period closing process

  • The closing balance for each account and the period that closes is calculated.

  • The opening balance for the next period is calculated

• The opening balance of the account makes its running balance calculation easier. It also allows calculating the balance of the account back in time.

Ageing Analysis

Ageing is an accounting term used to classify an account owner's debt depending on how long it's been due since an invoice was issued.

Ageing Analysis is a financial monitoring tool that monitors contacts' debt and age. Aged Invoices can be used to review or forecast the amount owed by account owners.

CRM.COM supports:

• Total aged balance per account as well as a breakdown of the aged balance in a fixed list of 5 buckets, 30 days duration each (i.e. aged by 1-30 days, 31-60 days etc.)

• Ageing Analysis included in Contact statements

• Ageing Analysis report, called Debtors Report

• Ageing Metrics in Dashboards

Financial Transactions

Financial transactions are processes that represent a financial event and generate a journal entry in an account.

Classifications of financial transactions:

• Invoices

  • An Invoice is a financial document that shows a list of services or physical goods bought by an account owner and the prices to be paid for them.

  • Has a due date.

  • The invoice's unpaid amount gets overdue one day after its due date

  • Triggers Stock out transactions for the stockable items

• Credit Notes

  • A Credit Note is a financial document issued by a business against an account to correct mistakes or adjust the amount the contract was invoiced.

  • Triggers Stock in transactions since credit notes can be used to return items back to the Business

• Payments

  • A Payment is a financial document issued by a contact to a business to settle an outstanding balance. A payment is usually issued for the same or lower amount of a specific invoice. It sets it off against the outstanding balance of that invoice or any other unsettled transactions.

    • Payment method types

      • Cash, Electronic Transfer, Cheque

      • Card, Wallet, CRM.COM Wallet, Account Debit, Account-to-Account

• Refunds

  • A refund is a financial document issued by a business to a customer in order to fully or partially refund the customer's payment. The refund transaction returns the money back to the customer's account through which funds were initially taken because of the payment. Refunds are issued to customers who are not satisfied with their purchase or in cases where an order cannot be fully or partially delivered to the customer. Refunds are not issued to correct invoices.

• Payouts

  • A payout is a financial document issued by a business to a customer in order to return back money directly to the customer's funding source (bank account, card or the CRM.COM Wallet). A Payout (unlike Refunds) is not issued based on another financial document such as a Payment.

• Transfers

  • Transfer an amount of money between accounts (of the same contact or to a different contact) or to the contact's CRM.COM Wallet or between an account and a CRM.COM Wallet.

• Top ups: Top up the account or the CRM.COM Wallet

Multi-Currency/Multi-Countries solutions

• A Business operating in various countries has to specify the following:

  • It's base currency as well as any other accepted currency(ies) of the countries at which it operates

  • The operating countries. For each country, its currency can be specified.

• Each additionally accepted currency's exchange rate against the base currency can be set (manually). Exchange rates are used to

  • convert a price in base currency into the currency of the account owner during ordering/billing flows

  • to convert amounts into base currency in Analytics.

• Prices can be configured in any of the supported currencies, and the country of agreement is one of the advanced pricing conditions.

• On contact registration, the country of agreement is selected, resulting in applying prices of that country.

• Automatic conversion of a price in a different currency based on the pre-defined exchange rates.

• Ability to support Reward Offers, Promotions and Pass Plans in various currencies.

• Aggregated analytics presented in the business’s base currency, whereas itemised analytics presented in each contact’s currency.

Tax Region

Tax Regions that group together various countries at which the business has the same taxation obligations (e.g. EU, USA). Therefore, a region indirectly groups together a set of Tax Rates.

Tax Rates

CRM.COM allows setting up multiple Tax Rates. Each Tax Rate includes:

• Tax Code: VAT, Sales Tax, Exempt

• Percentage

• Can apply different taxes per supply method

• Can apply different taxes per Country of agreement

• Product conditions (specific products or product families)

• A single Tax can be specified as the default one per code, country of agreement

• A validity period that can be changed in cases of tax rates increase/decrease. A single change of tax rate % can be scheduled to a future validity period.

Special attention to:

• Multiple VAT taxes can be specified per country

• A single Tax Exempt rate is required

• In order for a Tax to be applied, it requires at least one product or product family.

Numbering Schemes

Numbering schemes assign a unique number to

• Accounts

• Invoices

• Credit Notes

The rest of the transactions are assigned a unique and random 16-digit code as their number.

The number is set on posting the financial transactions. While in Draft state, they only have a reference number (again, a 16-digit code)

Allocations

Allocations are used to allocate the amount of a credit transaction against the debit transaction in order to settle any overdue amount. Allocations are applied automatically by the system based on the allocation principle of the system, which can either be FIFO or FIFO and Against Item. The allocations mechanism ensures that all transaction amounts are allocated, so cases in which there's an unallocated amount in a credit and a debit financial transaction are prevented.

Invoice Estimation

Provides an estimation of an invoice's charges before creating it

• Accepts a list of products to be included in the invoice with their quantities

• Optionally, a price is specified for each product (the unit price). If not specified, then the estimation will apply pricing rules

• Returns

  • total amounts (net, tax, discount)

  • detailed pricing per invoiced item

  • taxes breakdowns per invoiced item and the total

Custom Fields

If you require additional information not supported by CRM.COM, you can create custom fields of various formats to meet your specific needs.

Ability to set up Custom Fields for:

• Accounts

• Credit Notes

• Payments

• Refunds

• Top-Ups

• Accounts

• Account Journal Entries

• Wallet Journal Entries

Reports

• Organisation Financial Analysis: Basic information of the primary account of organizations

• Contact financial Analysis: Basic information of the primary account of organizations.

• Debtors Report: Ageing analysis

• Accounting Analysis: View the Business's accounting transactions per month in a summarized format

The first two reports include amounts in each account owner's currency, whereas the last two present the amounts in the Business's base currency.

Itemised reports show results in each account owner’s currency, whereas reports presenting aggregated amounts show results in the business’s base currency.

Insights

Insight analytics for

• Invoices

• Credit Notes

• Payments

• Refunds

• Top-ups

Automations

Automation allows the Business to:

• Communicate a new financial transaction to its contacts (when it is posted)

• Communicate a Payment Failure

• Automatically try to activate a subscription by crediting the account (payment, credit notes)

• Use Webhooks

• Automatic Content Updates (update custom fields on posting a payment)