E-Commerce revenues are projected to grow to 4.88 trillion US dollars in 2021 worldwide. With such a rapid growth, eCommerce marketplaces are good channel of choice for sellers.Introduction of new technology and availability of multiple eCommerce software solutions in the market, it has become very easy for the sellers to onboard marketplaces and start selling.

In today’s competitive e-commerce market, it is essential to be quick, responsive, and accurate when a customer makes the transaction. But receiving and tracking online payments is a major challenge that many of the sellers still face today. Maintaining records regularly becomes almost impossible to manage with growing sales.

This is when, effective payment reconciliation system can help track your payments for the orders received. In this blog, we explain the characteristics of an effective payment reconciliation system with couple of case studies.

Case Study 1: Often, waiting period to receive supporting documents for missing transactions cause delay in reconciliation process.

Generally, we download statements from bank portal and upload them in client’s Accounting system (Quick Books). QB then auto matches the Deposits with AR invoices and Payments with AP Bills. Once it is completed, we check for unreconciled transactions. Most of them remain unreconciled because invoices are missing in QB & we had to wait until missing documents are received.

We overcame this challenge by suggesting Client to implement Bill tracking system for uploading Sale Invoices and Vendor Bills based on which AP Bills and AR Invoices get automatically created. Payments are then processed after 3-step approval process. Then, entries in Bill tracking system get synchronized with Accounting system. This process reduced the missing entry cases and improved the Bank Rec TAT.

Case Study 2: Bank Recs relating to past period which were already closed / completed are changed to unreconciled status without intimation. This used to result in re-doing the entire reconciliation from beginning to identify the difference.

As a general practice most of our clients like any other, close their books on periodical basis – Daily, Weekly, Monthly etc. based on the volume but this client of ours practices yearly-closure of books. Coming back to the issue, primarily, this used to happen due to lack of reporting. We suggested Client to list all such approved JEs / Bills which have been edited. To do this effectively, we have set cut off dates & maintained a log report to identify the items that were frequently being edited & investigated them to make sure they do not get repeated. Over a period, activity got streamlined and it became seamless.

Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act was adopted on 27th March 2020. PPP loans are open to be applied from

• 3^rd April for small businesses & sole proprietors
• 10^th April for other applicants

Latest version of Application & other details can be viewed by clicking on https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/cares/assistance-for-small-businesses

Lenders list is available on SBA website i.e.,https://www.sba.gov/article/2020/mar/02/100-most-active-sba-7a-lenders (or) find zip code wise by clicking on https://www.sba.gov/paycheckprotection/find

Qualified Applicants:

• Wide range of small businesses as defined under Small Business Administration (SBA) Act
• Any business with 500 or less employees working in the US
• Non-Profit Organizations with 500 or less employees working in the US
• Veterans Organization with 500 or less employees working in the US
• Tribal business with 500 or less employees working in the US
• Sole proprietors or self-employed individuals and few others as defined in the Act

Affiliation rule states that 500 count is Company-specific but not Branch-specific.

Qualification Rules:

• If your business has been suspended or 50% drop in Revenue.
• Borrower must have been in operation as of 15^th Feb 2020.

If one does not qualify for this program, then they may consider applying for Tax Deferral or other programs.

Terms:

• Lesser of $10 Million or 2.5 times of average total monthly payroll costs incurred during the past 1-year
• Interest rate is 1% (as per SBA) from the date of disbursement of loan
• Maturity is of 2 years (as per SBA) period with no prepayment / penalties
• Repayment begins after 6 months from the disbursement of loan
• Certification must be provided by the Borrower that they shall not reapply for another PPP loan in future

Proceeds can be used only for,

• Payroll expenses
• Mortgage / Debt Interest payments in existence as of 15^th Feb 2020
• Rent / Lease payments in existence as of 15^th Feb 2020
• Utility payments in existence as of 15^th Feb 2020

Proceeds cannot be used for,

• Cash compensation in excess of $100,000 during the year per employee
• Taxes
• Non-US employee payroll
• Qualified Medical / sick leave for Covid-19
• Few others as specified under the Act

Guidance on Waver of the loan is expected to come soon but primarily, at least 75% of the loan proceeds must be spent towards Payroll costs. This must be separately applied by the Borrower by providing documentation justifying the usage of loan proceeds for allowable purposes.

Recently, I came across an outsourcing engagement in a company run by my friend. He was narrating the story and I felt compelled to share with all of you as it opened up an important part of the outsourcing success ingredient. One of the metaphors we always use is ‘it is not a boxing match between the two teams that are located in two corners of the world’. Once you feel this way, the engagement is doomed for failure. Let us come back to this story.

My friend’s company got engaged with a client for doing some of the back-office tasks. The client must have researched enough and was putting in lot of efforts on preparing the ‘blue book’ as they call it. This ‘blue book’ is also sort of a bible for the remote team to follow once they begin the project. The client therefore spent enormous amount of time on two tasks-  one to identify a task that was deemed as a stand-alone (island) and therefore could be sent to the remote team. Second, they took pains to list out the steps in carrying out this stand-alone task.

As you may have guessed, the project began very well. The remote teams even were able to suggest improvements to the ‘blue book’ as they went along. Thru’ out the weekly cycle (the first task was to work on transactions that occur on a weekly basis), the remote team hardly had to discuss/engage with the project sponsor. What happened to the onsite team that was doing this task until now? Where are they?  The remote team had no clue and had probably talked to them once during the kick-off.

Story looks really rosy – this is how an outsourcing should work – auto-pilot almost?

Nah, the disaster came in after 3 months of transition. Why? The stakeholders of the task were blindsided totally during the weekly cycle. Any challenges that they faced, they had no clue to respond to the field /vendors. There was no problem with the remote team’s quality or timeliness. What was missing was the bonding between the onsite and the remote teams. The project manager or what we call SPOC (Single Point of Contact) from the client side did her job perfectly (Blue book, shared folders, access credentials, work allocation etc). However, she did not involve the original team mates all thru’ the process /weekly cycle.

What we learn from the above experience is that there is no such thing as

1. Stand-alone (Island) tasks in outsourcing.
2. Teams must meld together from the beginning and must avoid the boxing match syndrome.

We always recommend taking baby steps however nothing must be done in isolation.

In every business, there are bound to be Due Dates for all the activities that we perform, some would be recurring while others are not. Its humanely impossible for any individual to remember all these Dates and it would be even more worrisome if the activity involves reminding another person like Tenant, Vendor, Property Manager, etc. To overcome this unproductive task, most of the software applications have in-built calendar reminders functionality & Yardi is not an exception. In this Blog, various hurdles are categorically explained under 4 broad steps that are involved in setting up the Critical date reminders.

Step 1: Save the Input Data

When managing a property, there would be many activities for which reminders can be set like Insurance, Utilities, Taxes, Repairs & Maintenance, Mortgage payments, so on & so forth. Most of these activities have fields available in Yardi by default but some may not. Not to worry, we can assist you by creating Custom Tables for such activities.

Step 2: Setup Email Templates

Every Email Template consists of multiple sections like Subject line, Header, Footer, CC, Body of mail, etc., any other regular email. Additionally, in Yardi, we have to setup few other elements like Tags, Tokens, Object Types being the most primary of them. Tags are inserted in an Email template to auto-populate details whenever an email is triggered. These Tags must be linked to Tokens (Tags in machine language), most of the Tokens are available by default in Yardi but if any Token as per need is missing, then we can assist you by writing SQL scripts to make them available. Object types are used to categorize the Tokens. Internal management email IDs can be saved in CC of the email template to receive a copy of all the emails that are triggered to Tenants.

Step 3: Setup Notifications    

After Email templates are setup, we move forward to set up periodic Frequency & Roles. Frequency must be set up for the emails to trigger Before, After, or On the Due date based on our need. Roles are then selected to capture the email ID of the recipient(s) saved under a specific Lease or Property. At this stage, we can checkmark “On Hold” checkbox that is available & performs a test run to make sure we are on the right track. 

Step 4: Setup Schedulers 

As a final step in setting up the Critical dates, we need to setup Schedulers. This is done based on the time slot that is available after reviewing to make sure that there is no clash with any other schedule in Yardi.  

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