MoneyWorks blog

Newsletter December 2018

Posted on 31 December, 2018 by Grant

It may be a bit of a cliché, but 2018 seems to have vanished in the blink of an eye. It seems only a few weeks ago that we were battening down for winter, and now the summer holidays are almost here (at least in this part of the world). Thank you for your support and ideas over 2018, and the MoneyWorks Team wish you all a happy and safe holiday, and a successful 2019.

In this newsletter:

Holiday Hours

The MoneyWorks main office will be closing for the holidays from 5:00pm December 21st until 9:00am January 7th. Although there will be no phone support over this period, email support will still be available through the support@cognito.co.nz address. Normal administration services will resume on January 14th.

If emailing for support, please be sure to include details of the MoneyWorks version you are using (e.g. MoneyWorks Gold 8.1.4), and the operating system version that you are using. Outline what the problem is, and, if you are getting an error message of some sort, tell us exactly what it says. Brevity might be the soul of wit, but it will significantly hinder any help we can provide.

Another support resource that you can (and should) be using is the MoneyWorks Community Forum (accessible under Help>Community in MoneyWorks), where you can ask and answer questions about MoneyWorks. Google also knows a lot about MoneyWorks (it is getting smarter!), so queries like “writing off invoices in MoneyWorks” or “closing a period in MoneyWorks” will give a lot of useful information.

Making Tax Digital – UK

Making Tax Digital (or MTD) is the UK Government initiative to make VAT processing easier by allowing accounting packages to directly file the VAT return with HMRC, obviating the current requirement to rekey the numbers into the HMRC website. This is slated for introduction starting April 1st 2019. We expect to have an update to MoneyWorks 8 available for MTD before April.

Accounting for Prescribed Goods – Singapore

From January 1st, new requirements for the GST handling on “prescribed goods” are being introduced in Singapore. MoneyWorks 8.1.4 has been approved by the IRAS as being compliant for this new system (older versions are not, and should not be used). For information on prescribed goods please see the IRAS website. Details on how to configure MoneyWorks to handle prescribed goods are outlined in the MoneyWorks Manual. If you need assistance with this, please contact Ledgerworks, the MoneyWorks distributors in Singapore, at support@ledgerworks.asia

Using Jobs for Funds Tracking

It is not uncommon for not for profits (such as sporting clubs, schools, charities) to get some sort of grant from a parent or government body, and need to monitor or report on how the funds were allocated.

Tracking and reporting on this is easy if you use “Job Tagging” in MoneyWorks (and even Cashbook supports this). Basically just tag the line of affected transactions with a code for each grant that you need to manage. Then use the Job Allocation report, which is new in MoneyWorks 8.1.5, to view a summary of the job and its “profitability”. You can also use this technique for tracking events such as the pony club “One Day Event”, or the Bowling Club Fundraiser, and determine exactly how much was raised (and spent) on the event.

For more details see Tracking Grants and Events in MoneyWorks.

Upcoming Training Courses

What better way to start the year than with a MoneyWorks training course — after all, you don’t know what you don’t know! The first courses are 2019 are scheduled for Auckland on February 20th and 21st. For more details, or to book your place, see cognito.co.nz/support/training/

In addition to these formal courses, we offer short, targeted on-line training. For example, if you want to find out more about how job costing can work for you, what scripts can do, how to change an invoice layout, or are unsure of how multi-currency works, then a time can be arranged to show you. For details please contact admin@cognito.co.nz

MoneyWorks 8.1.5

The current version of MoneyWorks is 8.1.5, which was released earlier this month. If you are using an earlier version please update, as this not only adds some new features, but also addresses a number of issues discovered in previous versions. For a list of changes please see the change notes.

Mojave/High Sierra Compatibility

Just a reminder that MoneyWorks 7 and earlier are not compatible with the new file system in MacOS High Sierra and Mojave. If you want to use these new OSes you must upgrade to MoneyWorks 8. To upgrade, go to our upgrade page and enter your existing MoneyWorks serial number (which you can find under Help>Enter Serial).

Tips du Jour

Multiple enquiry windows

Did you know that you can have multiple account enquiry windows open at once? To open a new enquiry window, simply hold down the Option key (on the Mac) or the Shift key (on Windows) and choose Account Enquiry from the Enquiries menu (or the Reports menu, if you are using Cashbook). This applies to all the enquiry windows, not just accounts.

Write-off

At the end of the fiscal year, which is approaching for many users, it is often necessary to write off bad debts (i.e. invoices that you have issued that are not going to get paid). The first step in the process is to ensure that you have a “Bad debts” expense account to use. Then, simply highlight the invoice(s) to write-off in the Receivables list, and choose Adjustments>Write-off from the Command menu. For more information on end of year procedures, please see this forum topic: What should I do at the End of Financial Year?.

Got a MoneyWorks Tip to share?

Please send it into us at admin@cognito.co.nz

Posted in News | Comments Off on Newsletter December 2018

Newsletter September 2018

Posted on 30 September, 2018 by Grant

In this newsletter:

Mojave Compatibility

Mojave, the new version of the MacOS, has just been released.

Our testing has not turned up any incompatibilities with MoneyWorks 8 on Mojave. We would still advise, as ever, to wait for a point update of Mojave before installing rather than being a guinea pig with a mission critical system. Note that MoneyWorks 8 does not support the new Dark Mode.

Mojave also further restricts the ability of applications to communicate with each other. This means that when you first ask MoneyWorks to send an email via Apple Mail, you will get a permission request.

Mojave Security Alert

You should click OK. The very first time an email is created in Apple Mail at the request of another application, the attachment will fail to attach. Apple Mail has suffered from this bug for many years. The workaround is just to close the message and send again from MoneyWorks. It should work fine after that first failure.

If you click Don’t Allow in the above dialog, MoneyWorks will not be able to create messages in Mail for you. If you inadvertently do that, you can grant the permission later by going to System Preferences ➝ Security & Privacy ➝ Privacy ➝ Automation and clicking the checkbox next to Mail for MoneyWorks.

Mojave Security Alert

Note that, if you are automating other apps from MoneyWorks (or indeed, from anywhere else), you may need to go through a similar process.

Accountech.live – Melbourne

Accountech.live is a special expo for accounting professionals being held in Melbourne (Australia) on November 13-14, and MoneyWorks will be there showing its unique extensibility and cloud features. So if you are in Victoria and know of “open-minded accountants, bookkeepers & advisors in practice who are passionate about delivering exceptional value to their clients and bringing about positive change for a digital future” (to quote the organisers), make sure to tell them to visit the MoneyWorks stand at the show. Full details are available at accountech.live, and we know it will appeal to accountants as they have free admission!

Upcoming Training Courses

We currently have training courses scheduled as follows:

  • Sydney (October 22/23)
  • Auckland (November 21/22)

For more details, or to book your place, see cognito.co.nz/support/training/

Customised Training

In addition to these formal courses, we offer short, targeted on-line training. For example, if you want to find out more about how job costing can work for you, what scripts can do, how to change an invoice layout, or are unsure of how multi-currency works, then a time can be arranged to show you. For details please contact admin@cognito.co.nz

MoneyWorks 8.1.4r1

The current version of MoneyWorks is 8.1.4r1, which was released on 24th August. If you are using an earlier version, please update as this addresses a number of issues discovered in previous versions.

Tips du Jour

Hiding old Codes

Over time, the products and services that you provide will change, and you don’t want your choices lists or drop down list cluttered with items that are no longer used. To hide these, simply change the code so that it starts with a tilde ~ character, for example from BA100 to ~BA100. All the historic data pertaining to the item will still be there, but the item will no longer be available for selection. The same philosophy applies to customer and supplier codes, and to general ledger codes.

Note that Datacentre users must be in Single User Mode to be able to change a code in this manner. This is because changing a code may also involve updating a large number of related transactions to reflect the change. This means that you (a) must be the only user of the system, and (b) must hold down the Option key (Mac) or the Ctrl key (Windows) when you double-click the item to modify it.

Combining GST/VAT reports

When you make a mistake and finalise your GST/VAT report too early, as in the query below, it’s not the end of the world:

“Silly me … I finalised my GST report without double checking 🙁 and realised that some of the transactions hadn’t been posted, so I posted them, then finalised again – and now don’t know what to do to get back – is there anything I can do?”

MoneyWorks lets you combine GST reports, and report the combined results in the appropriate GST/VAT guide, thus picking up the information from both the finalisations done above. For details of how to do this see Printing a GST Report in the MoneyWorks manual.

Note that this feature is also useful if you are having to pay GST/VAT in more than one jurisdiction and the tax cycles do not mesh (for example, most New Zealand businesses are required to report GST every two months, but in Australia it is quarterly). In this scenario you would finalise the GST every month, but then combine the last two for the New Zealand GST, and the last three for Australia.

Got a MoneyWorks Tip to share?

Please send it into us at admin@cognito.co.nz

Posted in News | Comments Off on Newsletter September 2018

Newsletter March 2018

Posted on 31 March, 2018 by Grant

In this newsletter:

New MoneyWorks Mobile App

MoneyWorksGo Home screen
Selecting a customer

A new, free MoneyWorks mobile app for iOS is now available from the MoneyWorks Add-on Store. Although designed for an iPad, it is quite workable on an iPhone, and has the following capabilities:

  • Run any (authorised) report.
  • Customer management
    • Customer dashboard showing balances and historic purchases.
    • Retrieve any invoice for a customer.
    • Update customer details.
  • Enter new quote, sales order or sales invoice, with option to capture customer signature.
  • Record time and materials used on a job.
  • Do stock count with option to use iPad/iPhone camera as scanner
  • Record expense claim, with photo of docket/receipt.

The app works with MoneyWorks Datacentre 8.1 or later, or MoneyWorks Now, and data entered on the device can be sent live back to MoneyWorks. It is pre-configured to talk to a sample file in Brisbane, Australia, but you can easily reconfigure it for your own Datacentre or MoneyWorks Now file.

Note that when using the App with MoneyWorks Datacentre, it will use one of your user licences, and fail if this is not available. Guaranteed access for multiple users can be achieved with a special REST licence key. For use with MoneyWorks Now a REST multi-user key is required — for details of this please contact admin@cognito.co.nz

MoneyWorks Now expands to Singapore

Good news for businesses in Singapore and Malaysia who are looking for industrial-strength cloud accounting and ERP: we have recently commissioned a MoneyWorks Now Node in Singapore. People in Singapore/Malaysia who prefer to use the public cloud instead of the private cloud offered by an in-house MoneyWorks Datacentre should contact Mike Ong at LedgerWorks for more information.

NZ IRD AIM Initiative

We are working with the New Zealand IRD to implement both the AIM initiative and the electronic filing of GST returns direct from MoneyWorks Gold/Datacentre. For those not familiar with AIM, it is, to quote the IRD:

AIM is designed to fit better within the existing and ordinary processes of a business and is more reflective of the current year to date financial performance of a business.

Under AIM, provisional tax is integrated into business processes and payment amounts are based on current year tax adjusted income. This should provide businesses using AIM with more certainty that they are paying the right amount of tax as it will be paid as income is earned.

AIM is not compulsory, and indeed may in practice incur significant addtional accountancy fees. At this stage we are unable to give an implementation date, but will advise availability in a future newsletter.

Upcoming Training Courses

We currently have training courses scheduled as follows:

  • Auckland (March 20/21)
  • Sydney (April 18/19)

For more details, or to book your place, see cognito.co.nz/support/training/

End of Year Processing

With the financial end-of-year approaching in a number of countries, it could be a good time to review the What should I do at the end of the Financial Year post in the MoneyWorks forum. If you are using stock/inventory, the one thing you should remember to do at the end of business on the last day of the year is to start the MoneyWorks Stocktake, which takes a snapshot of your current stock holding and values.

MoneyWorks 8.1.2

The current version of MoneyWorks is 8.1.2, which was released on 25th January. If you are using an earlier version, please update as this addresses a number of issues discovered in previous versions.

Tips du Jour

Using Subscriptions to Advantage

The MoneyWorks Subscription service allows you to get MoneyWorks licences on a monthly basis, so is great if you have a sudden glut of work, or an unexpected visit from the tax department. Examples:

  • You have Datacentre, but need an additional user for just a month or two.
  • Simply subscribe to a MoneyWorks Gold (which will act as a client to your existing Datacentre).
  • You have purchased MoneyWorks Gold, but need an additional user for a short period.
  • Subscribe to a single user MoneyWorks Datacentre for the period. Your existing Gold will act as a concurrent second user.

Finding Backdated Transactions

Sometimes, you need to find transactions entered after a certain date, but dated before that date (a question that your accountant might have). These are easily found using the Backdated Transaction report, available under Reports>Audit>Backdated Transactions.

Reinstalling MoneyWorks

If for some reason you need to reinstall MoneyWorks, you can download the installer from the MoneyWorks Trial page. Choose the correct version from the pop-up menu, which includes installers for obsolete versions of MoneyWorks, going back to MoneyWorks 5. Note that older versions of MoneyWorks may not run on newer operating systems (and you need MoneyWorks 8 for High Sierra, the latest MacOS). Having installed MoneyWorks, you just need to activate it by entering your serial number into Help>Enter Serial (you can retrieve your serial number from the same place on your old installation).

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Prompt Payment Discounts in the UK

Posted on 10 April, 2015 by Grant

The handling of VAT on prompt payment discounts (PPD) in the UK changed from 1st April 2015, essentially making it the same as most other countries.

MoneyWorks 7 users do not need an update to do this. Instead simply change the PPD Settings in the Document Preferences of MoneyWorks (accessible under the Edit menu) from the old UK settings (the third option) to the first option, as shown below.

MoneyWorks Prompt Payment Discount settings for UK after April 2015

You will also need to make your PPD expense account taxable (i.e. give the it standard V tax code).

Note that you are also required to include text with the following meaning on the invoice.

A discount of x% of the full price applies if payment is made within n days. No credit note will be issued. Following payment you must ensure you have only recovered the VAT actually paid.

The easiest way to do this is to just have the text in the message area of the invoice. Alternatively you can customise the invoice to have the text “hard wired”.

Important: If you are paying/receipting an invoice that has a PPD that is dated before the 1st April, you will need to temporarily reset the preferences back to the old UK option (and the tax code on the PPD expense account) in order for the discount to be applied correctly and the correct VAT calculated.

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MoneyWorks Accounting for Schools training courses

Posted on 9 March, 2015 by Grant

Accounting for schools has always been a major strength for MoneyWorks, with hundreds of schools in Asia and Australasia using MoneyWorks for their school financials.

The features that particularly appeal to schools are the departmental accounting (cost centre accounting), and the powerful report writers that are built into MoneyWorks.

Over April and May, we’re having a series of courses that are specifically oriented for school administrators. Presented by Peter Cook, a long term MoneyWorks Consultant with special expertise in school accounting, these are a must for any schools that are using or considering using MoneyWorks. For further details please visit the Training courses.

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Ostendo release MoneyWorks Integration

Posted on 24 July, 2014 by Grant

Ostendo is “Operational Software” that includes advanced features for inventory, manufacturing and jobbing, and which now offers seamless, real-time integration with MoneyWorks Datacentre. In effect, Ostendo becomes an operational front end to MoneyWorks, adding powerful functionality for distribution, engineering and manufacturing, including:

  • Serial Number/Batch Tracking
  • Inventory and Purchasing
  • Landed Costing
  • MRP and Inventory Replenishment
  • Enhanced Job Costing and Projects
  • Labour, Timesheets and Job Tracking (includes Constraints Scheduling)
  • Distribution, POS and Service (includes Asset Preventive Maintenance)
  • CRM, Call Centre and Quoting
  • Manufacturing and Assembly
  • Configured Custom Products including Features and Options

Like MoneyWorks, Ostendo incorporates powerful custom reporting, graphical workflows, advanced scripting, and access from mobile devices, thus allowing for a high level of customisation to meet specific user requirements. For more information, visit www.ostendo.info or call +64-9-525-3612.

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MoneyWorks Tops Accounting Reviews

Posted on 14 July, 2014 by Grant

MoneyWorks Gold 7 was named “top choice” in a recent review of accounting systems in the USA, beating out QuickBooks and AccountEdge (formerly MYOB), and earning 4.5 points out of a possible 5. To read the full article, click here

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Importing Bills of Materials

Posted on 19 December, 2013 by Grant

It’s been possible to import a bill of materials (BOM) into MoneyWorks since about MoneyWorks 3. However it always had to be done using some sort of script (AppleScript on Mac, vbScript on Windows), as there is no user interface for it in MoneyWorks.

However it is relatively easy to add an Import command by using a Report Script, and this also has the benefit of being cross-platform (Report Scripts were covered in this earlier post).

The sample report script below will read a text file consisting of three columns (no headings):

  • Parent Item Code: The item code of the product that is being built
  • Quantity: The quantity used of the component
  • Component Item Code: The item code of the component used

The line of the text file must contain these three values (no blank rows), and the file can be either tab or comma delimited (you specify when the report script it run). Note that you cannot edit an existing bill of materials for an item; it is completely replaced by the components and quantities specified in the file (which must be ordered by Parent Item Code). Also note that no checking is done: if the items or components do not exist (or cannot be used in a BOM) the import will silently fail.

To act as a report script, the “Import Bills of Material.crep” file must be placed in your MoneyWorks Custom Plug-ins/Scripts folder (unzip it first). You can then run it by choosing “Import Bills of Material” from the Command menu in MoneyWorks Gold/Datacentre (requires MoneyWorks 7 or later).

Download

Import Bills of Material.crep.zip

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MoneyWorks 7 Unicode support

Posted on 15 November, 2013 by Rowan

Up until now, MoneyWorks has used the native “code page” text encoding for the platform it is running on, and as these are different on Mac and Windows, accented characters have not translated between platforms, and support for special characters has been limited. In v7, all text is encoded as Unicode, so the full gamut of non-Roman and accented characters, ideographs, and other special symbols can now be entered into the database and are preserved across platforms. Files created on earlier versions will be converted when first opened in v7 (and if the file contains accented text, be sure to do the conversion on the same platform that the file has been used on, since that platform’s default pre-unicode encoding is what the file uses).

If you’re not accustomed to using accented characters, here a few tips for typing some common accents on a standard “US”-style keyboard.

Mac (using the US, Australian, or UK keyboards):

To get acute and grave, type option-e or option-`, then the vowel you want to receive the accent. E.g. for é, type option-e then e. For è, type option-` then e. Here are a few more:

              for       type…	
               à	option-`, a	
               ç	option-c	 
               è	option-`, e	 
               é	option-e, e	
               ê	option-i, e	 
               ë	option-u, e
               î	option-i, i	
               ï	option-u, i	
               ô	option-i, o	
               ù	option-`, u	
               û	option-i, u	
               ü	option-u, u	  
               ñ	option-n, n

If you are running Lion, Mountain Lion, or Mavericks, you can just hold down the key you want an accent on, and a popup will give you the options:

Screen shot 2013-11-10 at 11.55.11 AM

Press the digit key for the character you want.

Windows (using the US, Australian, or UK keyboards):

For the occasional accent, and without changing your keyboard settings, you can type the “alt code” for the character you want. Here’s how:

  • Hold down the left-hand ALT key;
  • On the numeric keypad, type the 4-digit alt-code for the character you want;
  • Release the ALT key.
                        code		                code
               à	0224	               À	0192
               ç	0231	               Ç	0199
               è	0232	               È	0200
               é	0233	               É	0201
               ê	0234	               Ê	0202
               ë	0235	               Ë	0203
               î	0238	               Î	0206
               ï	0239	               Ï	0207
               ô	0244	               Ö	0212
               ù	0249	               Ù	0217
               û	0251	               Û	0219
               ü	0252	               Ü	0220

If you need to type quite a few accents, you might want to consider using the US International keyboard. See Using US-Int’l Keyboard Layout to Type Accented Characters.

Macrons for Māori

For our New Zealand users, who may need to type Māori long vowels, here’s how:

First, enable the Maori keyboard:

  • Mac OS X 10.6—10.8:
    System Preferences → Language and Text → Input Sources. Scroll down the input methods and click the check box next to Maori, and make sure the option “Show Input menu in menu bar” is turned on.
  • Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks):
    System Preferences → Keyboard → Input Sources. Click the +, select Maori from the list of input methods and click Add. Make sure the option “Show Input menu in menu bar” is turned on.

Now you can select the Maori keyboard from the menu next to the time in the menu bar. With this keyboard selected, just type option-a, option-e, option-u etc to get ā, ē, ū, …

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MoneyWorks 7: Easier, faster search

Posted on 1 November, 2013 by Rowan

MoneyWorks 7 is now available, so we’ll be posting some articles on how to make the most of the new features.

While Moneyworks has always had quite powerful searching, it was not sufficiently accessible to users who did not know which field they wanted to search on. These days people are used to near-instant results from a browser search bar. So that is what we now provide. The new search field in the toolbar does a fast asynchronous full-text search (including sticky notes and transaction details).

The Cmd-F or Ctrl-F keyboard shortcut now activates the search box in the toolbar. Just type a word and MoneyWorks instantly starts searching the full text of the records in the list. As usual, the search applies to the current view, and the currently selected filter, if any. For moderately-sized data files, the search will be instant. For very large files, it may take a little longer, but results will be added to the list as they are found, and you can continue working as the search proceeds.


The new search box. The filter popup is on the left; type in your search term.

For users who want more control over searching, the usual Find by Field and Find by Formula are still available. Just press Cmd-option-F (Mac) or Ctrl-Shift-F (Windows) to bring up the usual search dialog. This mode of searching has also been improved for network users: Even very complex searches are now performed entirely on the server, for faster results and less network and server load.

For more details on the new searching, see Finding Records using the Search Box in the new online manual (Yep, the entire MoneyWorks 7 manual is available on the web).

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