The purpose of this tool is to generate an amortisation schedule for financed equipment, and where a cloud accounting package is connected to the applicable client within AccountKit, automatically bring to account the interest to account to reconcile the balance each month.
- The Equipment Finance list page
- General Variables & Input Fields
- Variables & Input Fields specific to Irregular Repayments
- Before you start...
- Bulk import of schedules
- How to create a new finance schedule (with no connected accounting software)
- How to create an existing Equipment Finance schedule (Connected to a cloud accounting package)
- How to create a new Equipment Finance schedule (Connected to a cloud accounting package)
- How to create an irregular Equipment Finance schedule
- How to fix an out of balance finance schedule
- How to handle one off events (cancel, payout or refinance)
- Posting journals & automation
The Equipment Finance List Page
Area |
Description |
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1
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Create new Equipment Finance Schedule | Select this to start the process of creating a brand new equipment finance schedule. |
2
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Filter, Actions & Client Group![]() |
This area has 3 components
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3
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The list... | This is a snapshot of all current Equipment Finances running within your practice and their current status.
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4
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Actions Column | These are the actions available to you for each equipment finance line.
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General Variables & Input Fields
Variable Name |
Description |
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1
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Asset Details | This area identifies the core elements of the equipment finance:
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2
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Purchase and Deposit Details | This area will only appear if “Existing Agreement” is not ticked. It enables the original purchase and finance entry to be created within the accounting software.
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3
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Finance Details | Here you define the details associated with the finance and where relevant, identify the accounts the interest and liability are to be posted to.
Results – These will calculate automatically once the Variables have been completed
NOTE: Which accounts are visible here and in the schedule depends on your default settings, but can be edited under the action menu to show other accounts if you split between Current / Non-Current and Unexpired Interest Charges.
Tracking options – If you have tracking options turned on in Xero, this will appear for you to choose from.
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4
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Repayment Schedule |
This shows the timing of each payment and the applicable interest component, accumulative interest and balance at any point. The
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5
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Annual Summary | This shows an annual summary of the schedule balances for referring to. |
Variables & Input Fields Specific to Irregular Finance
Most elements of the equipment finance screen is relatively similar whether you select irregular repayments or not, but there are some key differences to the available fields and your associated workflow, per below.
Variable | Description | |||
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1
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Ownership, Contact and Asset Details | Select this check box to enable irregular repayments
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2
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Finance Details | A number of the variables have been removed since things like the payment dates and amounts are all defined in the table below and the interest rate automatically calculated. The "build schedule" button has been exchanged for a "Calculate Interest" button. Since we'll be building out the schedule manually, all we need do is calculate the applicable interest and how it's apportioned over the life of the loan. |
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3
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Repayment Schedule | The ![]() |
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4
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Repayment Schedule Actions | Once payments have been added to the schedule, use the following action icons as follows:
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Before you Start
So you can get through the process of setting up a schedule in one efficient sitting, there are some steps you should do first before commencing the process.
- Setup the applicable interest and expense account within your accounting software.
- If the client has an online accounting package like Xero, first ensure you’ve connected them to AccountKit by going to the applicable client page. Then click on the applicable Integration icon to trigger a process to connect and download the client data into AccountKit;
- Until this process has finished, you won't be able to initiate any connected tools for that client - you will be notified once complete.
- See here for more details about connecting and disconnecting from Xero
- Ensure you have on hand the equipment finance details along with the invoice for the purchase of the equipment.
- Where you know there’s been a deposit paid, identify which account this has been posted to within the accounting software.
- If it’s a pre-existing finance arrangement from prior years, identify the date the account was last reconciled; AccountKit will start posting interest from this date.
Set your default finance tool settings
Review your practice settings to ensure the default settings for the equipment finance tool are how you like to process the various purchase and interest journals.
- Automatically post client equipment finance interest journals to Xero each period:
- As the description would imply, in the event that you don't want AccountKit to automatically post the interest journals each period, simple turn this function off here.
- Accounting Treatment
- Account for unexpired interest - for when you need to gross up the liability and separate the unexpired interest charges to a different account. Requires the following accounts
- Non-current liability account - Gross balance
- Allocate your payments to this account.
- Non-current liability account - Unexpired Interest balance
- Interest journals are journaled from this account.
- Non-current liability account - Gross balance
- Account for current / non-current entries - enables you to automatically split your liabilities between current and non-current liabilities upon purchase; Each interest journal then re-assigns the next transaction within the 12 month period so that you always have the next 12 months within the current liability accounts. Requires the following accounts
- Current liability account - Next 12 months Net balance
- Allocate your payments to this account.
- Current interest journals post from this account.
- Next 12 months net balance is journaled to this account
- Non-current liability account - Net balance over and beyond 12 months
- Next 12 months net balance is journaled from this account
- Current liability account - Next 12 months Net balance
- Both above options are toggled on - this facilitates splitting the non-current and current liabilities between the gross liability amount and unexpired interest. Requires the following accounts.
- Current liability account - Next 12 months Gross balance
- Allocate your payments to this account.
- Next 12 months Gross balance is journaled to this account (ie. the payment amount due in 12 months)
- Current liability account - Next 12 months Unexpired Interest balance
- Current interest journals post from this account.
- Next 12 months interest figure is journaled to this account
- Non-current liability account - Gross balance over and beyond 12 months
- Next 12 months Gross balance is journaled from this account
- Non-current liability account - Unexpired Interest balance for the period beyond 12 months.
- Next 12 months interest figure is journaled from this account
- Current liability account - Next 12 months Gross balance
- Account for unexpired interest - for when you need to gross up the liability and separate the unexpired interest charges to a different account. Requires the following accounts
- Show purchase journal on cash basis reports:
- Enables you to define whether any purchase journals posted from within an equipment finance journal is to show on cash basis reports or not.
- Show interest journal on cash basis reports
- Enables you to define whether any interest journals posted from within an equipment finance journal is to show on cash basis reports or not.
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Note that the finance tool settings can be overwritten on a per schedule basis under the Actions -> Settings menu option. |
Bulk Import of Schedules
If you would like to bring in a number of schedules in one go, you have the option to import a spreadsheet with the basic details to speed up the process.
To commence the process, simply go to the Action Menu on the Equipment Finance List Page and select "Import from Excel".
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At this point we only support the import of regular equipment finance schedules. Irregular schedules will need to be created manually using the normal process identified in this help guide. |
Steps | Description | |||
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1
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Download the Template | We've prepared a simple Excel (.xlsx) template that you can fill in ready for import. Select the "Download The Template" link and save the template to somewhere you'll easily find afterwards, such as the Downloads folder. |
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2
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Enter the Details into the Template | Fill in the details identified by the column names with each finance schedule on its own line. Make sure to delete Row 2 which is just an example for you to work from and get an idea of what to enter in each field.
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3
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Upload the Completed Template | Select the "Choose File" button and browse to where you have saved the import file. Once selected, press "Import" to commence the import process. |
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4
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Review and resolve any errors. | Once uploaded we will do a series of cross-checks to ensure the data is valid. If any errors are found with the data, the import will stop and either one of the following two things will happen.
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5
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Review the imported schedules and finalise. | We now recommend that you open up each of the imported equipment finance schedules and carry out the following actions.
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How to create a finance schedule (with no connected accounting software)
There are plenty of times where clients aren’t connected to a cloud accounting package, but where you’ll still want to create a schedule for manually preparing journals into your ledger software. In this instance, it's simply a matter of building a schedule and exporting to PDF for reconciling against.
- Open the Equipment Finance tool and select “Create new Equipment Finance Schedule” from the top.
- The new equipment finance schedule will open, first of all, prompting you to choose a client.
- You can now select the applicable client, add in a description about the asset being purchased before selecting the “Continue” button.
- Complete the variables in the Finance Details section based on the original finance contract. Items which are mandatory are marked with an “*”.
- The results will then auto-populate based on the variables that you’ve entered which you can check back against the original details to ensure they’re correct.
- Now complete the “Accounts” section by selecting a loan account and an interest paid account from the client's chart of accounts in Xero.
- Once these details have been completed, click on “save” to save the Equipment Finance schedule details to the relevant client.
- This will then prompt a button labeled “Build Schedule.” Click on this to build the schedule and scroll down to view it.
- Skip between the “Repayment Schedule” and “Annual Schedule” for a quick comparison of the current balance and end of financial year balance if required.
- Now you can print the schedule to your client file for future reference.
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If you’re using Xero Ledger, you can still connect AccountKit for posting your interest journals for the year; It’s just a matter of coding your clients movements to the applicable ledger account (which will represent all payments made for the year), then AccountKit can post the interest journals and check that they match. This isn't ideal though as you'll end up without of balances every single month, so better at this point to flag for not reconciling with Xero. Note also, that the build schedule button won't activate until all of the required variables are filled in. |
How to create an Existing Equipment Finance schedule (Connected to a cloud accounting package)
Utilise this process when you've previously been reconciling the loan in your accounting software; So typically you would apply this when you've previously reconciled to the end of financial year OR where you've started a client within your cloud accounting software throughout the year.
- Open the Equipment Finance tool and select “Create new Equipment Finance Schedule” from the top.
- The new equipment finance schedule will open, first of all, prompting you to choose a client.
- If the clients accounting software is connected to AccountKit, you will be able to select the “Refresh Account List” button to pull in the account details.
- Once you’ve selected a client, a tick box will appear labeled “Existing Agreement” – In this instance, ensure “Existing Agreement” is selected.
- Upon selecting this tick box, a new field labeled “Conversion Date” will appear. Complete this with the date of the last reconciled balance within your client's accounting software that you would like AccountKit to start posting interest journals from.
- Enter a description for the equipment finance and choose “Continue”.
- Ensure there’s an adequate description to make it easy to identify for future reference.
- Optionally fill in the Registration No and Contract No fields if you wish.
- Complete the variables in the Finance Details section based on the original finance contract. Items which are mandatory are marked with a “*”.
- The results will then auto-populate based on the variables that you’ve entered which you can check back against the original details to ensure they’re correct.
- Now complete the “Accounts” section by selecting a loan account and an interest paid to an account from the client's chart of accounts. (see the info section below for more details)
- Once these details have been completed, click on “save” to save the Equipment Finance schedule details to the relevant client.
- This will then prompt a button labeled “Build Schedule.” Click on this to build the schedule and scroll down to view it.
- If the previously reconciled balance in Xero does not match the schedule, the
will appear. Selecting this will give you the ability to post and adjustment to correct the balance.
- Choose the date to post - it defaults to the conversion date. But if you need it to be after this date (eg. conversion at 30/06 but need to adjust on 01/07 if the financials for the year are already complete).
- It will calculate the adjusting entries for you and allocate the difference to the interest account, which you can then change if you need to.
- You'll now note a small (i) icon where you can cross check the date that the adjustment was posted and therefore the balance that AccountKit is showing and why it may differ from Xero.
- If you scroll down, you will see an an
icon in the Action Column with the option to “Post Journal”.
- Note that you’ll only see this from the point that you identified your equipment finance schedule was last reconciled in the initial steps.
- For example, if you selected that your equipment finance schedule has a conversion balance (ie. last reconciled) was 30/06/2016, you won’t be given the option to post an interest journal until July 2016.
- Click on the
Post Journal icon in the Action column to post the interesting journal into your accounting software.
- At this point, the repayment schedule will show a comparative balance for you to cross check against your repayment schedule balance.
- It will be green if it’s reconciled or red if it’s not.
- You have an option then, to void the journal at any point by selecting the
icon.
- You can also jump between the “Repayment Schedule” and “Annual Schedule” for a quick comparison of the current balance and end of financial year balance if required.
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Note that the "Build Schedule" button will not activate until the mandatory variables are entered, including the Xero accounts (required to retrieve the applicable balances). |
How to create a New Equipment Finance schedule (Connected to a cloud accounting package)
- Open the Equipment Finance tool and select “create new Equipment Finance Schedule” from the top.
- The new equipment finance schedule will open, first of all, prompting you to choose a client.
- If the clients accounting software is connected to AccountKit, you will be able to select the “Refresh Account List” button to pull in the account details.
- Once you’ve selected a client, a tick box will appear labelled “Existing Agreement” – In this instance, ensure “Existing Agreement” is left unticked.
- Enter a description for the equipment finance and choose “Continue”.
- Ensure there’s an adequate description to make it easy to identify for future reference.
- Optionally fill in the Registration No and Contract No fields if you wish.
- Within the new “Purchase and Deposit” area, click on “Add new purchase or deposit line” to enter the relevant equipment finance purchase details. You can create as many line items as required until the total matches the amount that has been financed.
- Check that the Amount Includes Tax is set to the correct setting.
- Where there’s been a deposit paid, enter it as a negative and select the applicable account for where the deposit was originally allocated to.
- Ensure that you click on the disk icon from the “Actions” column to save each purchase or deposit line.
- Once completed, scroll down and you’ll note that the “Amount Financed” field is now updated based on the data entered. Cross check that this matches the amount financed.
- Complete the remaining variables in the Finance Details section based on the original finance contract. Items which are mandatory are marked with a “*”.
- The results will then auto-populate based on the variables that you’ve entered.
- Now complete the “Accounts” section by selecting the loan and interest paid account from the client's chart of accounts. (see the info section below for more details)
- Once these details have been completed, click on “save” to save the details of the Equipment Finance schedule to the relevant client.
- Once saved, you’ll be able to click on the buttons “Post Purchase Journal” which will post a journal into your client's accounting software with the purchase, crediting the relevant loan account with the financed amount.
- You can now select “Build Schedule” to create your equipment finance schedule.
- You’ll now see an
icon in the status column giving you an option to post your interest journals.
- Note that you’ll only be given this option after the date of the repayment has occurred.
- You’ll now see an
- Click on the
icon to post the interest journal into your accounting software (or leave it and if auto posting is enabled in practice settings it will post overnight), at which point the repayment schedule will show the balance in Xero and cross check against your repayment schedule balance. It will you will be presented with a green
if it’s reconciled or a red
if it’s not.
- You have an option to then void the journal at any point by selecting the
icon.
- You can also jump between the “Repayment Schedule” and “Annual Schedule” for a quick comparison of the current balance and end of financial year balance if required.
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Note that the "Build Schedule" button will not activate until the mandatory variables are entered, including the Xero accounts (required to retrieve the applicable balances). |
How to create an Irregular Equipment Finance schedule
Creating an irregular repayment schedule is similar to creating an ordinary finance schedule for the initial steps. Here we outline the elements unique to irregular repayments
- Open the Equipment Finance tool and select “create new Equipment Finance Schedule” from the top.
- The new equipment finance schedule will open, first of all, prompting you to choose a client.
- Once you’ve selected a client, two tick boxes will appear – one which is labelled “Existing Agreement” and the other which is labelled “Amounts Include Tax” – In this instance, ensure “Existing Agreement” is left unticked and press “Continue”.
- Within the new “Purchase and Deposit” area, click on “Add new purchase or deposit line” to enter the relevant equipment finance purchase details. You can create as many line items as required until the total matches the amount that has been financed.
- Where there’s been a deposit paid, enter it as a negative and select the applicable account for where the deposit was originally allocated to.
- Ensure that you click on the disk icon from the “Actions” column to save each purchase or deposit line.
- Once completed, scroll down and you’ll note that the “Amount Financed” field is now updated based on the data entered. Cross check that this matches the amount financed.
- Enter the other basic details about the finance with respect to the Financier, Contract Date, Date of First Payment and the Residual Balance.
- Now complete the “Accounts” section by selecting the loan and interest paid account from the client's chart of accounts. (see the info section below for more details)
- Once these details have been completed, click on “save” to save the details of the Equipment Finance schedule to the selected client.
- Select the
icon to bring up the "Add Payment" pop-up window and fill in the details according to how often you want a payment to repeat, keep in mind you can edit and delete them afterwards.
- Repeat the process until a majority of the framework for the payments you want to add to the schedule are in place, then customise them to get exactly what you're after
- You can edit
or delete
any particular line by selecting the applicable icon; This enables you to edit specific payments within a schedule. For example,
- Adding a large one-off payment on the second payment for GST
- Zero out or delete a particular month or two of payments representing the period after harvest.
- Some examples of methods for creating complex schedules include
- 2 Annual payments just in February and March each year - Method: Create two series of annual payments starting in February then, March
- Large one-off GST payment on second payment - Method: Create a monthly schedule over the required number of periods, then edit the second payment to increase it to the full required figure.
- Once you've finished editing the applicable line;
- Select
to save the changes to the line.
- Select
to cancel the changes.
- Select
- You can edit
- Once the applicable details have been entered, the "Calculate Interest" button will enable. Upon activating:
- It will work through and calculate the interest to apply to each payment
- The post journal
and reverse journal
will appear in the Actions column
- The edit and delete options will be hidden.
- Note that you’ll only be given the option to post a journal after the date of the repayment has occurred.
- Click on the
icon to post the interest journal into your accounting software (or leave it and if auto posting is enabled in practice settings it will post overnight), at which point the repayment schedule will show the balance in Xero and cross check against your repayment schedule balance. You will then be presented with a green
if it’s reconciled or a red
if it’s not.
- You have an option to then void the journal at any point.
- You can also jump between the “Repayment Schedule” and “Annual Schedule” for a quick comparison of the current balance and end of financial year balance if required.
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Note that if you change any of the variables or payments, the interest entries will be cleared and you'll need to re-calculate the interest; All entries will be locked the moment the first journal has been posted. |
How to fix an out of balance finance schedule.
- This can about from any number of reasons, all requiring you to enter the accounting software and reviewing the applicable liability account. Three of the most common causes include.
- GST has been applied to loan repayment;
- A loan repayment has been allocated to the wrong account.
- Some other amount has been posted to the liability account.
- Alternatively, you can select the cross to see a pop-up of the transactions between the payment dates
- This may give you a clue as to what the issue may be.
- If you're not sure about a transaction, select the xero icon to go to that transaction in Xero.
- To fix the issue, it’s simply a matter of fixing the above transactional issues within the accounting software, then within AccountKit, just press the refresh button
within the "Repayment Schedule" tab. to refresh the xero data and balances.
How to handle one off events.
One off events are about adjusting the look and behaviour of schedules based on a change that's occurred such as a payout or refinance. Here are the examples that we currently cover.
Start by heading to anywhere on the schedule where the 3 dot menu will appear on the right
- Mouse-over and select the 3 dot context sensitive menu within the schedule.
- Choose the one off event option
Cancel Schedule
Use this event when you simply want to stop posting entries and reporting against a schedule; At this point it's a good idea to simply archive the schedule.
- Select Cancel Schedule to show the applicable fields.
- Identify the date when you would like to cancel the schedule.
- Select Continue
- This will then simply:
- Mark the schedule as Cancelled - no further journals will be posted.
Early Payout of Schedule
Use this event when you have a schedule that has been paid out with a lump sum amount. AccountKit will then process all of the applicable journals and update the schedule accordingly.
- Select Early Payout to show the applicable fields.
- Identify the date and amount of the payout along with the account the payout has been allocated to.
- Select Preview
- Review the content of the proposed journal.
- If all looks to be in order, press the Post button
- This will kick off the process to:
- Journal out the balances to clear all liability accounts back against the payment account, with the net balance allocated to interest.
- Update the schedule to show the revised schedule as at the date of payment.
- Mark the schedule as Paid Out - no further journals will be posted.
Refinance of Schedule
Use this event when you have a schedule that has been refinanced to a new loan. AccountKit will then process all of the applicable journals, update the schedule accordingly and prepare a new schedule.
- Select Refinance Schedule to show the applicable fields.
- Identify and update as follows
- The date and amount of the refinance - the date forms the contract date for the new schedule while the amount of payout is the refinanced amount to clear the old liability.
- Optionally include the borrowing expense here IF this has been included in the funding. There is an option in the new schedule also to add further lines if you would prefer to leave this blank.
- Select Preview
- Review the content of the proposed journal.
- If all looks to be in order, press the Post button
- This will kick off the process to:
- Journal out the balances to clear all liability accounts back against the payment account, with the net balance allocated to interest.
- Update the schedule to show the revised schedule as at the date of payment.
- Mark the schedule as Refinanced - no further journals will be posted.
- The refinanced balance + borrowing expense will then be copied into a new schedule.
- From here it's a matter of treating this new schedule like any other schedule.
- Update the purchase area to align the amount financed if not correct, it will otherwise be populated with the original refinanced field in an non-editable row (we'll be journaling out of this in a moment)
- Then go through and enter the other finance details + accounts;
- Build the schedule;
- Post the purchase journal to re-allocate the refinanced amount between the various liability accounts.
- The new schedule is now good to go!
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Where a schedule isn't set to sync with Xero, each of the above events are the same, they just miss the step of posting journals to Xero. |
Posting of Journals (manual & automated)
Bulk Posting of Journals
There is a number of ways and places to go about posting journals. Where you need to post lots of journals, it's way more effective to choose one of the bulk post options below since many journals can be posted to Xero in one API call.
- Go to the equipment schedule and press the post journal icon
for its line on the schedule. Select from one of the options:
- This journal - just posts the journal for the selected line.
- To selected payment date - posts all journals since the start date / conversion date / last payment date up to the selected date.
- End of schedule - posts all journals from the start / conversion / last payment dates right through to the end of the schedule. (don't worry, these can be bulk voided). The benefit of this is that you have all journals in place ready for tax planning and other future planning.
- From the equipment finance list page, select the post journal icon
button in the action column for each schedule; Select from of the options
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- Current Date - This will post all journals up to and including todays date.
- Other Date - Here you can choose any other date that you'd like the schedule posted to.
Automating your journals
Within the practice settings for the equipment finance tool, you have the option to turn on auto-posting of entries throughout the year. This will post all available journals as at the end of each day.
- Go to your practice settings and turn on the automation option.
- Interest journals only become available to post once the payment date has passed.
- If you're having problems posting interest journals into your accounting software, check to ensure that the period being posted into is unlocked.
- This can then be over-written on a per schedule basis by editing the applicable settings within each schedules action menu.
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Where you select multiple journals to post at once, or AccountKit auto-posts some entries overnight you will receive a notification in the notification strip identifying when the process has been completed and the associated outcomes. From there you can click through to a summary report to identify any schedules that are out of balance so you can click through to fix them. Alternatively, you can access all of the summary reports from the equipment finance list page within the Actions menu. |
Related Links
Menus & Shared Elements | This support article covers all the menus and shared elements used throughout AccountKit |
Document Management System (DMS) | Learn how to connect and manage your DMS |
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