The Daily Balance feature of the MIPS Treasurer application is designed to facilitate balancing of bank account balances, cash on hand, checks, and electronic payments against any beginning balances and the collections and disbursements recorded in the system. It is designed to be utilized on a daily basis, but can also be used less frequently if balancing once a week, or twice a month is preferred.
To start using the Daily Balance feature, the system needs to know about any bank accounts used by the county. These can be entered under Edit Banks in the Checks menu. Once all the accounts that need to be tracked are entered, the beginning balance can then be established. Cantact MIPS to finish this process.
Once the beginning balances have been set, it's time to create the first Daily Balance record. To do this, select the balance date at the top of the Daily Balance screen, then click Begin. This will calculate the collections and disbursements from the previous balance date to the balance date chosen. These calculated values will be displayed at the bottom of the screen. The top half of the screen is reserved for any county accounts and user entered amounts. This is an opportunity to populate any beginning balances on any of those accounts before entering any electronic payments, deposits, or withdrawals.
The purpose of this screen is to make sure the account balances plus any cash and checks from the top half of the screen should match what the system reports is the grand total on the bottom half of the screen. Once balanced, the two numbers should match.
Once the sum of the accounts, cash, and checks matches the system total, the system considers the day balanced and the record can then be Finalized. Currently, once a day has been finalized it cannot be modified again since all subsequent days depend on the prior day for a previous balance. Likewise, a new balance day cannot be started without finalizing the previous balance date.
The collection entry screen can be utilized to categorize money into tender types and/or specific groups. This helps separate certain values on the Daily Summary sheet and may facilitate tracking down potential errors, but it is not required to utilize the daily balance feature. Instead, lump sums of cash, check, and electronic payments could be entered.
To enter collections, start by typing or selecting a group name for categorizing the collection. Then select the tender type (and bank account if entering an electronic collection), enter a description, and the dollar amount. Clicking Add on this screen will add a new collection entry into the group specified. Each group will display totals for Cash, Check, and Electronic payments. The grand totals of all the collections entered are displayed at the bottom of the screen. Electronic payments entered here also get totaled by account on the Daily Balance screen.
The accounts portion of the Daily Balance screen is populated using the County Accounts portion of your Bank records. If a new account needs to be added, this can be done from the Edit Banks screen under the Checks menu. For more information on setting up banks and county accounts, refer to the Check Writing page.
