How to Setup and Use Automatic Bond Reconciliation

Overview

The Automatic Bond Reconciliation makes it easier to manage the bonds held in your trust account. Rest Professional displays the bonds receipted on the screen and allows you to pay them to the Bond Authority in one step instead of posting each bond as a separate disbursement. The feature may be set up for AABONDR, AABONDC or both internal bond accounts. Once the Auto Bond Payments is setup, you must receipt bonds in rent receipts and disburse bonds from the Bond Payments function. You may not sundry receipt or use the other disbursement functions to post receipts or payments to the bond

You have a bond held report that shows you what is being held in the internal bond accounts at any time.

This document will cover:

• What to do prior to Setup

• How to Setup Automatic Bond Payments

• How to Payout Bond Disbursements

• Points to Remember

What to do prior to Setup

1. This feature can only be enabled directly after a Files Update and before any bond transactions are entered in the current month.

2. You need to reconcile your Bond Ledger AABONDR for Residential and AABONDC for Commercial and have a list of those tenants whose bonds are currently being held in these ledgers

NOTE: NT sites that hold all bonds internally should print off a Bonds Held List and verify that this balances to the internal Bond Ledgers.  This will also apply to those sites that have a separate Bonds Trust Account and do not use a Bond Board

Ensure a default Creditor has been setup for your bonds.   Normally this is your Rental Bond Authority and most likely has been setup already if you have been paying bonds out through creditor disbursements

 How to Setup Automatic Bond Payments

1. Ensure all users are out of REST.You can check users that are logged in by going to Other > Active User List

2. Ensure that you have the highest level of security as this is required to access System Options

3. Go to Other > Utilities > System Options > System tab

4. In the Auto Bond Reconciliation field, click on the drop down menu and choose Residential, Commercial or Both as required

5. This will now bring up the Bond Auto Configuration screen – this will default to Residential first

6. Click Select Bond List type and choose form the drop down box Select List

7. Enter the tenant details (if their bond monies are held internally). Once completed, the amount of tenants selected should equal the amount of monies held in AABONDR.

8. If you select List All every tenant will be loaded into the grid.

 NOTE: Normally this will only be done in the NT or for those sites that have a separate Bonds Trust Account

9. If you choose Select List you will need to enter each tenant’s ALPHA code to assign the amount being held.You will most likely use this method if you transfer bonds to your Bond Authority each month; work from your AABONDR or AABONDC ledger printed earlier.Once all selected and balanced click process

10. If you have set your system option to say BOTH you will then be taken into setting up the Bond Auto Configuration for Commercial – follow the same process as for Residential and process

11. You will then be taken back to your system options to enter your default creditor.If you know the name of the bond creditor, put in the alpha index and press Enter or simply click on Enter and select the creditor from the list

12. Click OK-F12

 How to Payout Bond Disbursements

1. Go to Transactions > Bond Disbursement

2. Select the bond/s to be paid out and change criteria as required

3. Select the tick box for bond/s to be paid out

4. Click on Process Payments Now or Add to Creditor run

5. Click Process

6. Proceed to paying out the creditor by following the prompts and creating an ABA file for upload to bank if paid by EFT

 NOTE: We recommend immediately importing the ABA file into your software to avoid the file being overwritten.

For more information on how to process bond disbursements, please see document "How to Process a Bond Disbursement" 

Points to Remember

• Once you have activated this feature, you will no longer be able to enter sundry receipts directly into the internal bond ledgers or do quick disbursements. All receipts are entered via the other tab in tenant rent receipts.

• You will still be able to do journal from and to the bond ledger but will be required to enter a tenant alpha code.

• The Tenant detail screen now has a Bond Held field and you can print a report of these bonds held through Reports > Tenant > Bond Held Report

• If you have set up both Residential and Commercial you can select which account you require by clicking on the field Select Bond Account.This will default to Residential

• Rest defaults to paying the full amount of bond to your default Creditor but both these options can be changed

• The amount to disburse can be changed by clicking on amount to pay and change to the partial amount.This would be the case if bond was to be disbursed to tenant and owner (i.e./ tenant $800 owner $1200)

• You can amend the payee field.Click on payee and then click the grey box

• If you do not want to pay the default creditor just enter the alpha code of your chosen creditor and press Enter.You can also overtype the description to include invoice number

• Once you have selected tick the white box next to payee and tick process- you may do all tenants at once or individually

• If your Bond Authority directly debited the money directly from your trust account, this can be reflected in REST by doing a cheque to the bond authority using the cheque number 999999 once this appears on your bank statement as a debit