Interest and collection letters - global

Interest and reminders are used when you want to calculate and post interest or send reminder fees to customers. You can find the menu item for this under Accounts receivable/Reports/Interest and reminders

Note! If you do not see the menu item Customer/Reports/Interest and collection letters, it is because the function is turned off in the Interest and collection letters field under Company/Maintenance/Configure application functionality.

Note! You cannot send interest and reminders as OIOUBL/GLN in our standard Uniconta.

Note! If you use the Balance method on your Customers, you cannot send reminders. Here you can use the Account statement.

Videos / Interest notes and Collection Letters

In these videos, you can see how interest and reminder fees and more are added:

Dunning procedure
Accrued interest

Open transactions on Customers

Before calculating interest and reminders, it is recommended that you review all open items on debtor accounts.
This can be done under Customer / Reports / Open transactions by sorting the entries by customer number and then checking if there are Invoices that can be offset against payments.

From the Overview with the open records, you can jump to the Customer with F6 in the Account field and select the Open Records button, where you can settle open records that have not been settled in connection with General journals of Payments, Credit notes etc.

Under Debtor/Reports/Open items you can e.g. group open items by account.
Read more about "Group by" in layouts here.
Read more about equalizations here.

Add interest

• Fill in the Fields From Due date and To Due date and select the Search button to show only the Records you want to attribute Interest to. The From Due date field can be left Empty so that all Records Before To Due date are found.
• Exclude any Records that should not have Interest added using the Discard transaction button or the Filter button
• Select the Add Interest button and enter/fill in the following fields and select OK:
  

  Per date	Selected date to calculate Interest per.
  Interest % (Months)	Enter the desired interest percentage per Month.
  Number of days	In the field, select '30' if the interest percentage is to be calculated on the balance. If the Interest is 1%, the interest amount will be DKK 1.25 if the remaining amount is DKK 125.In the field, select 'Per day' if you want to accrue interest per day. If the Interest is 1% and the DKK 125 has been due for 5 days out of a month of 30 days, the interest is calculated as follows: ((DKK 125 *1%)/30 days) * 5 days = DKK 0.21.
  Per	In the field, select either 'Transactions' or 'Account'. It is recommended to select 'Transactions', as you can choose to collect the Interest per Account when transferring the interest to the accounting journal.

  

• All fields in the list will now have an interest rate calculated in the Fee size field.
  Note! If you want different Interest Percentages for different Running, you need to make multiple filters and run the interest assignment procedure per interest rate.
• Select the button with the small Printer icon in the top right corner to see the Interest notes on Screen so you can flip through them and/or send them to your printer. IMPORTANT! Select No to the prompt if you just want to test-print to the Screen.
• Select the Transfer to Journal button, fill in the fields below and select OK to have the interest amounts transferred to an accounting journal:
  

  Draft	Select which draft the interest should be transferred to
  Offset account	Select which account the interest should be posted to, e.g. select the account you have in your Chart of accounts for 'Interest and Fees Customers'.
  Text	Select a desired Enumerated texts. Enumerated texts are created under General Ledger/
  The date	Select the date to which the Interest should be attributed
  Per	Select 'Transactions' or 'Account' depending on whether you want to transfer the interest item by item or to collect it per Customer. Note! If transferred per 'Account', negative interest on payments and credit notes is also included. If transferred per 'Transactions', only interest amounts on Invoices are transferred, i.e. negative interest amounts on credit notes/payments are NOT transferred to the Journal.

• Select OK to go to the Journal lines and Post journals .
• Go back to the tab you have open with Interest and collection letters and select the Send as e-mail button to send the interest notes by e-mail to your customers. Enter the date of the interest note.
  The Date of latest interest note field is updated with this date when you select the Refresh button.

Dan reminders

Note! It is recommended to create reminders per currency if you want to accrue reminder fees, as reminder fees can only be calculated for one currency at a time.

Note! Notices must be created in chronological order, but you can Select which reminder to Start with. I.e. if you Starts your reminder procedure with a reminder 1, you can specify this when creating notices.
If you have open Customer transactions that have been remindered according to the old way in vers. 89 and earlier, you need to find the Customer's Open transactions and insert the Last notice field and manually fill it with the last notice you have created for this record. This is necessary because the New Collection Letters Function in Uniconta will automatically present the next Notice after this one when this Record is next moved.

• Fill in From Due date and To Due date if necessary and select the Search button on the ribbon
• The overview now shows all open debtor items within the selected due dates
• Exclude the Records you do not want to Notice using the Discard transaction button or by filtering these Records using the Filter button
• Select the Create Collection Letter button and enter/fill in the following fields and select OK:
  

  Per date	Selected date for the Records to be noticed. Note! If there are no more days than the last Notice Letters date + the number of days indicated in the Number of days since last dunning field, the New Notice Letters field will not be filled in on the record, which means that the record will not be collected Letters this time.
  Collection letter fee	Enter a Collection letter fee in the Collection letter fee field if applicable. Marked the Fee on reminder field if you also want to apply a fee to reminders. Note! If you want to assign dunning fees and you have debtors in currencies other than your default currency, you need to dunning all these debtors in a “pile” separately, i.e. filter them first and then enter the desired dunning fee + currency in the field next to the fee. Note! It is optional whether you want reminder fees and collection fees to be added. If you fill in the currency field next to the fees, only open items in the selected currency will have a reminder fee added.
  Collection fee	If applicable, enter a Payment charge in the Payment charge field. Load the description above regarding the Collection letter fee field in relation to Currency etc. You cannot choose to attribute only the collection fee. If you only want to attribute a single fee, it must be the reminder fee.
  Fee on reminders	If this Field is not marked, Fees are not applied to Reminders, but only to the other Collection Letters.
  First collection Letter	The reminder codes are assigned in chronological order, starting with the reminder code selected in this field. For example, if you do not want the First collection Letter created on a Record to be a Reminder, select Collection Letters 1 in this field.
  Per	Select whether customers should be charged Collection letter fees per Transaction or per Account/per reminder code. For example, if there are 3 Open transactions for a Customer and the Fees is set to DKK 100, then a fee of DKK 300 will be added to 'Transactions' (DKK 100 per record), and DKK 100 will be added to 'Accounts' (DKK 100 on the first record). If there are 3 open records for a Customer, where 2 of the records have Collection Letters 1 and the last one has Collection Letters 2, and 'Accounts' is selected, then 2 x DKK 100 will be added to the Collection letter fee, as the Collection letter fee is per Account per Collection Letters.
  Reminders	In this field, select which reminders you want to create in connection with this run.

  

• All the records/customers in the list will now be assigned a Collection letter fee in the Fee amount field, depending on whether you selected per Account or per Record Records.
• In the New Collection Letters field, you can see which Notice will be created for each Transaction. If there is a Transaction you don't want to Notice, you can Select the Discard transaction button and have the record removed.
• Select the button with the small Printer icon in the upper Right corner if you want to print your reminders.
  You will be asked if you want to update the Transactions with "Last notice".
  If you Reply No to this, the printouts created will be perceived as "Drafts/Proforma reminders".
• Select the Send as e-mail or Send e-mail from Outlook button to e-mail the reminder fees to your customers.
  More about the options under the description of the Send as e-mail button elsewhere in this article.IMPORTANT! Do not select the Refresh button before you have transferred any Collection letter fees to your Post journals.
  Select the Transfer to Journal button to have the Collection letter fees transferred to a Post journal so that the amounts are posted to the Customers. When you transfer the fees to the journal, you can choose whether the fees should be transferred per posting or per account.
  If you choose per account, only one line is created in the journal per Customer, with the total reminder fee.
  In the Counter account field, select the Ledger account that the fees should be posted on.
  In the Text field, you can select texts you have created under Finances/Accounting and the Enumerated texts button, so that this text is used on all entries created in the journal.
  
• When you refresh the screen after the reminders have been sent by Email or printed, the Collection Letters field is updated with +1, so you can see how many times you have sent reminders for the Current record. The Last reminder field is updated with the reminder that was sent/printed and the Last reminder field is updated with the Date.
  In the Collection letter log under, for example, Customers/Reports/Reminder log , you can see a log of when a Record has been reminder by whom and with which reminder code. Load more about the Collection letter log later in this article.

Formation of both interest and reminder

These are two separate runs, where interest must first be booked and then the accrued interest can be moved.
For example, you can also choose to create and post the Interest without sending an Interest note and accrue and post dunning fees without sending a dunning letter, and then print an Account statement to the customer instead, which will show both the Interest and the dunning fee.

Version 90 - Last notice update

In connection with version 90 of Uniconta, the way in which reminders are attributed has changed.
The Function is more automated than before, and a new field called Last notice has been added to the open Customer records, where you can see which Last notice was created for the Customer for the current Record.

If you have Open Customer transactions that have been Noticed in vers. 89 or earlier, these Records are missing a Values in the Last notice field. However, the field Notices is updated with how many times the record has been moved, and the field Latest collection letter is also updated with when the record was last moved.
The missing value in the Last collection letter field must be manually updated before you can create notices in vers. 90 with the desired reminder codes.

Therefore, you need to do the following to update this field:

• Select Customers/Reports/Open transactions
• Insert the Fields Collection Letters, Last collection letter and Last collection date. Fields can be inserted with ALT+F
• In the Collection Letters field, you now filter so that you only see Open transactions with a Value in this field. This can be done by Holding the mouse on the Fields Header and clicking on the small funnel that appears, and here select '(Values)'
• Now select the Edit All tab and the Edit All button
• Fill in the Last notice field with the Name of the reminder that matches the Quantity in the Collection Letters field. I.e. if you have Records with a Value of 1 in the Collection Letters field, enter Reminder in the Last notice field. If you have records with the value 2 in the Collection Letters field, you write Reminder 1 in the Last open field, and so on.
  It is possible to use the "Assign new field value" function together with a filter on the Collection Letters field, so you can Refresh multiple records at once if you have many open records that have previously been moved.
• Select the Save button on the ribbon.
• Now create reminders as it is done in version 90 and onwards. See description below.

Collection letter log

Under Debtor/Reports/Interest and dunning/Dunning log , a log of who and when an open debtor item has been dunned is displayed.
The reminder log can also be viewed via the button of the same name from the Debtor overview as well as from debtor entries and open debtor entries.

Note! If you can't see the menu items for collection letters, it may be because there is a missing check mark in the Interest and collection letter field under Company/Maintenance/Configure application functionality

Printing/previewing interest notes/advice letters to screen/printer

In the top Right corner in Uniconta, you can select a small Icon with a Printer on it to print the Interest notes/printers to the Screen. Remember to select External in the Fields Print preview before you select the printer button.

Once the printouts have been created on the screen, you can now send the printouts to print, save them to your PC, etc.

Note! Only if you select Yes to Refresh "Last notice" during printout, the fields Last collection letter, Last notice, Notices will be updated.

Send email from the Preview
From the Preview Image you can also Select to Send the form as Email. But if you do this, the Fields for Last notice etc. will NOT be updated.

Description of fields

Selected fields are described below.

Description of buttons

Description of the buttons under Customer/Reports/Interest and collection letter

Button	Button description
Discard transaction	If you don't want to calculate interest or attribute Collection Letters on the Current record, remove the record from the overview by selecting this button. Please note that the record is not deleted on the Customer, but simply removed from the current Notice/Interest process.
Physical vouchers	Views any connected Physical vouchers.
Refresh	After a change or correction to an Interest or Notice, press Update to see the latest updates. Note: This will bring lines that have been removed with Discard transaction back into the window.
Filter	Here records can be filtered.
Clear filter	Reset "Filter" so that Values set in "Filter" are removed.
Layout	You have the option to save, delete, edit or recall a saved layout.
Add Interest	Enter the desired interest percentage and the date on which the interest will be added. Load more about this below.
Create Collection Letter	Enter the desired Collection letter fee etc. Load more information below.
Transfer to Journal	Select this button to Transferred on the calculated Interest or Collection letter fee amounts. Load more information below under the description of the Interest and reminder fee procedures.
Send as e-mail	With this button, the Interest notes or reminder letters are sent by email to the Customers using the default email setup. These are set under Customer / Maintenance / E-mail setup. Alternatively, an email address can be entered. In Connection with this sending method, the fields Last notice, Collection Letters and Date of latest interest note are always updated. For Printout, you can select whether you want to Refresh these fields or not. All: Interest notes and Collection Letters are shipped to All customers in the Overview. Marked lines: Interest notes or Collection Letters are only sent to the customers and including the Records that have been previously marked by holding down the Ctrl key and marking the lines with the mouse. Current record: An Interest note or reminder is only sent to the customer on the current line and only with the current record. This means that if there are multiple records in the reminder list for the same Customer and Current record is selected, only the current Record will be included in the reminder letter to the customer. Note! The interest notices and reminder letters are sent to the debtors' contact persons who have a mark in the reminder or interest notice respectively. If a contact person has not been set up to receive interest notices and reminders, the email will be sent to the debtor's invoice email instead.
Send e-mail from Outlook	When this button is used to send Interest notes or reminder letters, the email will open in Outlook with the Documents attached, and you must manually press Send in Outlook to send the email.

Tips & Tricks for Interest and collection letters

Why are my reminders not being sent? (error: "No lines found")

Check if the Customers you are sending reminders to are set up with an Address. Load more here.

Check SMTP in your reminder E-mail setup. Load more here.

How do I Remove the Date of Latest collection letter/Last interest note date?

Select, via the Filter, the lines where the date should be removed.

Right-click on the Column heading 'Last interest date' or 'Last interest date' and select 'Assign new field value' in the small menu that appears.

Select fields 'Script' instead of 'Values' and the Script text field becomes Active. In the Script text field, enter Null and Select 'OK'.

Now your dates are empty and you can send your reminders or interest notices again.

Load 'Add new field value' here...

Can I Deleted the value in the Last notice field?

Yes, select you can simply delete directly in the field, or use our 'Add new field value' function.

Load 'Add new field value' here...