Explanation of the Standby Account (0000.att)

• To explain the standby account, we will use an example where you want to issue and print a cheque.

• Step 1: You prepare the cheque using payment preparation (Open Wallet icon).

  • At this point, you submit but you don’t print your cheque.
  • On your home page, you have a pending payment preparation.
  • That cheque affects the standby account. The system cannot affect the bank account yet because you don’t have a cheque number (not printed yet).
  • At this point, you could reverse the payment preparation and you would never see it in your bank account. It would only affect the standby account. You would see the in and out of the standby account.

• Step 2: You print your cheque.

  • When you print the cheque, you empty the standby account and affect the bank account.
  • Everything pending in the standby account means that it’s a preparation you did and you didn’t print the cheque yet. Same logic applies to EFT and credit cards.
  • The standby account is always supposed to be empty at the end of the day, unless you have made a payment preparation and decided to wait until the next day to print the cheque, print the credit card payment authorization or send the EFT file.

• We recommend that monthly, you generate a summary GL report (by GL sub-account) of all your bank accounts and make sure that the standby accounts are all at $0.00. For more information, please see the article GL Report (450).