Sample Accounting Interface Setup to Integrate REAL/Easy with Peachtree®

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Welcome to REAL/Easy’s Interface to Accounting system. As a pioneer for interfacing brokerage management systems, REAL/Easy is dedicated to making your business tracking and accounting efforts as efficient and valuable as possible.

With REAL/Easy you are already maximizing the value you can derive from a back office system. By using the interface to accounting, you are able to maximize your efficiency and minimize costs associated with your financial accounting.

 For companies who use REAL/Easy BOS (Back Office System) to manage sales closings and the Peachtree accounting package, REAL/Easy offers a way integrate the two systems. By integrating BOS with Peachtree:

1. Your company can save time by eliminating duplicate entry of accounting transactions.
2. Accuracy can be improved since the same income and expense figures in REAL/Easy would be transferred into Peachtree.
3. You can continue to use the Peachtree system which offers many support, cost, and learning advantages compared to using a proprietary accounting system.
4. You can benefit further by utilizing BOS as your subsidiary ledger to Peachtree, this means that you can keep your Peachtree chart of accounts as simple as possible.
5. By using Peachtree for your accounting you are able to efficiently provide data to outside financial management and tax accounting services.

The following sections will illustrate how you can setup BOS to integrate with Peachtree.

Interface Accounting Module’s capabilities.

Above is the Interface Accounting “desktop” showing the two areas of “Export Posting Data” and “Setup Posting Formats”.

The Setup us used first. Sample setups are already in the program and can be used as-is or modified.

To enable interface to your accounting system using the export posting commands, three types of postings are offered:

1. IA11- New G/L Batch A11. You can post “GL” transactions using the “G/L Batch” commands. This could include posting your sales closing incomes and commission expenses, sales commissions cash receipts, the agent billing invoices and invoice payments, and trust accounting activity. This is done with command IA11. This command will create a posting file for a specified date range that is assigned a batch number. This posting file is then imported into your accounting system G/L.
2. IA21- New batch for A/P . You can post commissions that need to be paid into an export file for the Accounts Payable (A/P) module or your accounting software. This option is used by brokers who use REAL/Easy to calculate commissions but wish to use their accounting system to print the commission checks. Command “IA21” is used to do this, and the posting file would contain all vendorID’s, as well as all debit, credit, and check amounts, and distribution amounts and account numbers.
3. IA23 – New Commission Checks Batch: You can post commissions paid by REAL/Easy into an export file for import into your accounting system. This option is used by brokers who use REAL/Easy to calculate commissions plus print the commission checks but wish to include the issued check details from REAL/Easy in their accounting system. Command “IA23” is used to create these posting batches.

Each time a posting command is used to create an export posting file, the “accounting transactions” are “marked as posted” in REAL/Easy’s subsidiary ledgers. This means that the accounting activity in REAL/Easy will only appear in a single export file eliminating any “double posting” possibility. Unique batch numbers are created for each posting.

Example commission checks export post and import into Peachtree.

In this example, a number of checks were printed in REAL/Easy and the accounting staff wish to record the details in Peachtree without double entry. The checks were for two days – July 19th and 20th. The “New Commission Checks Batch I23” command is used.

Above, the paid date range is entered and the “Search” button clicked. The interface displays all unposted checks for the date range. In this example there are 6 checks indicated by the counter at the bottom of the window.

To create the posting export file, click the “Export” button.

Example commission checks export post and import into Peachtree (cont’d)

The above dialog illustrates saving the export file. (The file name, e.g. “PAYMENTS.csv”, is assigned during “setup”).

Above, when the file export is completed, this message will display. Click “OK” and you can exit REAL/Easy.
 
Next, is the import these checks into Peachtree:

Login to the brokerage company in Peachtree and select the “File”

Example commission checks export post and import into Peachtree (cont’d)

In this example, the checks are imported into Peachtree’s Accounts Payable module. Under Accounts Payable, an import definition is setup and named “IMPORTS CHECKS FROM BOS”. Locate this, click to highlite, then click the “Import” tool at the top of the window.

This will start the Import process. Click on the “Options” tab and click off “First Row…” and on “Warn if Duplicate Reference” (this will verify that duplicate check numbers are not imported). Then click the “OK” button.
 
This will process the import and display a completion message. At completion, exit the import area.

Example commission checks export post and import into Peachtree (cont’d)

Viewing the imported payments in Peachtree.
 
There are a number if ways to view and verify the imported payments. One is to enter Peachtree’s Reporting Area “General Ledger” and select the “General Ledger” from the Report List. Use Peachtree’s filter dialog to locate the checks paid and the detailed display should appear as below:

Above, sample payment to an agent that was imported into Peachtree. Note, the “Split” button can be used to view the account distributions:

Above, sample split showing all “distributions”.

Setting Up the Interface to Accounting.

This section will walk you through the steps necessary for setting up the interface for your installation using the example commission check posting used above. For many companies, using this “pre-installed” will suffice. Or, the pre-installed definitions can be quickly modified with the help of REAL/Easy’s support staff.

Step 1 – Setup the Import Format in Peachtree

For the Import to operate in Peachtree, an import definition, or list if items to import, must be setup within the import module.

To illustrate this, the following will show creation of an Accounts Payable import of printed checks that will consist of 11 items. The items are:

1. Vendor ID
2. Vendor (Payee) Name
3. Check Number
4. Check Paid Date
5. Cash Account
6. Detailed Payments indicator (required for Peachtree and set to “No”).
7. Number of Distributions
8. Invoice Paid indicator (required for Peachtree and set to blank).
9. Description (usually the transaction number and property address)
10. G/L account
11. Amount (positive is a debit and negative is a credit)

The “Select Import/Export” command is used in Peachtree to both create the import item list and run the import itself.

To import checks printed in REAL/Easy, an import is setup under “Accounts Payable”. The type of import should be “Payments Journal”.

Use the “Fields” tab to select the import items in the “Show” column. Above illustrates selecting the first 3 of the 11 items to reside in the import file.

Above, selecting items 4 through 6 for the payments journal import definition.

Above, items 7 through 10 (G/L Account)

Above, the amount item is the last field needed.
 
Click “Save” to save this definition so it can be used for each batch import from REAL/Easy.

Above, final step for the import setup – saving the definition. Provide a name the helps you easily locate later when you run the imports.

Step 2 – Setup the BOS system to work with your accounting system.

The first step is to setup the interface to work with your accounting system. Some formats that were pre-installed can give you a head start or you can start from scratch. After this is completed, export posting files can be created at any time for any period range.

 REAL/Easy keeps track of what was posted so that it cannot be posted again and keeps history of all posted batches so you can review them at any time in the future.

Enabling the Interface.

To let BOS know that you wish to use the Interface to Accounting, move into the BOS Setup module – click the setup tool on the left side of the desktop. Then enter “Company Information”, above, which will present a number of tabbed setup areas – below.

Click forward the “Interface Accounting” tab to enable and select the interface type “Peachtree”. Also click the check box to “Enable Accounting Interface”.

Each time you post information in an export file, a batch number is created. You can assign any starting batch number desired. There are three posting areas that will have their own batch ID’s :

1. From the G/L journals (primarily the sales AR/AP income and expense postings).
2. From the Accounts Payable commissions to be paid (checks printed in Peachtree).
3. From the Check Management commissions paid (checks issued in REAL/Easy).

There a number of “default” account number setups you can do for the various sales revenue and expense, balance sheet, agent billing, and agent deductions. These setups will “lay-in” the desired account numbers when you are adding sales transaction income and commissions details. Doing these setups will help your data entry staff because they will not have to spend time changing the account assignments when adding detailed sales revenue and commission splits.

As shown above, REAL/Easy ships with a chart of accounts that have 4 digit main numbers. To add the balance sheet and income statement accounts you need to provide Peachtree, use the “Add Update Chart of Accounts” command in REAL/Easy’s “Basic Setup”.

As shown above, REAL/Easy ships with a chart of accounts that have 4 digit main numbers. To add the balance sheet and income statement accounts you need to provide Peachtree, use the “Add Update Chart of Accounts” command in REAL/Easy’s “Basic Setup”.

Special Setup for Multi-Office Companies.

Special setup for Multi-Office Companies: If you are utilizing department numbers for part of your account number or “CLASS” for the different offices in your real estate company, you can define these in the “Add/Edit Office” command.

Above, Use each office’s “Financial Department ID” for this. For multi-office companies who use this department ID as part of their account structure, this item will be included in the posting export file definition later.

Setting Up the Interface Accounting Posting Formats.

The accounting interface export formats setups and batch export processing are all done within the Interface Accounting module. The module has these command options:

1. The interface setup – here the export format you wish is defined.
2. Export commands that can create ASCII files of agent and other company vendor ID and name files for import into the accounting system’s vendor table.
3. The Posting Export commands – these create the batches to export and write the ASCII posting files per your setup. There are three export areas: G/L, A/P for invoices, C/M for checks issued.
4. Export existing batches – re-create any past batch export file.

The IA setup is done within the above tabbed areas. In “General” you define the default paths and names of the export files. These are used for the export processing as the default names – they can be changed if needed. This example setup will be for the export of checks printed in REAL/Easy using the “Cash/Check Management Interface” tab.

For each posting/export type there are Header, Detail, and Footer rows. For a check export, the header is used to post the expense debit and cash credit. The Detail section is used to post deduction credit distributions. The footer can be used to indicate an end of transaction or for other total or count information as required by the accounting package.

12. Vendor ID <