Banking: Change the Automatic Cheque Numbering

[JPH]

Remove the automatic cheque numbers for every transaction in spend money and payroll.  Most clients use internet banking & EFT these days, so cheques shouldn't be the default option.  If you write a cheque you should manually enter the cheque number in MYOB.

[David_Cree]

Hello Maggie,

You are making life hard for yourself, by changing the field to EFT. This means that you have to change the entry in perhaps 99% of transactions that you do.

I always get my clients to ignore the fact that the field name says 'Cheque No" and instead consider that it is a transaction reference number, and just let the number increment as it wants to. When there is an actual physical cheque to be entered then instead of the auto number manually enter CH12345 with 12345 as the actual cheque #. The prefix CH will stop the system from incrementing. In this was you only need to make a change for perhaps 1% of your transactions.

The other great benefit in doing this is that each transaction has a different and unique reference #. Would you want all your invoices the have not have a distinctive invoice # and for them all to have "INV" ?

I find it very frustrating when reviewing a client file and trying to find a single transaction when they all have a reference EFT (or BS - bank statement or PAY - payroll payments or BP - Bpay) when there are a number with the same amount or memo etc. It makes it difficult to find the right transaction to review or edit without having to open them all. This is the real time looser!

I usually manually change the first transaction to something like 10001, away from the current cheque series and let the system go from there. Try it - it will save you a lot of time & effort.

Perhaps in a future release MYOB will change the designation of this field from'Cheque No' to something like 'Payment Ref' so that users do not feel the need to always change it, after all I agree that cheques are a dying means of paying others, and the banks are discouraging it.

I hope that this helps.

Cheers

David

[SimonAtBalla]

I don't think anybody wants the cheque auto-increment feature, or to make cheques the default method of payment. Please advise when the status will change from 'under consideration'. I would like to have a fix for this in AccounRight v 19.6.

[ronatbas]

Hi Maggie

Of course I like nearly every other user would love to see this problem sorted, but the problem is a bigger than it appears at first glance. MYOB needs a discrete number on every cheque, not for day to day usage, but for imported lists of spend Money transactions. If you export/prepare a list in Excel and attempt to Import it into an existing file it will not happen as it sees the EFT as duplicate. There is a work around this problem, you need to concatenate a number sequence into the Cheque # cell so you end up with EFT1, EFT2 etc. What MYOB needs to do is downgrade the Cheque # to entered with warnings and it could then allow some form of alpha/alphanumeric to run in cheque number box.

Ron

[Choco157]

We are unable to add letters of the alphabet in EFT payment of accounts. Our bank operates also on letters not all numbers to be able to send money to pay accounts by EFT or even wages by the same. This leads to extra time at the banking stage to go into all accounts and add the letter required

[Barhilo]

Could you please be more specific about where exactly you're wanting to add an alpha character but currently cannot? What is the exact name of the field or do you have a screenshot available (with sensitive data blanked out)

[cynnyb]

In PAYABLES; pay bills a default cheque number appears at the top RHS of the page above the date. 99.9999% of the time my bills are paid by EFT and Bpay. Can the letters EFT be the default in the window with the over-ride option of (say) Bpay or a cheque number if required?

The same applies in SPEND MONEY.

[Geoff_]

Hi Cynthia

I must admit that when I make payments I always change the cheque numbers to DD, BPay or visa and unfortunately if I don't do this (and sometimes I do forget) then my cheque numbers are out of sequence,however I think that what you suggest is a very good idea.

Also very few people today use cheques.

[David_Cree]

Hello Cynthia,

You are making life hard for yourself, by changing the field to EFT. This means that you have to change the entry in perhaps 99% of transactions that you do.

I always get my clients to ignore the fact that the field name says 'Cheque No" and instead consider that it is a transaction reference number, and just let the number increment as it wants to. When there is an actual physical cheque to be entered then instead of the auto number manually enter CH12345 with 12345 as the actual cheque #. The prefix CH will stop the system from incrementing. In this was you only need to make a change for perhaps 1% of your transactions.

If you do want to have a note that it was EFT or BPay then add tis to the mumo line instead, but actually i would not worry.

The other great benefit in doing this is that each transaction has a different and unique reference #. Would you want all your invoices the have not have a distinctive invoice # and for them all to have "INV" ?

I find it very frustrating when reviewing a client file and trying to find a single transaction when they all have a reference EFT (or BS - bank statement or PAY - payroll payments or BP - Bpay) when there are a number with the same amount or memo etc. It makes it difficult to find the right transaction to review or edit without having to open them all. This is the real time looser!

I usually manually change the first transaction to something like 10001, away from the current cheque series and let the system go from there. Try it - it will save you a lot of time & effort.

Perhaps in a future release MYOB will change the designation of this field from'Cheque No' to something like 'Payment Ref' so that users do not feel the need to always change it, after all I agree that cheques are a dying means of paying others, and the banks are discouraging it.

I hope that this helps.

Cheers

David

[David_Cree]

Hello Cynthia,

You are making life hard for yourself, by changing the field to EFT. This means that you have to change the entry in perhaps 99% of transactions that you do.

I always get my clients to ignore the fact that the field name says 'Cheque No" and instead consider that it is a transaction reference number, and just let the number increment as it wants to. When there is an actual physical cheque to be entered then instead of the auto number manually enter CH12345 with 12345 as the actual cheque #. The prefix CH will stop the system from incrementing. In this was you only need to make a change for perhaps 1% of your transactions.

If you do want to have a note that it was EFT or BPay then add tis to the mumo line instead, but actually i would not worry.

The other great benefit in doing this is that each transaction has a different and unique reference #. Would you want all your invoices the have not have a distinctive invoice # and for them all to have "INV" ?

I find it very frustrating when reviewing a client file and trying to find a single transaction when they all have a reference EFT (or BS - bank statement or PAY - payroll payments or BP - Bpay) when there are a number with the same amount or memo etc. It makes it difficult to find the right transaction to review or edit without having to open them all. This is the real time looser!

I usually manually change the first transaction to something like 10001, away from the current cheque series and let the system go from there. Try it - it will save you a lot of time & effort.

Perhaps in a future release MYOB will change the designation of this field from'Cheque No' to something like 'Payment Ref' so that users do not feel the need to always change it, after all I agree that cheques are a dying means of paying others, and the banks are discouraging it.

I hope that this helps.

Cheers

David

[ASWatCR]

This may be done for AR2013 or later versions, but my understanding is that apart from the compliance update, there are not actually going to be any enhancements  for this product. All resources will be devoted to the new of software. 

[jml]

In relation to this issue.... I do use cheques and I like the cheque-auto increment feature but PLEASE extend this feature to other payment methods too. In the 'Spend Money' & 'Pay Bills' windows introduce a payment method selection feature (ie Direct Debit, EFT, BPay, Cheque & Other) and auto-incement the reference number for each payment type.