SchoolLeader has the ability to work directly with outside General Ledger packages such as QuickBooks Pro to transfer payment receipt information into that General Ledger's "Bank" and "Income" Accounts. This process allows you to take advantage of SchoolLeader's rich Accounts Receivable features designed specifically for the preschool business, while at the same time be able to use a very common/all purpose General Ledger package such as QuickBooks.
There are only two types of files that will need to be importing into your QuickBooks package to keep SchoolLeader and the General Ledger synchronized.
1) Deposit Files
2) Accounting Period Bookclose (True-up) Files
This chapter will discuss the Deposit Batch Files. Refer to the next chapter for a discussion on the Accounting Period True-up Files
The Deposit Batch file contains all revenue associated with a specific deposit batch. These files should be loaded into your General Ledger after each Deposit Batch is closed within SchoolLeader. The file is automatically created for you and placed in the EXTRACTS directory on your server's hard-drive after the Deposit Batch is closed. The revenue from the Deposit Batch is separated into the proper A/R Chart of Accounts. These subaccounts are then mapped to your Income Accounts in the General Ledger and will help you to track the sources of revenue at the General Ledger level.
The Deposit Batch File is created in one of two ways:
Automatically, when you close a Deposit Batch from the Deposit Manager.
In either case, a "Deposit" Extract file will be created and stored in a directory underneath the main SchoolLeader directory on your server. This directory is called EXTRACTS. For example, if the SchoolLeader system has been installed in C:\ProgramFiles\SchoolLeader on your server then you would access the newly created extract file by looking in C:\Program Files\SchoolLeader\Extracts.
The file that is created will be named Receivables_Deposit_XXX (where XXX is the Deposit Batch ID). Shown below is an example of what you might see if you looked in the EXTRACTS directory after bookclose from the with the Microsoft Windows Explorer tool.
You see several files with the last eight having the proper naming scheme. Only one should have the Fiscal year and Accounting Period you are expecting. This is the file you will want to import into QuickBooks using the QuickBooks Import facility. For Example; Import_Deposit_14.IIF
NOTE: It is highly recommended that you DELETE from the hard disk each file after you upload it to avoid uploading it more than once. QuickBooks will not protect you from accidentally uploading a file twice. If you ever need to load a file after it was deleted you can always manually recreate the file using the main menu options. The window above shows multiple files in the EXTRACT directory and is for clarity purposes only.
Make sure you have setup all the necessary accounts in QuickBooks prior to performing the first import. If the Account does not exist, QuickBooks will create it for you. However, it always defaults to a "Bank" account. This is fine for your base Checking Account but is incorrect for your Income Accounts.