Hi everyone, and welcome to our newest Pro Suite members. There's been a bit of an uptick in signups lately, which means I can devote more time and energy to helping you succeed with simPRO. Tell your friends!
Ok, so there have been a few releases since the last hot take. Let's look at the greatest hits.
Recurring Invoices Now Available In Arrears
If you provide scheduled maintenance, you may be using recurring invoices to bill for these. Recurring invoices are an under-utilised feature of simPRO, and are great for businesses based on a Service Level Agreement (SLA) or subscription model.
Typically, the customer will pay a regular fee (say, monthly) in exchange for programmed asset maintenance, regular visits, a software subscription etc. Recurring invoices are perfect because they are set & forget. They can be configured to automatically email out to your customers on a regular schedule without you having to do anything.
Previously, recurring invoices referred to the coming period, instead of the previous period. A monthly recurring invoice issued on the 31st of January was for February, instead of for January.
Now you can set your recurring invoices to be in arrears, not in advance. If it saves you one customer who was upset about paying for work they hadn't yet received, it's worth it.
Different Strokes for Different...uh... Asset Types?
This is a big one for those with Maintenance Planner and lots of assets to import.
If you've never used Maintenance Planner and don't intend to, sail on, my friend! I'll see you at the next heading.
For those of you still with me, any assets imported used to inherit all service levels for that asset type, requiring a manual update of those assets to the correct service levels. If you know anything about Maintenance Planner, you'll know that service levels and dates are key to getting it all working smoothly.
Now there is no longer any need to manually click through 300 assets to reset service levels, you can simply import them correctly by specifying them on the import file. Create a column for each service level on the import spreadsheet and save it as a csv, something like this:
Site ID | Asset No. | Location | Service Level 1 (e.g. Monthly) | Service Level 2 (e.g. Annual) |
123 | 001 | Lobby | 15/02/2025 | 15/02/2025 |
456 | 002 | Kitchen | 15/02/2025 | |
789 | 003 | Workshop | 15/02/2026 |
Then make sure when you are importing your data you tell simPRO to use service levels from the import file, not the default service levels. Any service levels not included on the import file won't be added to the imported assets.
Accruals and Deferrals
Somewhere out there are some accountants who are very excited by this. Good for them.
Seriously, though, it is a good feature, especially for larger businesses whose cashflow comes in fits and starts. If you saw the update and glossed over it, let me attempt to give you the executive summary.
What it is
Deferred Revenue is money received for goods and services you haven't yet delivered. If you count this revenue in the current accounting period but incur the expenses of delivering it in the next accounting period, it may not correctly reflect your profitability.
You can correct for this by recording the revenue as a liability (i.e. the value of the goods and services you owe the customer). When you deliver the service, the liability is cleared with a reverse transaction and the income is recognised.
Accrued Revenue is the same, but opposite. You deliver goods and services now, but have yet to receive payment for those. To prevent your profitability being misrepresented in your books, the accrual accounting method can spread the revenue over the period you deliver the service rather than at the time you make your final claim.
Do I need it?
Probably not. But if you receive large up-front payments, or do long-term projects with a long time between claims, then your accountant or financial adviser may recommend it, as it can have tax implications. I'm a technical consultant, not a qualified accountant, so seek professional advice on this one.
How to Set It Up
In a nutshell:
Create your accrual and/or deferral accounts in your accounting package (currently only Xero and Quickbooks support this feature). If you have different income and expense accounts for each cost centre, you'll need to set up separate deferral and accrual accounts in simPRO for each cost centre.
Go to Setup > Accounts > Chart of Accounts and create your accrual and deferral accounts in simPRO with the same numbers as those in your accounting package.
Go to Setup > Accounts > Cost Centres and map your accrual and deferral accounts to the relevant cost centres.
How To Use It
Open a job and go to the Project Overview > Accruals and Deferrals. (Deferrals can also be added to customer invoices).
Create an accrual or deferral transaction, including a description, amount and transaction date, and the date to reverse it. Save. Heads up! This requires you to predict the date when you will invoice the job (in the case of accrued revenue) or incur the expenses (in the case of deferred revenue). At that date, simPRO will create a transaction to reverse the original transaction. The reversal of the transaction will not be triggered by anything else, such as the job being completed or invoiced. If you forget about it and circumstances change, such as the job being delayed, make sure you update the expected reversal dates of your transactions.
The next time you sync simPRO with your accounting package, it will post the transactions to Xero or Quickbooks. When the reversal date rolls around, the reversal transaction(s) will be ready to post to your accounting package.
That's it for now - see you next time!
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