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.
Hi MYOB,
Considering Cheques are rarely used anymore, and are being phased out in Australia according to the banks, can we perhaps revamp the 'Cheque Number' field for Spend Money etc?
Most of my clients enter the method of payment here so they know where to look in their records. For example, DD for Direct Debits (source docs bank statements and origianl contracts), EFT for Electronic payments that dont go through the .ABA files (source docs is the bank statements and receipts), BPAY for billers paid via this method, and CASHOUT if an owner has withdrawn funds form the bank.
I realise some use the cheque numbers as an ID for the transaction but the field seems almost redundant, especially if your using the attachments.
Correspondingly, I think the Cheques being printed checkbox is also redundant. Although you can default this to Already Printed, it still seems redundant in this day and age of electronic transfers.
Perhaps other MYOB users have a better idea to utilise this field?
Persoanlly, I would like to set it to be an automated text field where I can choose the default entry, perhaps to be made up of method of payment, date and a transaction ID EG EFT07032019-1, EFT07032019-2 etc for the day.
I realise this wont warn me if I have paid the item twice, but to be honest, unless you are using a cheque book and ensuring your cheque numbers match your MYOB entry, the warning is redundant in most cases. A more appropriate warning could be triggered if the card number, date and amount matched perhaps?
Just a thought.
Kind regards,
Nat
Hello Nat Nat_EziLedger
I understand your feelings re the field "Cheque Number" but feel that MYOB should simply change Cheque # to read "Reference No."
Many MYOB users make life hard for themselves, by changing the Cheque # field to EFT etc. 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 way 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 this to the memo 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 to 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 V - Visa 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
Hi David_Cree ,
I completely agree with you! I belive it should just be treated as a reference number too so that it can be identified when reveiwing.
I think everyone has found a way to use this redundant field that suits them, but rarely is it used as it was intended to in the beginning! It just stands out as a field that definately needs some updating, or as you said, just change the name to Payment Ref :-)
Am hoping MYOB remove the 'Cheque' from their vocabulary soon.
Thanks for the input,
Nat
Concur - this option is outdated. ALL our transactions are online. NO cheques at all.
I mentioned this a long long time ago.
Given so few cheques are written nowadays and most payments are made electronically with associated payment reference numbers >8 characters, could the number of characters in the cheque number field be increased substantially (similar to Supplier Inv No. field) and the name changed to Payment Number.
Agree. should be easy for the programmers to "double" this data field to 16 characters - better still, to 32 (as some bank transaction IDs have up to 18 characters)
I really hope that MYOB will implement this suggestion. I believe, it will help a lot of MYOB user. In order to comply with latest requirements and business needs, we really need to change our numbering system. please notify me once this suggestion is implemented.
for instance, this type of numbering is basically what our business need, however, MYOB has limitation on this type of numbering(more than 8 characters). example, "TT1501001" for payment that made by TT. 15 means year, 01 means January, 001 means no of transaction. this type of numbering is not possible by using current MYOB application. if we have many banks, we would need to differenciate the banks payment such as "MBTT1501001".
Having said that, I really hope that MYOB implement this suggestion, not only for chq number, also for Received money #, Inv# etc.
I would suggest that MYOB will add the lenght for atleast 16 character.
I note that this has been discussed before but am curious as to why the option to use cheque No's or EFT1, EFT2 etc is not built into setup options, as stated by previous question on this subject many business's today do far more transactions by EFT than in physical cheques so in real terms it would be simpler to manually enter cheque number if that facility of auto numbering was turned off in setup and myob simply displayed last used entry be it EFT or number when spend money or pay bills was opened
kindest regards
Anthony
Cobiac & Chapman
This is an obvious omission in this field. I agree there should be a number of selectable options regarding the method of payment (cheque number / EFT / Credit Card - by card issuer perhaps) BPAY etc together with the means to select either EFT every time for that format or an incrementally updated number for cheques for example.
I would also like to see the option of bundling a number of indivual BPAY payments into one electronic file that is uploaded in the same way normal "aba" files are.
Greg
Anthony,
Are you using Bank Feeds?
Bank Feeds will reduce the amount of Data Entry substantially.
I understand MYOB uses EFT so the cheque number does not have to be changed.
Hope this helps.
Duncan Smith
Business Advioce + Tax
Dream with an Accountant - bringing life to tax
... and if we choose not to use bank feeds? We have to get the cheque number, no matter what is actually written in there, EXACTLY letter-for-letter/number correct, otherwise the download bank statement/bank reconciliation matching doesn't work.
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.
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.
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
Would be excellent if we could set a Preference to have “Cheque No.” set to EFT or C/Card.
I would also vote for this
Cheers
Thanks for your feedback. Please register your vote at this post - Change the Automatic Cheque Numbering
All the best,
Jason Hill
Community Manager
I agree, and it would be good if when processing the next EFT of chq it automatically went there and not the date. Not many people use cheques now adays, I really like this thought :)
I strongly support this.
I have suggested this a few times over the years. The response has been deafening silence. It is all very well asking for customer feedback and suggestions. But if nothings seems to get implemented then it just leads to frustration and disenchantment with the product.
U can mimic this on recurring payments, but it would be good to see it being set in [Suppliers] in the [Payments] tab, where a prefix could be set to the trans no such as:
EFT00001 which increments in the same way as cheques.
EG: EFT00001, EFT00002 ... EFT00009
We are not talking about the pathetic SC280213 and IE280213 date based ones in Bank Entry, but user defined ones that would increment even when the prefix is typed into the ch/trans no. IE, it would find the next available no as U typed.
EG: Typing EFT would give EFT00010, the next available sequence no from above. It could also be a drop down list which give the next sequence no for each user defined ch/trans prefix.
This way U would get a unique no without have to keep a separate run list in XL or the like.
When can this be fixed??
In Spend Money & Pay Bills the Cheque No: is 13 characters yet in Payroll is it is only 8.
Banking Numbers used are longer than 8 characters, when can this be changed???
Also, when can Cheque No: description be changed to something more relevant in today's world? May EFT???
Thankyou
Great suggestion, and I agree with both points. I suspect there'd be many businesses like ours (and we're into our 8th year now) that has owned a "Cheque Book". All our payments during this time have been made via EFT, so for 7+ years I've been typing over this to change to either EFT, EFT OSKO, BPAY or DD (for Direct Debit).
Though I understand that there are some companies that still do issues cheques so the ability to select a default in the 'Set Up - Preferences - Banking' tab would be perfect please.
Would be excellent if we could set the “Cheque No.” in payroll to show EP “Electronic Payment”, failing that allow the default to be blank.
So many businesses no longer use cheques or use them extremely rarely. Can we please have an option in Setup to NOT display the Cheque Number field in Spend Money or Pay Bills. If a business only uses EFT and Direct Debits, there is little point showing EFT, DD or BS (bank statement) as the "cheque number" for every transaction. Similarly if you let it default, the numbering starts at 1 and goes on forever. If you don't have cheques, not only is Cheque No. NOT a useful field, it takes time to replace the automatically generated number with something else. Those with cheques, by all means keep using it. For those of us without cheques let us opt out of that field.
Hello Tom,
You are correct that some make life hard for themselves, by changing the field to EFT etc. 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
Payment methods - I would like to be able to set the default payment method for Purchases as something other than cheque. We pay 99% of our bills by EFT and it is really annoying having to delete the cheque number and put in direct credit or what ever term you use ofr EFT.
Hi Tom & David
My guess is that there have been requests for this change since Internet banking was introduced back whenever and it has been raised at innumerable meetings with those that can influence the shape of MYOB. One of the big problems is that MYOB needs a number in the cheque field when you import Spend Money/Pay Bills list. It will see the second EFT as a duplicate transaction, irrespective of any other differences in the transaction. The fix for this to concatenate in a number so that it becomes EFT1, EFT2 etc. The unfortunate thing is that the number system will not run with an alphanumeric, as to me this would be the ideal fix.
Ron
When using the Spend Money function within bank feeds, I suggest the following specifically relating to the 'Cheque No' field:
1. As an option be able to change to 'Reference No'
2. Have this Reference number automatically update as it does when using the Spend Money function within Bank register.
Payments from the acount will then have a sequential reference number so the related invoice can be scanned and saved with the Reference number from MYOB.
Agree. Just change the text on the screens to Reference No.
