Cogitate Staff Holiday Schedule

 

We here at Cogitate Inc. would like to let you know of our upcoming Holiday schedule. The following days our office will be closed and instead of working, we will spending this time off with our families.

Thanksgiving Holiday: Closed Wednesday, November 25, 2015 through Sunday, November 29, 2015.

Christmas Holiday: Closed Thursday, December 24, 2015 through Sunday, December 27, 2015.

New Year’s Holiday: Closed Thursday December 31, 2015 through Sunday, January 3, 2016

 

Best Wishes To You And Your Families During The Upcoming Holiday Season!

Read Full November 2015 Newsletter

One Time Charges in UtilAbility

A while back, we discussed adding One Time Charges such as Turn On, Turn Off and Service Fees to your accounts. Please reference our November 2013 newsletter, located in our newsletter archives at www.utilability.com for this discussion. Now, while that discussion included a detailed explanation, it’s worth revisiting to add a few more helpful tips.

Often, when adding One Time Charges, it’s only for certain services and only for specific accounts. You will need to first determine if the service even exists for each account and if so, locate and modify that record. If it doesn’t exist, you will need to create a new record to hold that information. Fortunately, UtilAbility provides a helpful lookup tool in UtilAbility Central that will help you determine these things.

If you open UtilAbility Central and click on the Accounts check box at the top of the form and then enter the Accounts tab, you will be able to search for any accounts within your database. You can search by any field in the Account Information table by clicking its column header. So, if you set it to search by the account number, you can simply enter it in the Search box. This will position the list to the appropriate account. Now, since we have the accounts check box already checked, you can immediately go to theServices tab to view all the services that are assigned to that specific account. Here, you can determine if the service even exists for that account.
If you see the service, you can double click that line or right click on it and choose Maintain to modify the record appropriately. If you do not see the service, then it has not yet been assigned to that account and you will have to add the record. You can double click or right click and maintain any line to open the Service Information maintenance screen. Rather than editing that account and service record, you would click the New button and create a new record to hold the appropriate information.
The same information would need to be set and saved either way, as described in our previous discussion. Additionally, it’s worth noting that you want to make sure that you have the appropriate rates entered based on the Calculation Type defined for your service. For example, services defined with Calculation Type 1 will use the Flat Amount field from the Service Information screen for each account and service, while services defined with Calculation Type 4 will use one central Standard Amount from its definition in the Service Types screen for all accounts when they are billed for that service. Please see our UtilAbility Help documentation for more information on Calculation Types.

Once you have the information saved, you can close the Service Information screen and return to the Accounts tab on the UtilAbility Central screen to locate the next account you want to set. You will need to repeat this procedure for each account in which you want to calculate a One Time Charge.

Once you are finished you can calculate your bills for that service along with your other services and they will be billed based on the information that you have entered.
If you would like more information on One Time Billing, please see our UtilAbility Help documentation or contact our support staff, we are always happy to talk with you.

 

Read Full December 2017 Newsletter

Helpful Reminders For 1099-MISC Forms

It is the beginning of 2017, and that means that 1099 MISC forms will need to be filled out and submitted to the IRS. A Form 1099-MISC needs to be filed for each person to whom you have paid, during the year, in the course of your business, at least $600 in rents, services, (including attorney fees) other income payments, medical and health care payments.Payments for which a Form 1099-MISC is NOT required include all of the following:

1. Generally, payments to a corporation. (See below)
2. Payments for merchandise, telegrams, telephone, freight, storage, and similar items.
3. Wages paid to an employee (report on Form W-2).
4. Business travel allowances paid to employees.
5. Distributions from Pensions, Annuities, Retirement Plans, IRA’s etc.

Here are some examples of what goes in the most common boxes:

BOX 1, RENTS
Real estate rentals paid for office space.
Machine rentals. If the machine rental is part of a contract that includes both the use of the and operator, prorate the rental between the rent of the machine (box 1) and the operator’s wages(box7)

BOX 6, MEDICAL and HEALTH CARE PAYMENTS
Enter payments of $600 or more made to each physician or other supplier or provider of medical or health care services. Include payments made by medical or health care insurers under health, accident, and sickness insurance programs. You are not required to report payments to pharmacies for prescription drugs. The exemption from issuing Form 1099-MISC to a corporation does not apply to payments for medical or health care services provided by corporations, including professional corporations.

BOX 7, NON-EMPLOYEE COMPENSATION
If the following four conditions are met, you must generally report a payment as non-employee compensation:

1. You made the payment to someone who is not your employee
2. You made the payment for services in the course of your business
3. You made the payment to an individual, partnership, estate, or, in some cases, a corporation
4. You made payments of at least $600 during the year.

Attorney fees of $600 or more paid in the course of your business are reportable in box 7. The term attorney includes a law firm or other provider of legal services. The exemption from issuing Form 1099-MISC to a corporation does not apply to payments for legal services. Therefore, you must report attorney fees paid to corporations that provide legal services. 

Read Full January 2017 Newsletter

Support For MERS Defined Contributions
Cogitate is proud to announce a new program to help you in reporting the MERS Defined Contributions for both Employee and Employer contributions. The following procedures will help you in setting up your files to make this program work.

Special Note
Please note that this new procedure should be started AT THE BEGINNING OF A MONTH.

Payroll Setup
A special deduction code is to define each participating employee’s contribution. You can use any Deduction Code you desire, but something like MDC would be easily remembered. In the Deductions’ description there must be ‘MERS’ and ‘Contribution’ present. For example: “MERS Defined Contribution”. Multiple deduction codes can be set up as your needs dictate.

• Short Name: Can be anything, for example, ‘MERS DC’
• Calc Type: Can be any valid calculation type, EXCEPT 12 (the standard MERS calculation). 6 for flat amount and/or percent is preferred.
• Deferred Comp Flag: Needs to be checked
• Calc Order: Should be 28
• W2Info: Should be 414-H2
• Tax Code: Should be Box 14

In the deduction’s ‘PR/PRS Parameters Titles’ tab:

• Parameter 3 description should be set to ‘Match Amt’
• Parameter 5 description should be set to ‘Match Pct’
• These titles will then show up when adding or editing the deduction code for an employee

Employee Setup
Each participating employee should have this deduction code added to their list of deductions. The parameters will vary depending on the calculation type you specified.
Matching amounts are defined on the employee’s deduction code parameters dialog by filling in the Match Amt and Match Pct fields. If the match is 100%, then 100.00 should be entered in the Match Pct field.

Creation of the MERS Defined Contribution Data File
The MERS Defined Contribution data file is created once a month. Under the Payroll menu item, click on the ‘MERS Contribution File’ entry and a
dialog will appear title ‘MERS Contribution Plan Datafile creation’. This is similar
in layout and operation as the MERS EPass program.

• Enter the first day of the month that you will be reporting
• Enter the MERS Plan Name
• Enter MERS Plan number (6 digits)
• Enter IRS Number (9 digits, no dashes)
  • The last 3 items will be saved and will appear automatically each time
    you run the program
• Once the above “header” information is entered, press the FIND PAYROLL
  DATES BUTTON. This will cause the Deduction codes that have in their
  description the words ‘MERS’ and ‘CONTRIBUTION’ to be listed. This
  confirms that there are valid MERS Defined Contribution deductions defined
  and that they have been used in a payroll calculation. There will also be listed
  the payroll dates of payrolls where those deduction codes have to be used to
  create deductions.
• Press the ‘Create MERS Contribution File’ button to create the file. You will
  receive a confirmation of the files creation and the total amount of the
  contributions. The file will be named ‘MERS Contribution xxxxxx.txt’ where the
  ‘xxxxxx’ will be your MERS Defined Contribution plan number. The file is
  usually stored in the Pro Fund Accounting Output directory.

(Employer) Matching Amounts
Unlike the employee’s Defined contribution that is arrived at by the deduction code
and its calculation type, the employer’s matching amount (if any) is not defined by
a separate deduction calculation since the amounts are not deducted from the
employee’s paycheck. Instead, the matching amount is calculated at the time the
data file is created based upon the contents of the ‘Match Amt’ and ‘Match Pct’
parameter fields.


Reporting
In the Reports/Payroll folder, there is a new report named MERS Defined
Contribution List. Parameters include date range, employees, deduction
codes and others. It shows details and total of the contribution amount and the
match amount.

 

Read Full November 2014 Newsletter

Rounded Meters in UtilAbility

When you setup metered services for your accounts, you need to setup and assign a meter to each of those services. While services can share meters, you need to have at least one meter for each account. This allows you to post your readings to the proper meters, services and accounts so the information can be saved appropriately.

The meters contain information such as the Serial Number, Book Number and Read Sequence (for your meter routes), and various other optional information.

Meters can also share common characteristics. Rather than repeating that common information in each meter, you would setup various meter types and assign those to your meters. Meter types can be assigned to any meters that share their characteristics. These would include the size, the maximum number of digits (for determining when meters roll over), the factor, and again, various other optional information.

The factor is important for your bills to be calculated correctly, because your readings may be gathered from various types of rounded meters. For example, you may gather and post some of your readings in single units with a factor of 1 such as in gallons and some of them in multiple units with a factor of 1000 such as in thousands of gallons (i.e. 5000 or 5 can mean the same thing when multiplied by the appropriate factor). This allows UtilAbility to use the same meter rate tables when calculating your bills regardless of how your meter readings are rounded.

When you print your bills, the readings are displayed the way they were gathered and posted and the factored usage (the gathered usage multiplied by the factor) is displayed the way it was used when calculating the bills. Typically this is the actual usage.

If you have different types of meters that may round their readings differently and need more help setting up various meter types with the appropriate factors, please see our UtilAbility help documentation or contact our support staff for more information.

Read Full November 2016 Newsletter

Controlling Account & Services Billed

This month we will review some of your options for controlling which accounts and services will be billed when running your calculations in UtilAbility.

If you need to control whether or not an account is billed at all for any given billing period, you can enable or disable the account. UtilAbility will include enabled accounts and skip disabled accounts when calculating your bills. To enabled or disable an account, you simply check or uncheck the Acct Active Check Box in Account Information Maintenance. You can do this any time before running a calculation.

Another way you can stop the billing for an account would be to change their Billing Cycle to one you have setup that you will not be calculating (i.e. a holding Bill Cycle). The Billing Cycle is often used to group your accounts together so you can control which groups of accounts will be included when you calculate your bills. UtilAbility will only include accounts within the bill cycle you specify. You can modify their Billing Cycle in Account Information Maintenance any time before running a calculation. If you want them to re-join your regular billing, you can change it back any time you wish.

If you need to control whether or not an account gets billed for any particular service, you can enable or disable that service individually for each account. This allows you to bill them for some services and not for others. UtilAbility will include enabled services and skip disabled services when calculating your bills. To enable or disable a service, you simply check or uncheck the Service Active check box in Service Information Maintenance. You can do this any time before running a calculation.

Finally, if you only want to bill an account just one time for any service, you can set its Calculate Date for that service to match the effective date of your calculation. UtilAbility will include services with either no Calculate Date or services with a Calculate Date that matches the effective date of your calculation. Services with Calculation Dates that do not match will be excluded. You can set the Calculate Date for any service in Service Information Maintenance any time before running a calculation.

As you can see, UtilAbility offers a wide range of options for controlling Accounts and Services Billed. If you need to control these things when calculation your bills and have any questions, please see our UtilAbility help documentation of contact our support staff.

Read Full February 2017 Newsletter