 Zero Accounting Software 2023 Organization Settings Features. Get ready because it's time to become an Accounting Hero with Zero 2023. Here we are in our custom Zero homepage going into our new company file. We set up in a prior presentation that being Get Great Guitars. We're continuing on to take a look at the settings options noting that we set up a new company file. So these are basically the default setting options provided by Zero when we set up a new company file. Go into the dropdown up top. We're taking a look at the settings. Last time we took a look at the general settings. Now we're going to look at the features. So first let's just give an overview then we'll go into some of them in more detail. We've got the invoice settings. Create branding themes for documents, ad payment services and auto reminders for invoices. Then you got the payment services, add and manage online payment options for your sales invoices. Then you've got the email settings, set or reply to email address and email template content. You've got the check styles, customize how you would like checks to be printed. You've got the zero to zero, connect with other zero users to automate invoices and bills. And you've got the custom contact links, create shortcuts for your favorite zero contacts and other tools. Alright, let's go into the invoices up top and take a look at it in a bit more detail. Noting that the invoice is the form that you're going to be sending to customers typically these days with an email in order to try to request payment for work that has been done in the past. So a couple things we want to keep in mind with the invoice like with all other forms the invoice will most other forms is going to be creating a financial transaction typically increase in accounts receivable the other side going to sales and then you might have inventory that will be involved with it as well. So from a logistical standpoint from the accounting standpoint we have that that we want to make sure we understand. And then we also are giving this invoice to the customer and therefore it's we want to be looking good from a marketing standpoint from the branding standpoint and whatnot have our logo on it and all that kind of stuff. And the invoice is the thing that's going to be facilitating the recipient to turn around and pay the invoice. So we might also want to think about ways that we can make that turnaround process as easy as possible possibly providing other payment options. So so they can pay it with more ease and whatever payment option they think is best like giving them credit card payment options and other you know PayPal or whatever ways that they can pay it may increase the turnaround time once they receive the invoice. So just a couple things to keep in mind. All right. So we can customize invoices to suit our organization and match your brand create invoice templates add your logo and select which financial information to show see our help article to learn more. Now for us we're mainly going to be using the default invoices here and our focus is going to be on the accounting side of things meaning we're going to enter the invoice and see the impact on the financial statements of the invoice. But and then we might have other sections where we touch on some more of these types of things such as the setting up more payment options and then customizing your invoice for more branding geared ways but you can create different templates. So the standard template works pretty well but you can have different templates that you can create. You've got the new branding theme. That's what they call it. You might call it an invoice template. They call it a branding theme. So you've got the standard and then you've got other branding themes. You might even be able to use word to help you with your branding if you wanted to get more detailed on it. You've got your default settings. You've got your payment services. This actually links to another kind of settings that I believe we'll take a look at in a second and then invoice reminders which again these two I think will take you to another place of the settings but you can go to them from here. And then we've got the standard information. You've got the US letter margins and so on up top. You've got the information that is shown on down below. You've got your logo. So this is probably the default thing that most people if they're using just the standard invoice would probably want to add a little bit of a touch to it with your logo here. You've got your options up top to edit it copy it upload logo and preview. Let's take a look at the preview. So this is what it looks like at this point in times in terms of the general format. Now if you're going to make a different one you might want to copy the standard one right you might make a copy of it and then this will be your title for the new will be test one test one testing testing one one one test one. So now we've got the standard up top and we've got our test one and then we can kind of edit you know the test one if you want to go into up top and edit this one and then you've got some of your standard editing up top page size a for US letter you can play with the margins here and some of this is a little bit more restrictive of course than if you had like a word document or something but that restriction also makes it a little bit easier to do some customization without you know messing everything up. So you've got the font size draft invoice title approved invoice title overdue invoice title. You've got the credit note title statement title draft purchase order title purchase order title draft quote title quote title remittance advice advice title and then you could show the tax number show column headings and you could toggle these on or off show item code show unit price and quantity show payment advice cutaway show tax column show registered address show logo hide discount show contact account number and then you can show the tax subtotals and then you've got your dropdowns here tax rates tax rates over zero and so on show currency conversion if you have that in place payment services payment services and so on and then you've got your logo alignment which you could put left center and right show taxes as exclusive and enter your contact details so that's going to be the general information terms and terms so we're going to keep that we're going to say OK that looks good now again if you want to get into more detail than that you might be able to like export it to word and basically format it there obviously that adds a big level of complexity to do to go into that so that's the general idea with the invoices we're generally going to be using the defaults here let's go back into the settings we're going to go into the settings again and look at the payment services so I believe the payment services is one of the things that we could have clicked on within the invoice settings which basically would have taken us here just another way to get there and it says get paid faster and securely so remember when we talked about the invoices that's the thing that's going to the customers in order to request payment for goods and services that were provided we want to we want to make sure that the invoice facilitates the transactions correctly from the accounting side of things we might want to make sure it looks nice clean so that the customer gets a good impression of us from a brand standpoint and we want to facilitate payment options as easily as possible so you might just send it out and say pay us with a check or pay us with whatever format that you provide them you could even try to try to say that provide them with an external payment option within the letter that you give to them on the invoice for like a PayPal or something or some other payment option that way but it would it might be easier on them if you have an integrated payment service within the invoice that would be quite nice that they can turn around and pay with possibly paying directly with an electronic transfer from their bank or with a credit card or maybe you have a PayPal thing that you can integrate within there and then PayPal can take care of those things now note that as you think about these integrations you have to be a little bit careful because one the integrations add a bit level of complexity to the system as opposed to just an invoice that doesn't have the integration stuff but they can they're not too bad they can be nice but two there's going to be typically fees involved so you want to be balancing out the ways that you want them to pay you and the fees that will be related to that so so you might have give them more opportunities to pay you in different ways if you think that that's going to facilitate more turnaround on the invoices meaning you're going to be able to get your money faster and you're likely to have more of your customers actually pay you and less of that bad debt of people just not paying you by providing them multiple payment options and that might be something to kind of think about in other words you're really good customers you might say hey look I'd like you to pay me this way whatever way that is in order to minimize the fees because and that might be great but if you have a lot of customers and you're dealing with new customers all the time and you don't have an ability to give an impression on them other than the financial transactions you're giving them then it might facilitate a better turnaround if you can give them multiple payment options so you've got the cards so you got cards and digital wallets making payment invoices easy by accepting credit debit cards digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay you got the direct debit so automate payment collection and reconciliation for any zero invoice and then you've got the PayPal let your customer pay invoices instantly with their PayPal account so again some people like of course PayPal if they have a PayPal account that could be great other people like to pay with the credit card this is powered by Stripe which can give you know the other payment options and so on so you want to kind of think about these in terms of which would be integrated best in your businesses and when you might use them so we're not going to turn them on for our practice problem purposes I'm going to go back here because we're mainly focusing on the impact of the financial transactions as they take place not on the different payment options but we might touch on them as we go through the practice problem and then you've got your email settings so if we go into the email settings I believe this is another area that if you checked clicked on the invoices that when we were in the invoice area that it would take you to well maybe not this one it goes to the messages this is where you tailor their email you send from zero so see your help article to learn how to control the displayed name and reply address so tailor the email so for your emails you sent as Bob's deal with replies going to the email you could add an email address and then you've got your templates down below so here we go with our templates so this one then is an invoice so let's take a look at the invoice and so you've got your template here so the basic include quick link to online invoice and detail summary so the message that's going to be sent out so remember some of these these are going to be the types of forms that you might actually email to the client with possibly the attachment of the invoice and so then you're going to have to have some kind of text in here for the email as long as as well as the attachment which will be the invoice or some kind of invoice that will be involved with it as well so now these are the default messages and you could go into here and customize your messages so this one says for example yet you could include quick link to online invoice so that's checked off you've got the invoice invoice number in the message here trading name contact name obviously the stuff in the brackets is going to be pulling in that data into those bracketed areas so it says high contact first name so that means that it's going to be high kind of informal and that it's being picking up the first name that it's pulling from the contact list that was it knows because you created an invoice with the contact list so here's invoice there's the invoice number that's going to be here for currency code invoice total without currency so that's the amount that it's pulling in from the invoice the amount outstanding of currency code amount due without currency so again it's pulling that information in from the invoice is due on due date view your bill online from your online bill you can print a PDF export a CSV or create free law login and view your outstanding bills if you have any questions please let us know thanks and then name so again you might want a different closer here you might want a little more less formal in message so you can think about what you want to do within the message and then by the way these these items here when you want to add those that are pulling in here's the things that you can pull in the amount due without currency amount due contact first name last name so if you want to make it more formal instead of having just the first name and you want to make it first and last name or something like that you could you can use these items and that should add this bracketed thing I believe which will then pull in the proper information when you make your messages so I'm going to close that back out the invoice is going to be one of the most important forms to do that with because you're probably going to be sending a lot of invoices but you have have the credit note here's a credit note deduct the remaining credit and so on that could come up from time to time the statement here's your statement if you have any questions statements might be something that be fairly common as well if they have like multiple stuff outstanding for invoices remittance here's your remittance advice for payment and then you've got the receipt attaches a receipt for your payment of so on if you have any questions and so on purchase order so these are now going on the vendor side of things when you're buying stuff here's a purchase order and so on repeating invoice here's your da da da da and so on and then you've got your quote also something that if you use quotes will be quite common and another external kind of report so you can go into those invoicing settings I'm going to go back on over so those are your email settings then you've got your check styles which which if you're using checks if everything's not automated at this point in time you could take a look at the different check styles and then again you've got your zero to zero connect with other users to automate invoices and bills and then you've got your custom contact links create shortcuts to your favorite zero contacts and other tools so here's a look at the zero to zero so zero to zero lets you connect directly with other businesses who use zero allowing you to exchange invoices directly in and out of your zero accounts so that's pretty neat because then you can you know instead of emailing them possibly you've got this direct connection from zero to zero so that's pretty neat sending invoices via zero to zero to set up enter your customer zero network key into your contact record once complete invoices sent via zero to zero will appear in your customer zero account automatically receiving bills via zeros to zero to set up send your supplier your zero network key and ask them to set it up and then here's your custom links create custom links to allow you to click from zero contacts to other systems such as the customer relationship management the CRM you could set up your custom links if that is applicable