The Power Broker Balance Program is a utility used to find month end outages.  This utility has the commands that Power Broker technical support staff use to find discrepancies, but with a more friendly user interface, allowing you, the user, to solve month end outages on your own.  This program was generated as a project by a systems analyst with the help of a programmer, and although all the features work fine, there still may be some errors with flipping back to menus you have already visited so sometimes it's just better to start from the icon and work your way back to the test you were attempting.

If you already have an earlier version of Balance installed, then please first go to Add/Remove Programs in your Start, Control Panel, and uninstall the previous version.

Click here to download the workstation install  and then Click here to download the balance program Note:  You must download both files

Past Release Dates: 02.15.07 04.07.07 04.27.07 05.11.07 Date located on the top left of the Power Broker Balancing Test Screen.

Installation Instructions:

Install the workstation file to the default

Install the balance file to the default installation directory C:\BALANCE
 

Launch Instructions:
On your desktop, you will see a new 'Balance' icon. 
Double click this icon and it will launch the 'COPY Files Procedure'.


 

Preperation Instructions:
Exclusive Database:
It's important to note that the 'Copy Files Procedure' be
done when everyone is out of Power Broker. As soon as this procedure has completed ( this procedure can take 10 seconds for small offices, and 2 minutes for the largest ones), then everyone can go back into Power Broker. You would then proceed with running the Balance test and be able to work freely because you are using a 'copy' of the files and not the ones on the server.

Since your using the BALANCE program, it's already assumed that your out of balance.  You will need to copy several accounting files to find your outage.  Once you have found your outage, and made your corrections in Power Broker, you would then re-copy your files again using this procedure and then run whatever test found your initial outage. 

Should you copy these files, then get side-tracked by a customer or a telephone call, and then come back to the BALANCE program, the question would be ' do I need to copy these files again?'.  It's important to know that you DO NOT need to copy the files every time you enter the program.  Doing so may disrupt the live version that everyone is working on.

NOTE: The month to be balanced should be closed, or else files must be copied immediately after running End of Day Processing each time you want to run the balancing tests. 
 

Copy Files Instructions:

Click on 'Copy Files Procedure' to copy the files from the \BRO directory on your server to your new C:\BALANCE directory located on your workstation. At the bottom, choose the drive (In this test, we choose W) and then the BRO folder, and then select.







You should now see the files copy over.  Click into the screen once, and then click OK to continue.



 

It is at this stage that everyone can log back into Power Broker and continue working while you proceed with packing the cloned data, and continue with your balancing tests.



This will then bring you into the list of tests that you may pick.

List of Test options:






Although the tests have been listed from 1 through 4, we are going to skip number 1 which would be the most popular of all of the tests until last.  The reason for this is because test 2, 3, and 4 can be completed much quicker, and you may find simple solutions to your outage by running these first.

Test 2:  Part 1 of this test will identify/confirm the trial balance outage, where total debits do not equal total credits. 

Test 2B:  This test uses the general ledger detail records allowing you to pin-point the precise date(s) and entry(s) of the outage.  Reports are available to assist you in comparing debits to credits.  Once problem entry(s) has been identified, you would delete entry and redo.

Test 3:  This test will identify any missing customers for which you have accounting transactions.  A list is displayed on screen.  You would then proceed to re-add these customers with the exact same customer code so that the accounting transactions would re-associate with customer.  Once missing customer(s) have been re-added, reprint the Accounts Receivable Listing to check balance with Accounts Receivable Agency Bill general ledger balance.

Test 1:  What if my Accounts Receivable Listing By Customer total does not agree to the General Ledger balance for the Accounts Receivable account as shown on the Balance Sheet or Trial Balance.

Project Balance Example:
Imagine that in the month of October, you had an A/R outage and you needed to find this outage.

In step 2, you would provide your A/R GL Code



In Step 3, you would provide your branch code or leave BLANK if you do not use branch codes.



In Step 5, you would provide an entire month time span.


Click on 'Show Outage'


If Step 9 displays a '0.00' value, then your not out of balance in this area.

If you actually have a value in the outage box ( imagine $500 for this example ), then this would be what you need to do more investigation on.

To narrow down the outage, you would click on 'RESET VALUES' and return to step 4.


Question:  Ok so now that I know I have an October out of balance problem, how do I find where and when this happened?
The general concept of how to find this $500 outage or any other outage you encounter is of narrowing down the search fields to a shorter span of time.  To do so, you need to break down the time frame from the 31 days into weeks, and then days.  So to do this, type in the first two weeks of October to check balance.



After you type in your new dates, you will need to re-click all of the buttons , Step 6, 7, 8, and 9 in this screen capture to show you your outage for the first two weeks of October.



Imagine that you find the same value as you did before ( $500 ), then you would know that if you 'Reset Values' and did the same test over again but using October 16 to 31, your show outage would be at 0.00.

To narrow down where the outage was for the $500, you would repeat the previous examples over and over again, changing the dates until you found what days you had an outage on and for how much.  The $500 example we used may be more than one transaction so you will have to look for that.

---------------------------------------------------------------






---------------------------------------------------------------






---------------------------------------------------------------







In this example, we found the example $500 outage on 10/06/2006
Please write this down on some paper.

Click on EXIT at the TOP right of the page



:
 

TEST 1 B


On the next page, type in the date and enter your A/R GL Code.





Click on Limit by Date in Grid 1 and in Grid 2





This should bring up whatever was out of balance in either of the two grids.


Should you be looking for an individual amount in a specific time frame, this can also be achieved by entering a date in the date field, typing in your A/R GL Code, and at the bottom of the page, you may enter these values:





------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This feature will allow you to print any of your findings.

 

What do you do when you find your outage?


If you find the outage in the Grid 1 - Custtran spreadsheet, this indicates that something posted to the customer sub-ledger, but not to the Accounts Receivable Agency Bill control account. 

You would need to reverse this entry at the customer sub-ledger level following these steps:

Note:  If when you first enter the Seed Customer Account Receivable Balances screen, you find some transactions already listed in the window, these are Cash Receipts that either you or someone else from your brokerage has entered.  These entries must be posted via Post Cash Receipts Batch before you begin seeding.


1)  Ensure that you know when your last month closed is before proceeding
2)  Go to Utilities, Seed Customer Receivable Balances
3)  Add one line
4)  Entry should be dated last month closed date. 
5)  Complete fields for customer code, policy number, balance amount that you found was the problem, and then the branch if it's applicable to you. 

NOTE:  the amount to enter is the reversing amount of entry found. 
If the value is a positive(+) in Grid 1 - Custtran, the value of your seeded entry should be a negative(-).


If the value is a negative(-) in Grid 1 - Custtran, the value of your seeded entry should be a positive(+).


6)  You would choose 'Print' and then 'Post' at the top of your screen. 
NOTE: Exclusive Database use required to Post. 


7)  Once the seeded entry has been posted, you would need to redo whatever transaction you originally had a problem with.

 

If you find your outage in Grid 2 - GL_Open spreadsheet, it indicates that an entry posted to the Accounts Receivable Agency Bill general ledger account, but not to the customer.  This one-sided entry could be an invoice, a cheque, a journal entry, or a cash receipt.  Track down what you did, delete it and then do the transaction over again.  If the month is closed, of where the problem is, it is possible to re-open a month to delete original entry and make correction.  See Help page associated with Enter Fiscal Periods – Utilities menu.  Should you decide not to re-open, you would need to seed the missing entry to the customer via Seed Customer Receivable Balances as in Grid 1 outage above.
 

The remaining tests listed on the main screen are all tremendously useful and have their own instructions.  If you are out of balance, consider these tests to help identify the cause of your outage.


Test 2:  Part 1 of this test will identify/confirm the trial balance outage, where total debits do not equal total credits. 

Part 2 of this test uses the general ledger detail records allowing you to pin-point the precise date(s) and entry(s) of the outage.  Reports are available to assist you in comparing debits to credits.  Once problem entry(s) has been identified, you would delete entry and redo.

Test 3:  This test will identify any missing customers for which you have accounting transactions.  A list is displayed on screen.  You would then proceed to re-add these customers with the exact same customer code so that the accounting transactions would re-associate with customer.  Once missing customer(s) have been re-added, reprint the Accounts Receivable Listing to check balance with Accounts Receivable Agency Bill general ledger balance.

Test 5:  Bank Reconciliation

This feature allows you to go online, download a month's worth of banking transactions to c:\balance with the specific name RAWDATA.CSV in the format of 'comma deliminated' format and to compare the transactions from Power Brokers by running the Print Bank Reconciliation, and running the 'Copy Files' procedure found on the first page of the Balance program.

Sort either grid by any of the columns by clicking on the header name, and then marking/deleting the items in both grids leaving values that need further research.

There is a 'reset' option if the you make an error, and a 'Load' feature to re-populate the grid. 

Once an item is marked for deletion, the 'Clear Selected Items' will wipe out both lines selected in both grids.  Multiple lines may be selected, clearing multiple lines out.  You may un-select an item if it's been shaded by clicking on it again to un-shade it.

Clicking the top left of the grid automatically adjusts each grid's row to a 'Size fits all' width, yet the typical 'Click and Drag' a row to make it wider applies.


There is a 'rawdata.csv' sample file that is included with the original install, but is overwritten by the customer when they download and save the new rawdata.csv file into the c:\balance folder.