Turning on these advanced finance settings allows you to do some very specific things that aren’t switched on as standard when you start using Rex out of the box.Don't let the name fool you - there’s nothing particularly tricky about using them, per se. However, there is a lot of responsibility involved. These settings manage the behaviour of some of the finance options in Rex for every user of your account. That means - if you’re the one fiddling around with these settings - you’re managing the way everyone works (at least, in three specific areas). So, we’ve dubbed them Advanced.Only Super Admin users, Agency Owners or users with the Advanced Settings privilege turned on will be able to see these settings. They’re accessible from the Advanced Settings tab of the Admin section.Let’s walk through each setting.
1. Invoice Overpayments Allowed
You’ve (hopefully) raised an invoice in Rex and applied payment before - so, you’ll know that you can’t pay more than the outstanding balance. Well, this setting changes that. Simply tick the box next to overpayments allowed, and you’ll be able to enter however much you want. But why would you want to accept a payment greater than the balance of the invoice you are accepting the payment for? Glad you asked!Say for example, you’ve received an invoice for $1,000 for staging furniture. But the same company is decking out the place with artificial flowers - and that always costs $400. So, instead of applying $1,000 payment, you can apply $1,400. Remember, though - you’re not actually moving any money just yet. Then, you’ll get a separate tab in the Finance section of the listing record to which the invoice relates. This is where Rex will track any credits you’ve got. In this instance, you’ll have $400 there. This is handy from an auditing perspective, because you're accurately reporting/tracking the financial transactions as they happen in your bank account. For example, if you only show the payment for $1,000 in Rex but your bank account shows $1,400, your accountant/auditor may wonder what the heck is going on - and what exactly you did with that extra $400.Something to keep in mind: this isn’t legal in some places. The overpaid money is going to go into your bank account where, theoretically, you could be earning interest on it. What you're doing is holding onto money for someone outside a trust accounting situation. You’ve been warned! (And we warn you again before you turn on this setting, don’t worry).
2. Supplier invoice references in VPA
Turning on this advanced setting will give you a second field in your Ad Schedule entries in the VPA tab of a listing record - allowing you to indicate your supplier’s reference for each entry, so long as you’ve got the Update Supplier Reference privilege.We probably don’t need to tell you why this is important, but we’re going to anyway - just in case the penny isn't dropping.Let’s say you’ve just won three new listings (impressive!), and all of your vendors have agreed to advertising packages using realestate.com.au. So, you’ll organise for advertising, and it appears on the website - Bob’s your uncle. But then comes the end of the month. Realestate.com.au sends you a single invoice for the three new listings, all bundled together. How are you supposed to reconcile that against your invoices in Rex?With this new field, that’s how. Simply click the drop-down arrow next to the product, provider, category column and click Set supplier reference. Enter the reference, click Save and you’ll notice a tick pop in the inv by supplier column. If your agency doesn’t have a lot of turnover, or if you don’t use Rex to track your Vendor Paid Advertising, you don’t need to worry about this.
3. Allow agent invoices
Out of the box, the only people you can attach to an invoice are contacts in Rex - and you can only create an invoice if you’ve got the Create & Void Invoices privilege. We know that sometimes, you might agree to pay out of your own pocket for a vendor’s drone photography or some other such service to give you a competitive edge, and win the listing. It’s fine, guys - it happens all the time. No judging here. But we need to account for that in Rex somehow. So, if you tick this box, the next time you raise an invoice you’ll be able to select Agent as the invoicee type. Then you can select the name of the agent under invoice to. This functionality is also useful for agencies that charge agents for overspent or unrecoverable marketing budgets - if that’s how you roll. However, if you’ve already created a contact record for yourself in Rex, you won’t need to turn this setting on.That’s all there is to it, friends. Remember, there’s no harm, no foul if you don’t turn these advanced settings on. They simply add extra capability - you can take it or leave it.If you’ve got any questions about these advanced settings, you can reach our Support team at support@rexsoftware.com.
