Support Corner
Spectra Property Management Software
Year End Process
To save time at year end, it is always a good idea to make sure your buildings are in balance as you work throughout the year.
General Ledger
At this point in the year, it is a good idea to have your 2024 budgets ready to enter into the system. Completing the next year's budget will help make the recoveries next year's budget billings a breeze to setup.
Is each building in balance? Go to Building – Reports – General Ledger – General Ledger – Trial Balance and preview or print a Trial Balance for each building and check that the debits match the credits. If you discover that there are any buildings out of balance, you will want to identify the source of the discrepancy.
- What Month Did the G/L go out of balance?
- What account/accounts are out of balance?
- Do you have any batches in Processing Status?
If you find that you have a batch/batches posted out of balance, please contact our Support Department immediately. We will have you upload your data, so that we can research the fix for the batches causing the out of balance. Additional resources are available to help find balance variances Under System Task > Spectra Utilities > System Assurance Tests.
Please Note: The System Assurance Tests require the password of the day. Please contact our Support Department for Assistance
Tenant Receivables
Go to the Database Menu – Spectra Utilities and run the A/R Exception Report. This report does two things:
- It will compare your tenant balances to the Accounts Receivable G/L control account, if you’re using accrual accounting. By the way, the #1 cause of the tenant receivable sub ledger not agreeing to the G/L control account is journal entries that have been done to the control account.
- It will check for any internal transaction errors. If any tenant names appear on the A/R Exception Report, contact Spectra Support for assistance.
Tenant Security Deposits:
Now is the time to ensure that your sub ledger balances to the G/L control account. Go to the Building – Reports – Security Deposit Reports – Security Deposit Listing. Run this report for each building and compare it to the G/L control account for Tenant Security Deposits.
The Security Deposit Listing cannot be backdated, so you must rerun this listing on December 31st or whatever is the last day of your fiscal year.
Compact, Backup and Restore
The Backup and Compact process is an important daily task to maintain the health of your database files. The Backup process creates a restore point in the event that something happens to compromise your working data files, while Compacting prevents the databases from becoming bloated and unstable.
At a minimum, you should run the Backup and Compact daily. We also recommend creating a backup prior to running Begin Month. Should something go wrong, you can simply restore to backup and avoid potentially billable database repairs.
Dealing With Software Updates
Being self-hosted, whether you are using LAN or Terminal Server installations, means having to deal with software updates for Spectra, Microsoft Office and System Software such as Windows, Firewall and Anti-virus Software. The installation of software updates is necessary but can be problematic if you are unprepared. We recommend the following process to control and minimize the negative impacts of problematic updates.
Have your IT or Systems Administrator disable updates on any computer where Spectra is installed including Terminal Server.
- When Software updates are rolled out, your IT professional or Systems Administrator can create a backup of your data and manually push the updates.
- Prior to working in Spectra, your team or IT can run processes in Spectra, testing specific process where errors typically occur.
- If there are no errors, restore to backup and proceed to work as normal. Be vigilant about making backups prior to your big processes such as, Begin Month or Permanent Year End Close. For the next week, create backups prior to posting any particularly large batches of any type.
- If an errors occur, restore to back up and notify your IT to roll back the software update prior to beginning work in Spectra. Your IT or system administrator can monitor the software websites for additional updates or a patch to fix a broken update.