A miscellaneous transaction is a transaction that does not involve a loan, per se. For instance, if your company sells prepaid phone cards for cash, the sale of a prepaid phone card would be considered a miscellaneous transaction. Other examples might be: bill paying, faxes, copies, money orders, bus tokens, Western Union, etc.
This option is NOT part of the standard Title Loan Professional PLUS package, and there may be additional costs and support required if you decide to use it. We do not advocate that you spend a lot of time setting up miscellaneous transactions, as you cannot use what you set up unless the program is specially configured. This requires the creation of an internal loan record for miscellaneous transactions that is not associated with a client. Only an Alpha Omega programmer can do this. So you should call Alpha Omega if you want to use this feature and have not used it in the past.
Miscellaneous transactions do not appear on most of the TLP reports, which are loan-oriented and A/R-oriented. Miscellaneous transactions do affect the Cash Drawer, the Daily Transaction Report and the Cash Daily Summary.
Here is a quick rundown of the miscellaneous transaction setup fields:
Heading: this is what the user sees when a transaction is entered. Examples: $20 Phone Card, $40 Phone Card, etc.
Transaction Description: this is the general heading under which the miscellaneous transactions show up on the various reports. For instance, all phone card sales regardless of price might show up under the general heading "Phone Cards" or "Prepaid Phone Cards" on the Daily Transaction Report. If there is only one item in a sales category, the Heading and Transaction Description can be the same.
Transaction Default Amount: this is the "face value" of the item, not including the fee your company adds to the price. For instance, if you sell a $20 prepaid phone card and charge an additional $2 fee, the transaction default amount would be $20 and the fee default amount would be $2. If you sell a $20 phone card and keep $2, with the other $18 going to the vendor, the Heading would be "$20 Phone Card," the transaction default amount would be $18, and the transaction fee default amount would be $2. Please keep in mind that the amount fields are simply defaults which can be overridden by the user at the time a miscellaneous transaction is entered.
Transaction Fee Description: this is the general heading under which the miscellaneous transaction fee shows up on the various reports. If the transaction description is "Phone Cards" a logical fee description would be "Phone Card Fees."
Transaction Fee Default Amount: this is the fee you add to the "face value"of the item, typically your "markup" or profit. See the topic Transaction Default Amount above for two different ways of handling the fee, based on whether the fee is collected in addition to the face value of the item, or if the fee is included in the face value of the item.
Once a miscellaneous transaction has been set up, use the Miscellaneous Transaction Entry option on the Tools Menu to enter miscellaneous transactions, and be sure to check the Cash Drawer and Daily Transaction Report carefully at the end of each day to make sure you have set up and entered miscellaneous transactions correctly.