Practice Level Collections
Practice level collections might be used for Funded accounts or other special types of accounts. A practice collection contains a set of master pages that can be applied to any client, without needing to copy in the required pages one by one.
To create a practice collection:
1. Create a practice master pack. To do this, use File > Maintenance > Accounts > Master Pack. Each master pack has a version number. If the version number is a whole number then it is a CCH master pack, e.g. 1.00; if it has decimal places it is a practice master pack, e.g. 1.01.
2. Add practice collections. To add practice collections to the practice master pack, use File > Maintenance > Accounts > Collections.
- Only unpublished, practice master packs can have collections added. “Publishing” a master pack finalises it and is performed in File > Maintenance > Accounts > Master Pack Publish.
- Each collection has a Sequence field. This determines the order in which the collections are listed in drop downs, e.g. in Financial Statements within a client. The CCH collections have a Sequence below 100; practice collections must be numbered above 100.
3. Add accounts pages to the practice collections. This is performed in File > Maintenance > Accounts > Format Designer.
There are two ways to add the new practice collection to a client:
- If the client is not already on the new master pack version.
- Go into the accounting period from the client Accounts Production tab in Central.
- The system offers to perform a “Master Pack Upgrade” to the latest version.
- Select Yes to perform the upgrade. The new collection and its pages are available.
- If the client is already on the new master pack version. In this case, the collection can be refreshed to show the latest pages that have been added to it. But any new collections that have been created cannot be added to the client without a Master Pack Upgrade.
- Go into Accounts Production > Financial Statements.
- Select the collection to be refreshed on the Collection Name dropdown.
- Select Reset Collection to add in any new master pages, leaving local pages unchanged. Alternatively select Revert to Default to return the collection to its master state, removing any local pages.
Notes
- Currently, practice collections can only be created for the Trust and Probate Entities.
- If an extra collection is added to a practice master pack, e.g. to Master Pack 1.01, but is not visible on a client on that master pack.
The reason for this is that Collections are only added to an accounting period at the point when the accounting period is upgraded to the master pack that has the Collections. So if the client is already on a master pack when more Collections are added to it, then they are not shown.
The workaround is to :- Select Home > Master Pack Version
- Change the Master Pack Version back to an earlier version, e.g. version 1.00.
- Change it back to the correct version.
- The new Collections should then be visible in Financial Statements.
- When a client is zipped up, the zip file contains the client’s local pages, but it contains no master pages. If a client that uses a practice collection is zipped up from a source database and unzipped on a destination database, the system looks for the practice collection on the destination database when the client is unzipped.
- If the practice collection is found, then the client is given the destination practice collection.
- If the practice collection is not found, then a local collection is created containing only the local pages from the source database (as the master pages are not contained in the zip file).