How to Add Restitution Checks
There may come a time when you find yourself having to take a restitution check for an item that is being confiscated by police. What is the standard practice for adding these checks to your till?
The first answer is that there is not really a standard. Each store is going to develop their own practices. This guide will give you one idea that has worked for a number of different stores, and is the best practices approach to this problem.
Step 1.
Create a fee.
From System Configuration, select Transaction and then Services and Fees. Click Edit and then click Add.
Add a new fee and give it a name that you can recognize, a default amount, a general ledger account and a tax group. For a complete guide on adding a fee, click here.
NOTE: You may want to enable a miscellaneous general ledger account to track all restitution checks separately from your other ledger entries.
To learn how, click here for the post to accounting guide.
Step 2.
Enter the Customer
To accurately track the fee, you will want to make sure that the customer is entered into the transaction. If you do not have the customer on record, add them. This ensures that you have a permanent record of who paid for the restitution.
To learn how to add a customer, click here to watch the video.
Step 3.
Enter the Transaction.
- Select Merchandise Services and Fees.
- Click on the radio button for Services and Fees.
- Select the restitution fee that you created earlier.
- Enter the amount of the restitution payment.
- Enter any notes that need to follow this transaction.
- Click OK.
- Proceed with the transaction.
The receipt will show that the customer gave you a restitution payment in exchange for their property.
Step 4.
Write off the Item.
The item(s) in question should now be written off with the reason Police Confiscation. If the items are in Inventory, use the confiscation reason in the Write Off menu. If the items are in Loan status, confiscate the loan with all appropriate law enforcement information.
To learn how to confiscate loan items, click here to read the article.
To learn how to write off items from inventory, click here to read the article.