Troubleshooting End of Day Wizard Problems

This page describes what to do if trying to solve end of day problems that prevent posting to the General Ledger. If any one of the steps in this section below does not fix the out-of-balance problem, try the next step or the other sections

Also, note the 'Create Sales Entries' process in the End of Day wizard actually takes two passes at checking for an imbalance. If your venue is not busy, this will handle most end of day issues automatically. However, if it does not -AND- you are having an extra busy day, then re-running the 'Create Sales Entries' can catch any sales that straggle in and counts them.

Problem

Action
You received a deposit in process message when attempting to use the End of Day:
  • Refer to resetting end of day in Company Preferences to reset all end of day settings (Normal approach), or
  • You can reset the 'deposit status' for the specific merchant account in merchant setup (This avoids resetting all merchant accounts and the overall EOD in progress setting).
Matching a deposit to your Merchant Account: Please refer to the following to make sure you've looked at your batch totals and/or settled the batches If your merchant batch total is different than Theatre Manager, it means one of two things:
  • There is more at the Bank batch than Theatre Manager.
    • If its a small amount or one or two cards AND ALL FOR ONE DAY, then
      • compare your entire batch, card for card to what theatre manager thinks.
      • Void any authorization at the bank that is not in theatre manager until you balance
    • If it is a larger amount, its likely that somebody forced closed theatre manager deposits:
      • look back at past deposits/transactions in Theatre Manager
      • see if those cards are in the open batch at the bank
      • If so, figure oiut which cards match the deposits in theatre Manager
      • Add them up and if you can see which bathes were force closed and the totals match, then settle the batch using theatre manger and make sure the batch is closed online
  • There is more in Theatre Manager than the Bank
    • Generally means that somebody settled the bank batch online instead of through theatre manager
    • Start at the last day that balanced and look at all Closed batches at the bank to get a total by day
    • Look at the open batch to see how much it is
    • Add them up
    • If that matches Theatre Manager, then settle the batch
Making the end of day balance go to zero so you can post: Please refer to correcting an imbalance to resolve the problem.
You receive a message indicating that there are orders currently being sold: Some orders may currently be in the process of having tickets sold to them or taking payments. You might need to
  • clear orders currently being sold for older orders to get End of Day to balance.
  • New orders - you may have to wait till the box office finishes with the customer.
  • At the very least, look at the BALANCE on each order as you will likely be out of balance by that amount in end of day -- at least till the order is completed or cancelled.
The inability to post to the general ledger after balancing: Please refer to cannot post to the General Ledger
If the payments can not be seen in the deposit process window:
  • The merchant account has been de-actived, or
  • The workstation does not have internet access, or
  • When the workstation started Theatre Manager, it didn't get a valid 'internet available' response. In this case, you will need to quit Theatre Manager and start it back up again to have the 'internet available' flag reset within that workstation's session.
You just ran the first End of Day after Year End Rollover and found an issue Please refer to End of Day Imbalance after Year End Rollover

Correcting an Imbalance in the End of Day Wizard

Occasionally, when performing the End Of Day, there will be an imbalance which prevents you from posting to the General Ledger. An "imbalance" simply means that Deposits do not match Sales. When this happens, Theatre Manager will not allow you to post an unbalanced entry to the General Ledger without fixing it first.

An imbalance can be caused by a variety of things such as:

  • A power outage in the middle of a transaction
  • A power outage in the middle of the the End Of Day
  • A misapplied fee or refund during the sales process
  • A manual GL Entry that was incorrectly applied
  • A GL entry with no detail lines
  • An EMV (pinpad) authorization initiated by Theatre Manager in which there was a time out or failure
  • Other reasons

There are several steps you can take to correct an imbalance in the End Of Day prior to contacting Support.

The first step is easy: don't panic.

There are two important things to remember about an imbalance in the End Of Day:
  1. Not completing your End Of Day does not mean you can't do any more business. If you can't complete the End Of Day, leave it until you can contact Support to assist you.
  2. Never - ever - Force Balance the End Of Day unless you have been advised by Support to do so.


1 First, verify no users are in the middle of selling tickets, donations, or passes. The End of Day wizard excludes any order in the process of being modified (i.e. tickets being sold) and does not journalize them.
  • When you start the end-of-day wizard, if there any orders in the state of account being modified (i.e in process of being sold), you will see a list of the orders, the patron and the user who is editing the order. A message is displayed indicating the probable resolution.
  • If an order is being sold and it contains a balance, then your end-of-day will be out by that amount.
    • If orders are older than 3 hours, you may want to talk to the sales representative and/or clear the order being sold flag by highlighting it on the list and clearing it.
    • You can also access this window from Setup ->Batch Functions -> Orders Currently Being Sold.
2 Re-run the End of Day process again to see if any new sales show up.
  • Do the sales entries again to look for new sales that came in while the last 'create sales entries' was running and compiling the G/L.
    • This may be needed if it was a very busy day and sales are still occurring while the a prior 'create sales entries' was being processed.
    • Also, note TM is designed to allow sales to occur while end of day is being done, so this is normal.
  • Optionally, redo the deposit to look for new payments.
    • You should never do this step unless you plan on taking the extra money to the bank.
    • Any money highlighted in this step would also have been displayed in the 'Pending Deposits' value on the upper right of the end of day wizard.
    • This means doing a second deposit will never fix an end of day issue.
  • Optionally: verify if there any issues with EMV PinPads by looking at their totals, if they have settled and for any issues in the payment requests sent by them to the bank.
3 Run the report called Utility Functions and Database Analysis Reports >> Check Order and Transaction Balances.
  • Set the criteria as:

    order date updated >= (last date in balance)
    AND order flag-reservation only = NO

  • Fix the orders and transactions that appear in the report to make them balance.
  • Re-run the End of Day wizard.
4 Run a Transaction History >> Transaction History List report.
  • Set the criteria as:

    trans date revenue >= (current date and time)

    to see if any user has their computer clock set into the future.  If an order has a date set in the future, Theatre Manager will not post that order until that date/time has passed.

    Theatre Manager uses the server date for all transactions, so this could only occur if the server date was set wrong (and in the future), and somebody or automatic time sync process discovered the server time error and reset it. You will rarely ever find this to be the problem.

  • However, If this is the case:
    • Stop all sales (including pausing the web listener) and set the clock forward on both the server and the computer handling the End of Day process and redo the deposit/sales postings.
    • Re-run the End of Day process to get these payments and sales entries. IGNORE any post dated payments.
    • Then change the date on the deposit and sales entries to today.
    • Change the date and time on the server and computer clock back to the proper time. After the future transactions have been posted, you can resume normal sales.
5 Run Setup >> Batch Functions >> Order Balances
  • As criteria, use:

    dates between (last date balanced) and (today).

  • Re-run the End of Day wizard.
6 Go into Accounting -> General Ledger -> G/L Entries.  Are there any manual G/L entries since last time balanced?
  • If so, check to see why it was created, and see if that is what is causing the imbalance.
  • Double click on the entry, and look at the A/R line.
  • If the A/R line matches the out of balance amount, it is the problem.
  • Re code the manual GL entry so that it does not adjust the A/R account.
  • Re-run the End of Day wizard. 
7 Did the system crash in the middle of creating sales entry?  If so make sure G/L entries are not out of balance.
  • Go back into Accounting -> General Ledger -> G/L entries, and make sure debits equal credits.
  • Run a Transaction History by Play (Totals only) report for the sales posting that is out of balance with the criteria:

    trans g/l reference # = (the SP journal entry that is out of balance).

    • Most likely, if this occurred, there are missing sales, donations, memberships, ticket fees, order fees, exchange fee and taxes in the A/R line.
    • A manual correction of the GL Entry is required (or simply a reposting of the missing transactions) to add missing detail lines or adjust the debit/credit amount of the existing lines to match to the transactions that were journalized to the G/L Entry.
  • Run a Utility Functions and Database Analysis >> Check Transaction and G/L Entry Balances report with the criteria:

    trans date revenue >= (the last time the EOD was in balance).

  • This report will ensure that all transactions journalized to the GL Entry actually match the detail lines in the GL Entry
    • If not, a manual correction of the GL Entry is required (or simply a reposting of the missing transactions) to add missing detail lines or adjust the debit/credit amount of the existing lines to match to the transactions that were journalized to the G/L Entry.
  • Re-run the End of Day wizard.
8 Did the system crash in the middle of a deposit?  The deposit entries will need to be fixed in order to balance.
  • Go to ,Accounting >> General Ledger >> G/L Entries, and check to see if there are two deposits for one day.
  • Run a Bank Deposit report for both deposit numbers.
    • One deposit will appear to be in balance, but will be lower than expected.
    • The other one will be unbalanced.
  • Edit the deposit to match the amount that the other deposit is off. For example:
    • The deposit total is $2000, half cash and half check.
    • The deposit that balances totals $600 cash and $500 check, with $1100 A/R.
    • The other Deposit totals $2000, but does not have A/R.
    • Change the deposit that does not balance to show $400 cash, $500 check and $900 A/R, so that the two deposits will total $1000 cash and $1000 check.
  • Run a Utility Functions and Database Analysis >> Check Transaction and G/L Entry Balances report with the criteria:
    • trans date revenue >= (the last time the EOD was in balance).
  • This report will ensure that all transactions journalized to the GL Entry actually match the detail lines in the GL Entry.
    • If not, a manual correction of the GL Entry is required (or simply a reposting of the missing transactions) to add missing detail lines or adjust the debit/credit amount of the existing lines to match to the transactions that were journalized to the G/L Entry.
  • Re-run the End of Day wizard.
9 Has anybody gone into a Patron's transactions and either duplicated or reversed debits and credits in an attempt to fix something? If so:
  • Contact AMS with the patron account, the order and the transactions that have been changed.
  • If possible, AMS can assist with finding the transactions and creating new ones to balance the End of Day. 
10 Run a Utility Functions and Database Analysis Reports >> Check Order and Transaction Balances report again.
  • Broaden the criteria to look for more data:

    order date updated >= (a much longer time in the past)
    AND order flag-reservation only = NO

  • Fix the orders for any patrons orders and transactions who appear in the report.
  • Re-run the End of Day wizard.
11 Have TM Support run a query to find any transactions that are posted but are not connected to a a GL entry

The general form of the query is below and will need modified depending on what is found.

select * from f_transaction where T_GL_SEQ not in (select GL_SEQ from F_GL_HEADER)
and T_TRAN_CODE not iLike 'A%' AND T_TRAN_CODE not in ('TU','DU','TTT','TTF','OTT','OTF','DTT','DTF','MTT','MTF')
and T_GL_D_DEPT_SEQ = xx

12 Look to see if there are any gift cards or passes that were sold/refunded/adjusted and are not in GL entries.
13 Did you just complete the first year end rollover since Jan 1 2018 and are users TM for a long time? The new rollover process recalculates all account balances from inception of the database and this could be a leftover imbalance from before version 6. Please contact AMS support if this is the case. In the end, a one-time-only manual adjustment will be necessary by forcing the end of day balance that should be noted and ignored in the accounting program.

AMS team will need to:

  • Manually create a GL entry against the A/R account over 6 years ago
  • Mark it posted
  • Re-run the year end rollover after adjusting the current year to bring into balance
14 Force the A/R Balance. If you have:
  • done all the previous steps -and-
  • simply cannot find the source of the out of balance -and-
  • have contacted AMS Support for their assistance - THEN -
  • You may have to force the end of day balance. We do not recommend doing this step unless an imbalance simply cannot be found.

Cannot Post to the General Ledger

Follow these steps if the user is unable to post to the general ledger in the End of Day wizard.  If a step does not fix the posting problem, proceed to the next step.

Problem

Action
Has the End of Day been completed? If not, complete an End of Day.
Is it in balance? If not, review the instructions above on finding and fixing an imbalance.
Are account numbers missing? Check to make sure that all account numbers are entered in deposit and sales entry windows in End of Day.
>Are any GL entries unbalanced? Go into Accounting >> General Ledger >> G/L Entries, and make sure that all debits and credits are equal for each entry.
Is it a new fiscal year? If the organization is at or past year end, a Year End Roll Over needs to be completed. If the organization has not done a year end rollover, it will not be able possible to post GL entries in the new fiscal year. For more information on handling a Year End Roll Over, click here.
Are there any posting dates in the future? Check sales posting dates - are any in the future? Future dates cannot be posted.
Does the user have permission? Does the user have authorization/permission in the user ID permissions in the system to post? If not, the user will need to obtain permission.
Is your Merchant Provider different than TM? It is possible that Theatre Manager got a timeout sending a credit card, and if it was sent again with a force duplciate, you would expect this. Compare TM edit list with the authorization detail online at your merchant account and then void the extra in your online merchant account. If the deposit doesn't match, them please refer to solving merchant account Imbalance

Deposit In Progress Flag

If you experience an interruption of power or connection to the database server during the End Of Day, when you attempt the End Of Day again, Theatre Manager may respond with a message that a 'Deposit is In Progress,' indicating that it believes the End Of Day Wizard is still active and is currently depositing credit card funds through your merchant processor.

The resolution for this is simple, and you can get back to running your End of Day in seconds by unchecking the 'Deposit In Progress' box in the Merchant Account setup. You cannot check this box, you can only uncheck it. Only do so if you are 100% sure there is no settlement occurring for this merchant account (i.e. nobody has End Of Day open). Unchecking it, resets the End Of Day and allows a settlement to happen.

To reset the Deposit in Progress Flag, you perform the following steps:

  1. Ensure that no one is currently doing the End Of Day.
  2. Log on as the Master User.
  3. Select the Setup>>System Tables>>Merchant Account menu.

  4. Select your Merchant account from the list.

    Double click on the Merchant account to open it.

  5. Click the tab.

  6. Uncheck the 'Deposit Status' box.

  7. logon using your Employee account.
  8. Restart and proceed with the End Of Day.