Welcome to Financial Entries import template training with VLU. This course is designed to give you a better understanding of the Financial Entries import template used within the VL import tool. We will also cover best practices and tips for completing this template to ensure a smooth upload of data.

By the end of this course, you should be able to
• Navigate to the Financial Import Template
• Complete the fields for the template
• And Understand the best practices for completing this template

Please take a moment to review the agenda. To view a particular topic, please jump to the corresponding timestamp.

Completing the Template

In this video, we will complete a Financial Entries template and show you some best practices when completing this import.

On the Import tool page, find the Financial Entries template. This Template is considered a primary template –which can be found here. Click on it to open the workflow in a new window.

Please note: users must have Import Financials permissions in order to access this tool. Contact your Visual lease platform administrator for additional assistance.

As a company, you must decide to use the template, or manually enter the data directly in the platform. In some cases, especially for those with a small amount of entries, it may be better, and even faster to enter them manually inside the platform. However, if you have say, 300 entries to make, then using the template will be the better choice.

As with all our templates, step by step instructions on how to use the template are found here on the template upload page. Make sure to follow these instructions as they will ensure the template will upload without any errors.

First, click the hyperlink to download and open the excel template.

The first tab, labeled Financial Entries, is where you will configure the entries to be imported. The remaining tabs contain reference platform data to assist you. As mentioned in earlier videos, we recommend using the copy/paste functionality from the reference tabs to the financial entries tab to ensure that the data matches exactly.

Let’s quickly review each of these supporting tabs…

The Leases Defined tab provides Lease ID and address for every lease record within your platform. This includes expired and archived records.
Payees Defined by Lease lists all payees currently associated with each record. It provides the lease ID, the payee name, type- if applicable, and address.

The Payees defined tab offers similar details, minus the associated lease ID. This tab is especially helpful for locating existing payee information for payees not yet assigned to a lease record.

Expenses Defined lists all the expense categories within your platform and the associated expense code.

Allocation Groups defined lists the allocation groups assigned to your lease records.

The last 2 reference tabs list the accounting standards defined in your platform for variable payments and the entry types for GASB 87 payment and income disclosures.

Back on the Financial Entries tab, the columns within the template mirror the fields found on the general tab of your platform. Visual lease color codes all templates to easily distinguish between required, optional, and criteria dependent fields. Additionally, some template fields may not be in use on your platform. Be sure to review the template key and instructions found here for more information.

Complete the necessary fields using the reference tabs. Save the excel sheet and return to the platform to upload.

Select the browse button, locate the saved file and click Upload & Process to complete the import.

The results will display below. Any issues requiring your attention will appear here.

This template has many best practices and tips. Some of them are as follows:
First, when there is a planned increase. Everything from the from the first column to column Z must be the same. For example, these rows represent a planned increase for Lease ID 001. For every row that includes this lease, must have matching information. However, you can add multiple leases to the template. In this example, we are also going to add a planned increase for lease 002 as well, where all the information for THAT lease will need to match.

Another tip for planned increases, is that there can be no gaps in dates. This is important for leap years. For example, if row 6 ends on January 31st, row 7 must start with February 1st. Finally one important note regarding dates. All rows within the financial entry must have an end date.

The second tip is in regards to the Subsequent payment on the 1st column. Typically this column defaults to yes if left blank which will impact entries that have mid-period start dates. If this is left blank, and it defaults to yes, and there is a mid-period start date, the system will prorate the amount listed by the number of days left in the month for the first period. So if we start on the 15th, the first period will show the remaining days left in that first period.

If this column is set to ‘no’, and you have a mid-period start date to the financial entry, the system assume you want the period to be of the start date through until one day before the start date in the next month and will prorate the final period, unless you set the end date to be one day prior to the start of the next, for example, the start date is the 15th, and the end date is set to the 14th.

Finally, the variable treatment defaults to the financial category setup in the administrator module. If you are trying to make an entry and have a variable treatment – you will need to list the accounting standard in the Variable Treatment column. For example, if the variable treatment was for FASB 842, you’ll need to include it on the column located here. This would be the equivalent of going to the financial entries section, checking the box to Show Optional Fields, and then checking the box for FASB 842.

– When there is a planned increase variable treatment, everything from the Lease ID to the Frequency sections must be exactly the same. Pay close attention to the dates, because there can be date gaps between the end date of one amount and the start date of the next amount. This is especially important when taking into consideration during Leap Years. (heads up how-to)
o A-Z have to be the same info in the row for increases (001 in 5 rows then 002)
o No gaps in dates – row 6 ends Jan 31, row 7 must start Feb first
o All rows within that entry must have an end date

– The Subsequent payment on the 1st defaults to yes – if this column is left blank, the system defaults this record option to ‘yes’ . This will impact entries with mid period start dates. If the column is left blank and the start date is mid period, the system will prorate the amount listed by the number of days left in the month. If ‘Subsequent payment of the 1st ‘ is set to ‘No’ and you have mid period start date to the financial entry, the system assume you want the period to be of the start date through until one day before the start date in the next month. (Important note)
o Start date 15th and left as yes – expect financial entries in the system view details – first period is a proration of the amount entered in column
o If no and start date on the 15th – schedule date same as start date – proration on the final period. Unless 14th as the end date (one day)

– The variable treatment defaults to the financial category setup in the administrator module. If you are trying to make an entry have a variable treatment – you will need to list the accounting standard in the Variable Treatment column (Important Note)

Key Takeaways

This concludes the Financial Entries Import template training with VLU
Here are a few key things to remember…
– When there’s a planned increase, each lease ID on the template will have to have matching information
– If you have a mid-period start date with regards to a subsequent payment, selecting no in this column will make the system assume you want the period to be the next start the day before the start date of the next period.
And Finally, for variable treatment, make sure you’re adding the correct financial category in the column
Thanks for watching, any questions, comments, or feedback can be sent to support@visuallease.com

Welcome to General Lease import template training with VLU. This course is designed to give you a better understanding of the General Lease import template used within the VL import tool. We will also cover best practices and tips for completing this template to ensure a smooth upload of data.

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• Navigate to the General Lease Import Template
• Complete the fields for the template
• and Understand the best practices for completing this template

Please take a moment to review the agenda. To view a particular topic, please jump to the corresponding timestamp.

Common Imports: General Lease

In this video, we will complete a General Lease Information template and show you some best practices when completing import.

Visual Lease offers a plethora of import options, but there are some that are used more often than others. Specifically, the Primary and Secondary Import Templates. The General lease import template falls under the Primary template category and is important to the main lease information upload steps.

To begin, click the tools icon in the main menu, then click Import lease information. Once on the page, find the General Lease Information template, located within the primary import template section.

This Basic Lease Information Importer can be used to both add new lease records and update existing ones. As this video is dedicated to new lease record creation, that is where our focus will be.

First, click on the link for General Information. A new tab in your browser will open.

Please ensure that you review the detailed instructions and important notes prior to using this template. This will help to ensure a smooth and successful import.

Next, click the hyperlink to download the pre-formatted Excel template. Please note, selecting a lease filter from the dropdown will prepopulate matching leases from VL into the downloaded template. This is how the support or CSM teams would recommend making updates to the general tab in bulk. Since we are creating brand new lease records, we will leave this blank to download a new blank template.

The columns within the template mirror the fields found on the general tab of your platform. As mentioned earlier, Visual Lease color codes all templates to easily distinguish between required, optional, and criteria dependent fields. Additionally, some template fields may not be in use on your platform. Be sure to review the template key and instructions found here for more information.

It is important that you do not manipulate, move, or delete any columns or tabs within this file, even if they are not in use. This will cause the import to fail.

The reference tabs along the bottom of the worksheet provide you with a list of accepted values for specific columns within the template.

Think about the steps to create new lease records in the platform. Often you must select from a predetermined list of drop downs or tree fields, based on the configuration of your platform. The same is true here.

These tabs are broken into numerous categories including:

– basic values, like lease status, owner type, and currency
– Record types
– Organizations
– Region
– Brand
– And country with state or province

We strongly recommend copying from the reference tabs and pasting into the Lease General tab to avoid typos, errors, or hanging spaces at the beginning or end of a word – as these will result in import errors.

Once you have finished populating the template with the details of the leases you are uploading, save the file and return to the platform. Click the Browse button to locate the saved file and click “Open” to load it into the import tool. Once loaded, click Upload and Process to complete the import.

You do not need to select the “Update Lease Financials for Expiration Date changes” checkbox as this setting only applies when you are updating existing leases.

How about demoing how to use the template to update leases here?

Select a lease filter to download a prepopulated import template. Update the templates as need

Detail the expected behavior of the Update lease financials flag
The import results will be displayed under the Results section. Here, you will see a summary of actions taken as a result of the import including: the number of rows that were processed, unchanged, updated, inserted, and those with errors.

If you use the import tool to add 18 new lease records to your platform, your results should display 18 rows inserted.

The template treats each row as an individual upload. This means only rows that have errors have not uploaded.

Review the error summary here to identify the lease IDs that contain an error and the error message. Open your saved template to correct the leases with errors and re-upload as needed.

If the upload is successful, there will be no errors.
The new lease records are now available in your platform.

If you are unsure of the error, please do not hesitate to take a screen shot or the exported file to support for assistance.

Tips and Tricks

In this video, we will cover some best practices, as well as some tips and tricks to ensure a smooth import of the General Lease template.

When completing the General Lease import template, there are things that should be taken into consideration.

Here are some best practices and tips for completing the General Lease Information template are as follows:

• First, it’s important to copy and paste from the reference tabs to the general import tab. This ensures there are no misspellings or extra spaces in the field when they are inputted.
• Next, it’s important that you need to copy and paste the record types from the ‘Record Type’ column on the reference tab, not the description column
• In the currency section on the Basic Lookup Table, the first currency listed is ‘United States Dollar’. All other currencies are in alphabetical order.
• The Original Commencement Date is intended to capture the lease’s initial start date, the Commencement Date may be the same if this is a net new lease. The Commencement Date will have downstream financial and accounting implications and should house the lease’s current term start date
• The expiration Date is conditionally required, because if the Owner Type is ‘Owned’ there is technically no end date, but to avoid downstream errors on financial entries, we recommend always listing an expiration date – consider using 12/31/2099 as the end for Owned leases
• Rentable area is a numerical field only! The minimum value accepted is 1. 0 is not an acceptable number

– When completing a non-real estate record in the platform, it does not require the rentable area Measurement Unit or Land Unit is not required, but the import template does require this to be entered in order to successfully upload a non-real estate record.

Key Takeaways

This concludes the training for the General Lease import template.

Here’s some key things to remember:

• Always Follow the instructions on the template page
•  Never change or any of the column header names
• Always copy & paste from the reference tab to the template
•  If the owner type is “owned”, enter 12/31/2099 to avoid errors when uploading. If you are unsure of the error, please do not hesitate to take a screen shot or the exported file to support for assistance

Thanks for watching. Any questions, comments, or feedback can be sent to support@visuallease.com

Introduction

Welcome to the introduction to the import tool within the Visual Lease platform. This course is designed to give you a better understanding about the basics of the import tool and how to complete an import template at a high level.

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

– Navigate to the Import Tool
– Understand the different sections of the import page
– How to read and utilize a basic lease template for import
Please take a moment to review the agenda. To view a particular topic, please jump to the corresponding timestamp.

Access and Tour of the Lease Information Import Tool

Visual Lease provides a variety of Import tools & templates that allow you to bulk upload data into the platform using pre-formatted Excel templates.

In this video, we will discuss what an import template is, and how to access the Lease Information Import Tool in the Visual Lease platform.

An import template is an excel or CSV file that allows a user to add or update information in bulk and then upload it into the VL Platform. These sheets consist of a color code that makes it easy to determine what information is mandatory, and what is optional, as well as providing reference information that can be copy/pasted into certain fields, when applicable.

When you have hundreds of inputs to enter into the VL Platform, the Lease Information Import Tool is a real timesaver and is well worth the work up front.

Should this information come from another system, VL can integrate with software products that might provide the data such as ,allocations sales, percent rent, which can prepopulate the template

To begin, click on the tools icon to view the list of tools and select Import Lease Information.

Please note: Import Permissions are needed to access the lease and financial import functionality. If you are unable to access this dropdown, or do not see the Import Lease Information option in the list, please contact your platform administrator for assistance.

Once on the Record Information Import Tools page you will see that it is separated into three sections, Primary, Secondary, and Supplemental.

A very important note: If you have records that exist in the platform, and you are using the template to update them, the template will override any data that is already in the system. It is important to ensure the data is correct before uploading.

First is the Primary Templates. These templates are used when trying to complete all of the mandatory Lease Administration and Lease Accounting functions for the record within the VL Platform. To complete this, you must complete the following templates in order: General Lease Information, Lease Financial Entries, and Lease Accounting.

By completing these three templates you will have populated a basic record. We will walk through how to complete these templates later in the video.

Next we have the Secondary Templates. These templates are not mandatory to the Admin and Accounting aspects of the record, but they are still very important. Completing these three templates may provide deeper insight that could assist in completing the primary templates. These templates are Contacts, Options, and Clauses.

Please note, that while an Option is technically a clause, it is important to complete the option template for options only. You should never complete options using the clauses template.

Finally there is the Supplemental Templates. These are typically used for specific workflows within an organization. Please contact VL Support to discuss and decide if any of these templates would benefit your organization.

So there are a lot of templates listed here. And that may seem a bit overwhelming. Understand though, that while each template may require different types of data, the overall anatomy of the templates is relatively the same.

First, the headers of the template will mirror what you’d see in the platform when filling out the information in there.

Visual Lease color codes all templates to easily distinguish between required, optional, and criteria dependent fields. Additionally, some template fields may not be in use on your platform. Be sure to review the template key and instructions found on each template page for more information.

It is important that you do not manipulate, move, or delete any columns or tabs within this file, even if they are not in use. This will cause the import to fail.

Next, if applicable, the template will have one or more reference tab. These tabs will provide you with accepted values that you should copy/paste into the appropriate column in the template. These tabs will vary depending on the template you are filling out.

Think about the steps to create new lease records in the platform. Often you must select from a predetermined list of drop downs or tree fields, based on the configuration of your platform. The same is true here.

Completing an Import Template (Walkthrough)

In this video we will walk through the completion of a general lease template to give a better understanding of the overall process from start to finish.

First, navigate to the import template tool by clicking here and selecting Import Lease information from the list.

Once on the page you will be presented with the list of templates that can be used. We will be working with the “General Lease Information” template which can be found here, in the primary template section.

The General Lease Information Importer can be used to both add new lease records and update existing ones. As this video is dedicated to new lease record creation, that is where our focus will be.

First, click on the link for General Information. A new tab in your browser will open.

Please ensure that you review the detailed instructions and important notes prior to using this template. This will help to ensure a smooth and successful import.

Next, click the hyperlink to download the pre-formatted Excel template. Please note, selecting a lease filter from the dropdown will prepopulate matching leases from VL into the downloaded template. This is how the support or the CSM teams would recommend making updates to the general tab in bulk. Since we are creating brand new lease records, we will leave this blank to download a new blank template.

The columns within the template mirror the fields found on the general tab of your platform. As mentioned earlier, Visual Lease color codes all templates to easily distinguish between required, optional, and criteria dependent fields. Additionally, some template fields may not be in use on your platform. Be sure to review the template key and instructions found here for more information.

It is important that you do not manipulate, move, or delete any columns or tabs within this file, even if they are not in use. This will cause the import to fail.

The reference tabs along the bottom of the worksheet provide you with a list of accepted values for specific columns within the template.

Think about the steps to create new lease records in the platform. Often you must select from a predetermined list of drop downs or tree fields, based on the configuration of your platform. The same is true here.

These tabs are broken into numerous categories including:
– basic values, like lease status, owner type, and currency
– Record types
– Organizations
– Region
– Brand
– And country with state or province

We strongly recommend copying from the reference tabs and pasting into the Lease General tab to avoid typos, errors, or hanging spaces at the beginning or end a word – as these will result in import errors.

Once you have finished populating the template with the details of the leases you are uploading, save the file and return to the General Lease Import page. Click the Browse button to locate the saved file and click “Open” to load it into the import tool. Once loaded, click Upload and Process to complete the import.

You do not need to select the “Update Lease Financials for Expiration Date changes” checkbox as this setting only applies when you are updating existing leases.

The import results will be displayed under the Results section. Here, you will see a summary of actions taken as a result of the import including: the number of rows that were processed, unchanged, updated, inserted, and those with errors.

If you use the import tool to add 18 new lease records to your platform, your results should display 18 rows inserted.

The template treats each row as an individual upload. This means only rows that have errors have not uploaded.

Review the error summary here to identify the lease IDs that contain an error and the error message. Open your saved template to correct the leases with errors, delete the rows that do not have any errors and re-upload as needed.

If the upload is successful, there will be no errors.
The new lease records are now available in your platform.

Key Takeaways

This concludes the Introduction to VL Imports Training

Here are some key things to remember….

– The Import Template tool has many different template types, make sure to follow the instructions on the specific template page to complete it
– Use the reference tabs to accurately input certain data into the template. Using copy and paste is a best practice for this.
– Review the template for accuracy and upload. If there are errors, they will display on the template upload screen. Only correct the rows that had the error and delete the remaining rows, and then re-upload.

Thanks for watching. Any questions, suggestions, or feeback can be sent to support@visuallease.com