New Membership Recording, January's Good Idea

Barbara at Manchester Credit Union wanted to know who opened a new membership record. This information is now logged along with alterations to memebrship records and can be viewed in Account Activity Enquiry.

(Barbara @ Manchester)

Review the "Whats New" Section on Curtains

go to Help --> About Curtains --> Whats new

(the Kesho team)

Review the "Whats New" Section on Curtains

go to Help --> About Curtains --> Whats new

(the Kesho team)

SARA, October's Good Idea

Each month Sara would select key performance indicators and various elements from the Revenue Account for review and presentation at Board meetings. This was a fairly tedious and repetitive exercise. Therefore we created a new, fully customisable statistical and reporting analysis tool, aptly named SARA. This can be found under the 'Print essential month end reports' feature. Since parameters of the statistics and reporting analysis may require minor modification (due to the creation of a new Nominal code etc., it is advisable to produce this report in isolation. Therefore, within the Month End Reports program click the ‘Deselect all’ button. This will remove the ticks from all the check boxes. Then click the check box adjacent to the ‘SARA - Statistics and management report’ label, and click ‘Continue’. This will launch the report. Extra guidance is available on request.

(Sara @ Greenwich)

Statement Formatting, September's Good Idea

At Merthyr, their preferred statement format was the one including the FSCS text. Ian hoped they could have the option to set their own preference. This can now be done within statement production. Simply make your selection and click the wand to save the setting

(Ian @ Merthyr Tydfil Credit Union))

Diary Messages, August's Good Idea

John felt it would be easier to remove obsolete diary messages from the "see all" pane. You can now do this by right clicking on a message.

(John @ East Kilbride Credit Union)

Review the "Whats New" Section on Curtains

go to Help --> About Curtains --> Whats new

(the Kesho team)

FD Online integration April's Good Idea

Crownsavers credit union have migrated to FD online, the internet banking platform from the Coop bank. This application requires any export files to be produced in SWIFT format. Therefore BACS payments to member's own bank accounts can be generated in SWIFT format by changing the BACS style code in Credit Union maintenance to 8 in Curtains for Windows or 10 in Curtains Too the SQL. May's Good Idea. Credit Union's who offer the Credit Union Current Account or CUCA already use a 3rd party tool to convert Curtains export files into SWIFT format. The aforementioned request inspired us to look at the export of CUCA payments in May. Therefore, export files for Curtains containing CUCA payments need no longer be processed through this conversion program as the file we now produce (namely a .dat file) will already be in true SWIFT format.

(Dolores @ Crownsavers)

Standard Email, May's Good Idea

Matthew suggested that credit unions would find it most time-saving and efficient if Curtains Too the SQL could populate emails in very much the same manner as it does with standard letters. Naturally, the style used in an email differs to that in a letter, so we have automated the ‘Browse’ facility attached to the standard letter keypad to access the document you want to import into the body of your email. This offers the same functionality as the standard letter writing and is activated by selecting ‘Yes’ when prompted “Import pre-populated text to the email” Understandably, a little preparation is required to build up a bank of standard “texts”. Tip. Most likely, you will be using this facility to chase members whose loans are in arrears, so, use your standard delinquency letters as templates and that will save a lot of time.

(Matthew @ London Mutual)

Diary Messages - Next Action Date. April's Good Idea

When using the diary for Credit Control purposes and diarising yourself a reminder via the next action date it would be useful if a calendar could pop up to make it easier to chose the next action date. Download the latest update to take advantage of this feature!

(Aimie @ East Kilbride Credit Union)

Review the "Whats New" Section on Curtains

go to Help --> About Curtains --> Whats new

(the Kesho team)

Review the "Whats New" Section on Curtains

go to Help --> About Curtains --> Whats new

(the Kesho team)

(John @ East Kilbride Credit Union)

Pre Paid Debit Cards! January's Good Idea

Dharminder has come up with a clever concept to account for a pre paid debit card their member’s have. A new product was created and assigned a separate bank nominal. Money is then transferred to this product from the member’s share account as a journal transfer, avoiding any bank effect. Then a withdrawal is done on the new product, which in turn affects this new bank nominal. This process has then inspired us to replicate features similar to those we introduced for the Current Account and streamline the process for accounting for pre paid debit cards. You can look forward to this in the coming weeks. The Shortcut for a Journal Transfer in Transaction Posting is 7!

(Dharminder @ Catle & Crystal Credit Union)

Cost Centre Analysis! December's Good Idea

Is it possible to add cost centres to the accruals posting set up? It has been asked, that where a credit union is operating true accrued accounting, there is the need to have each accrual sub analysed by a cost centre. At present only manual nominal posting allowed you to specify a cost centre. During December, download the update where a cost centre can be allocated to your accrual items. Download the latest update to take advantage of this feature!

(Lucy @ Waltham Forest Community Credit Union))

Easily identify Your Corrections! November's Good Idea

You can now easily view corrections on a member's account through the colour coded F10 feature! Transaction reversals will now be presented clearly on the member's account, highlighted in red. Next time you F10 a member transaction view their account to see the result!

(Andy @ London Fire Savers Credit Union)

Make it personal! October's Good Idea

Do you want your delinquents to take heed of a standard debt letter? If the answer is YES, then don't let them think it's a Standard letter. And don't demand a response e.g. 'within two weeks of this letter' Make use of Delyth's inspiration and insert the following keyword(s) in your debt letters: will insert a date one month from the letter date. will insert a date seven days from the letter date. will insert a date two weeks from the letter date. will insert a date three weeks from the letter date. EXAMPLE When reviewing your loan, it has come to our attention that we have not received a repayment for two weeks. Unless we hear from you by we will have no alternative but to refer your case to our debt collectors. Paste the above text into a standard letter and see the result!

(Delyth @ Merthyr Tydfil Credit Union)