Omni - Settings

The master user can set various items to customise the working of Omni, under ‘System, Master User Options, Settings’.

Accounts and Report – customises the appearance of ‘Reports, Full Scheme Report’ and the Accounts options on the Report menu:

‘Identify Borrowing By – determines whether the label on the investment valuation is the name of the bank taken from the Mortgage bank account (if any) or the name of the lender from the Borrowing screen

‘Full Scheme Report Cover Footer’ allows fixed text to be added to the cover of all scheme reports

‘Show investment revaluation as % as well as £’ – if this is not ticked the revaluation for each investment will just be shown as an amount. If it is ticked then the percentage will be shown on the line below the amount of the profit or loss.

‘Full Scheme Report defaults’ - There are also many settings which correspond to the options for the sections in the Full Scheme Report which enable you to set defaults for all schemes.

Miscellaneous:–

‘Work Log Master Email Address’ sets the address to which the daily email is sent with a list of all items moved from the Diary to the Worklog on that day.

‘Financial Sanctions Document URL’ is used in XL Reports (Financial Sanctions Register on Miscellaneous tab) to enable Omni to download a list of all persons against whom HM Treasury is currently applying financial sanctions. It is used as part of the Anti Money Laundering Procedures.

‘Scheme print options’ allows you to decide the format of the report from the Print button on the ‘Scheme, Amend Scheme’ screen. A file summary can be produced or a Word document or the user can be given the option of either format each time the Print button is used.

 ‘Help Folder’ is not mandatory. Omni will firstly try to find the help file from Omniphi’s website. If the user is not connected to the internet, Omni will look in the path stored here e.g. J:\Help. If there is no setting here, then Omni will try to find a ‘Help’ folder in the ‘Database’ folder. The Browse button allows you to browse to the folder and then select it.

‘Contribution Tax Relief Start Date’ is the date that you start using Omni to generate the tax relief records for contributions (via Reports, Contribution Tax Relief Claim) rather than entering tax relief transactions manually. This date is used by Omni when doing investment valuations and other features to decide whether to include the tax relief as a creditor.

‘Store Commission Details’ determines whether the Commission button is visible on the ‘Investments, Stocks’ screen and the whether the ‘Investments, Commission’ menu option is visible.

‘Prevent Contributions for Protection and Flexible Drawdown’ will prevent users from allocating contributions to members with Protection or Flexible Drawdown. This setting is ticked every time a user opens Omni i.e. it cannot be left unticked permanently.

‘Archive Stock button visible’ determines whether the ‘Archive button is visible on the ‘Investments, Stocks’ screen.

‘Select Scheme Using’ determines whether a scheme selected by typing the ‘Client Reference’ or selecting the Scheme Name from a list of schemes in alphabetic order.

‘Show Trustees etc for SIPPs’ enables you to show the Trustee, Deeds and Documents tabs on the Scheme, Amend Scheme screen. This option is not shown for SSASs.

‘Allow fees to be allocated to a member’ determines whether the ‘Member box appears when entering a bank transaction for a fee.

‘Input investment transactions from bank account’ allows the details of the investment transaction to be entered when entering a bank transaction.

‘Rent Invoices from Bank Transactions’ allows you to display a ‘Rent Invoice’ button on the Bank Transactions screen – which will produce a rent invoice if the rent has been generated by Omni as an expected transaction.

Read Only – various settings that are set by Omniphi or stored by Omni whilst processing data. It shows whether you subscribe to the Worklog, Projection, PAYE and Bulk SMPI modules.

The settings for Procedures are covered in a separate file - Procedures.

Data Feeds:-

Finstat folder’ allows you to specify where the Finstat files are stored. This needs to set for both the SSAS and SIPP database but the folder can be the same e.g. both could be set to J:\FINSTAT. If there is no setting, Omni assumes that the Finstat folder is in the ‘Database’ folder. More details in Finstat help file.

Finstat FTP’ stores the URL, username and password for ftp access to Finstat feeds.

‘Bank Data Feeds Folder’ allows you to specify where the data feed files are stored. This needs to set for both the SSAS and SIPP database but the folder can be the same e.g. both could be set to J:\BankFeeds. If there is no setting, Omni assumes that there is a ‘BankFeeds’ folder is in the ‘Database’ folder. Omni will add the selected bank’s acronym to the folder stored here e.g. if ‘J:\BankFeeds’ is stored here and the Cater Allen feed is run, Omni will look for ‘J:\BankFeeds\CAPB’. More details in Bank Data Feeds help file. The Browse button allows you to browse to the folder and then select it.

‘Skandia Feeds Folder’ allows you to specify where the Skandia data feed files are stored.

‘Reconcile Bank Accounts With Bank Data Feeds’ controls whether the data feed reconciles the accounts or just checks transactions.

‘Download Bank View Data’ controls whether the menu option ‘System, View Banks Data’ is visible and also whether the View Bank button is available on the Bank Transaction screen.

‘Match bank transactions’ allows you to set how many days before and after the transaction date that Omni looks when trying to locate a match.

Calculations:-

‘Check for deposits of 75% or more’ – when running the SMPI or Pension Analysis, Omni will check the investments of the scheme and prompt the user to reduce the assumptions if more than 75% of the fund value is in deposit accounts.

Pre retirement projection format’ - if the Projection module is installed the format of the results can be set. ‘KFI Word’ will just produce a Word document and ‘Full’ allows you to see the workings as well as the KFI.

‘Store assumptions separately for admin, advice and investment on Member screen for KFI?’ – if this is ticked, a ‘Projections’ tab appears on the Member Details screen, where users can store the different fees and charges for the Key Features and critical yields. An updated Word template will need to be devised to send the extra information to a Word document.

‘Fund Split - ensure fee deducted from unvested fund is not negative’ – if a fee is allocated to a specific member who has subfunds, then the fee can be allocated between those subfunds. If this setting is ticked then the amount allocated to the unvested subfund cannot be negative.

‘Fund Split - stop tracking Protected Rights’. The fund split used to have to track the Protected Rights subfund but this is no longer required by the legislation. When this setting is ticked, it affects all future fund splits. The past data is left but Protected Rights are not included in any future calculations, there will be no columns for PR in the workings and no values will be saved in the Protected Rights fields. If this setting is not ticked then the Protected Rights will carry on as before.

Worklog:-

The Worklog tab is only shown if you subscribe to the Omni Worklog module.

If ‘Store annual data requests in Worklog and Diary’ is ticked, the XL Report ‘Year Ends in Month’ will give you the option to store the Annual Data Requests for all schemes in the Worklog and Diary. When this setting is ticked, extra settings will be displayed so that you can decide how many days to set the worklog or diary entry before the due date. The number of days can different for schemes that hold just property and cash, compared to other schemes. Negative numbers can be used to set the diary date after the due date.

Similarly, ‘Store pre retirement packs in Worklog’ relates to the pre retirement reports on the Retirement tab in XL Reports.

‘Store VAT Returns in Diary’ will allow the XL Report for VAT Quarters to store the tasks in the Diary.

‘Store Rent Report Tasks in worklog’ will allow the various XL Reports to store the tasks in the Worklog, including ‘Expected Transactions Not Received’ – Rent, Rent Reviews and Rent Reviews in Progress.

‘Add Time Cost when task finished’ will prompt the user to enter time cost when a task is completed for specified work types.

‘Adviser Charges to Worklog’ will ask the user whether to store records in the Worklog when running the XL report ‘Adviser Charges in period from’.

Payroll:-

                ‘Process Transaction Type’ - There are 2 options for processing net pay or gross pension payments in the PAYE records:

a)     ‘Posted and Imported’ means that records will be created as posted bank transactions which are automatically imported to the Benefits Payments tab on the Member’s Pension screen

b)     ‘New bank transactions’ means that bank transactions will be created in the ‘New’ tab on the Bank Transactions screen. They will then have to be posted and imported manually.

 

 

‘Operate in Bulk or Individual’ - There are 2 options. When ‘Individual’ is chosen, only the selected scheme is included when using the features in ‘Reports, Gross Pension’ and ‘Reports, PAYE’. When ‘Bulk’ is chosen, all schemes in the database are included in those features.

If the ‘Individual’ setting is selected and no scheme is selected when running the reports, Omni will ask if you wish to run a report across all schemes but it won’t allow you to update records on a bulk basis.

 

If the PAYE module is installed, the PAYE settings are shown.

 

Invoices:-

 

                ‘Invoice numbers generation’. There are 3 options:-

a)     Entered manually’ means that Omni asks the user to supply a number every time an invoice is finalised.

b)       ‘Follow Previous Highest’ means Omni should find the previous highest number and add 1 (ignoring any spaces).

c)        ‘Spaces reallocated’ means Omni allocates any used numbers.

 

‘Add bank transaction when invoice paid’. Unless this is set to ‘None’, Omni will create a bank transaction when the Date Paid is entered on the invoice screen. It will either created an Expected transaction, or a New or Posted transaction.

 

‘Reset Invoice Numbers’ – if this is ticked, a grid is shown which allows you to amend the number of an invoice.

 

Use this setting to reset the invoice number sequence, e.g. at the start of a new year. Enter the invoice in the normal way and then use this screen to amend the number.

 

Subsequent invoices entered in the normal way will follow the reset sequence.