Finance & Billing has more than twenty Setup pages, and several rely on choices you make earlier. For example, you set up business units before G/L accounts, then G/L accounts before merchant accounts and products. The setup checklist gives new administrators a recommended path through those pages.
Finance & Billing was previously called Cash & Receivables. If you find older material that uses that name, the setup steps still apply.
What It Controls
The checklist page does not control any settings. It is a page of links grouped by topic, in the order Rhythm recommends you complete them.
The checklist does not track completed steps, check your permissions, or review your Rhythm account’s settings before showing a step. When you open a page from the checklist, that page controls what you can view or change.
Where to Find It
Go to Finance & Billing › Setup, or choose Overview at the top of the Setup menu after you are inside Setup. Both options open the same page, headed Finance & Billing Setup.
Prerequisites
You need the permission your administrator grants for general Finance & Billing setup access to open this page.
Reading the Checklist
The checklist is organized into topic sections, and each section includes a short numbered list:
| Section | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Basic Setup | Business units, G/L accounts, and optional accounting projects and departments. If you need many finance departments created at once, bulk import is not a self-service option; contact Support to have them created for you |
| Batches | Recurring batches and batch assignment settings |
| Money | Merchant accounts and bank accounts |
| Products | Installment plans, miscellaneous products, and donation products |
| Billing | Payment terms, billing notices, billing templates, and recurring automatic billing runs |
| Multi-Currency | Currency fluctuation G/L accounts, shown only if your Rhythm account uses multiple currencies |
| Almost Done... | Contact role permissions, app settings, and regenerating legacy open invoices for imported data |
Each step is a sentence with a link to the Setup page where you complete that work. Some steps also include a small question-mark icon with a tip that explains why the step matters.
Warning
The Multi-Currency step links to a business unit’s own setup page. That link has occasionally failed to open, with no visible error. If clicking it does not take you anywhere, go directly to Finance & Billing › Setup › Business Units, open the business unit, and use its Multi-Currency card instead; see Second Currencies and Exchange Rates.
Warning
Finance and billing bulk update has, at times, been unavailable for certain financial configuration fields on chapter dues products and membership packages. When this happens, the bulk update control is grayed out. If you run into this, update the affected products individually until bulk update for that field is restored.
Tip
The checklist appears in the same order every time, even after you complete a step. It does not show check marks, progress bars, or completion status, so use it as a map rather than a tracker. You can revisit a step you have already completed, and the checklist will not mark anything done.
The Setup Menu
After you are inside Setup, the side menu lists each Setup section. It hides a section when your Rhythm account has not switched on the feature that section configures. For example, the Billing group of menu entries and the Departments entry are hidden unless your Rhythm account uses those features.
Warning
The checklist does not use those same account settings. Its Billing steps and the departments step in Basic Setup always appear, even when the matching menu entries are hidden and the feature is not switched on for your Rhythm account. If you click a step for a feature that is off, the page still opens, and that page’s own rules determine what you can do there.
If a navigation path from older documentation is missing entirely, and you cannot find a setting that explains why, treat that documentation as potentially out of date. Do not assume the feature is simply hidden by a setting. Confirm with the current setup pages, or with Support, whether the feature still exists before you spend time looking for a toggle that is not there.
What the Checklist Does Not Mention
A few Setup pages do not have a step on this checklist: check request processes, fiscal years, legacy products, late-fee products and rules, and the template pages for batch downloads, invoices, payment receipts, refund receipts, check requests, and statements. The exchange rate table has no checklist step and no menu entry, so you reach it only by its direct address.
These pages can still be important; the checklist simply does not guide you through them. Use the relevant configuration article for each page.
Warning
Late-fee products and rules also have no Setup menu entry of their own; reach them only from a saved link. Setting one up records the charge and terms you intend, but nothing in Finance & Billing today applies a late-fee rule to an overdue invoice automatically. There is no toggle that turns on automatic charging.
Dependencies and Precedence
- Follow the checklist in order to avoid most setup problems caused by completing a later step before an earlier one it depends on, such as creating G/L accounts before the business units that own them.
- Each linked step opens that page’s own setup, with its own permissions and rules. The checklist only suggests an order; it does not enforce one.
- Setting up Rhythm Payments depends on the account owner verifying their email first. If setup does not seem to proceed normally on the Money steps, confirm the owner’s email is verified before assuming something else is wrong.
Change Impact and How to Revert
Nothing on this page is saved or changed because it is only a list of links. There is nothing to revert.
Permissions
You need the permission your administrator grants for general Finance & Billing setup access to open this page. Your ability to complete a specific step depends on that step’s page and permission.
Validation and Errors
The checklist has no fields to validate. If you follow a step to a page you do not have permission to use, that page shows its own access-denied message. The checklist does not warn you before you open it.