Open topic with navigation

Sending 1099/1096 Forms

If you distribute interest on escrow to homeowners, you must send an IRS 1099INT form to each homeowner. You also must send an additional set of these forms with an IRS 1096 form cover sheet to the IRS. Verify the dates on which these forms must be sent by consulting the Internal Revenue Service. You can use the Escrow 1099 Interest screen to help you with this process.

To process 1099 and 1096 forms
  1. Open the Finances tab in the Keystone ribbon and click 1099/1096 Forms.
    The Escrow 1099 Interest screen appears.
  2. You should complete all Affiliate Information and Affiliate Person to Contact information before attempting to process the IRS forms.
    You can edit your affiliate name, telephone number, and fax number on this screen into formats that are acceptable to the IRS forms. Editing this information on this screen does not change it anywhere else in Keystone.
  3. Verify that your affiliate name is correct in the Name field in the Affiliate Information pane.
    If your affiliate name is longer than the field provided, it will wrap when it is displayed or printed on the IRS form. In all likelihood, your affiliate name will "break" in a place that you do not want. You have two options for correcting this: 1) abbreviate part of your affiliate name (for example, use HFH instead of Habitat For Humanity), or 2) add spaces in the Name field to get your affiliate name to wrap in an appropriate place.
  4. Enter your affiliate's Federal Identification Number, if it has not been entered already.
    Enter it exactly as it should appear on IRS forms.
  5. Enter the Telephone and Fax numbers, if they have not been entered previously.
    The Area Code should have no parentheses around it and there should be at least two spaces between the Area Code and the rest of the number. Edit these fields as necessary to make the phone numbers adhere to IRS standards.
  6. Enter the Name and Email Address under Affiliate Person to Contact, if they have not been entered previously.
  7. If there are some homeowners you do not wish to include in this process, you should uncheck their Include check box.
To process the forms
  1. When you are ready to process the forms, click the Forms and Labels button on the Escrow 1099 Interest screen.
    The Select Escrow Interest Document screen appears.
  2. Select the form you wish to generate by clicking the record selector to the left of the name of the form.
    The selected form will be indicated by an . By default, 1099 FormINT is selected when you open this screen.
  3. Click the Documents button to generate the form you selected.
    If you selected the IRS 1099INT form, the data for this form will be exported to your My Documents\MoreThanData\Exported Data.csv file and Microsoft Word will open the Word merge document that displays this data. A similar process happens when you select the IRS 1096 Form and click the Documents button. 

    4. The location of the templates for these forms is defined on the Documents/Templates tab of Affiliate Setup.

  4. Click the Labels or Envelopes button to display a Word merge template with labels or envelopes for the selected homeowners.
  5. Click the Post button to log that you generated and sent the forms.
    Keystone asks you to confirm that you want to post the forms. Once you do so, Keystone posts the interest amount to each homeowner’s escrow account as well as a message to their log indicating that you sent the form to them along with the amount of the interest.
To reposition text boxes on the IRS forms

The merge fields in these templates are laid out in the same manner as the IRS forms. However, printed text often varies a little between printers, so it is highly likely that you will need to reposition these text boxes slightly so the text you’re printing will align properly with the corresponding spaces on the forms.

  1. Use the Select Escrow Interest Document screen (see step 1 above under "To process the forms") to select the form you want to modify, then open it by clicking the Documents button.
  2. Print a single set of data on a blank piece of paper by clicking the Print icon in Word.
    Leave the Word form document open.
  3. Hold up your paper with the printed data in front of the corresponding IRS form, in front of light, and notice how the data needs to be shifted to fit the form properly.
  4. In Word, click on the data that needs to be repositioned.
    This makes the text box that it is in appear.
  5. Click in the text box border to select the text box.
  6. Reposition the text box.
    There are several ways to reposition the text box.
    1. For large increments: Move your mouse over the border until you see a plus sign, hold down the left mouse button, and drag the text box to where you want it.
    2. For smaller increments: Use the arrow keys to position the text box.
    3. For even smaller increments: Hold down the Ctrl key and use the arrow keys to position the text box.

    Once you have repositioned the text box(es) and the data they contain, go back to step 2 and test your results. Repeat steps 2-6 until you are satisfied that the data is lined up correctly with the IRS form.

  7. In Word, choose File > Save As... and save this modified file as a template file in the same folder as the original template.
    Save it with a different name than the original template in your Templates folder.  
  8. Close Word.
  9. In Windows, open the folder where your IRS templates are located, rename your original template (for example, add the word backup to its name), and move it to a backup folder. Then, rename your new template and give it the same name as the original template.
    You are basically replacing the old template with the new one you just modified. It is good to save a copy of the original template, however, in case you need it later.
  10. As a final check, before printing all your forms, click the Documents button on the Select Escrow Interest Document screen to open your new template and print a single copy on an actual IRS form.