[RBASE-L] - Re: Question for you accounting pros

[William Stacy]

I use a transaction view that includes  a transaction table and a 
transaction detail table.  In the detail table, all chargable items have 
an item number (that links them to other, item tables), a quantity,  a 
regular price/fee/amount per unit, a computed column that is the product 
of the quantity and the price, and a final price (discounted/agreed amt, 
etc). All payments and other credits receive negative signs and go in 
the final price column, so the "balance" of a transaction is simply the 
sum of the price column, which will be positive if a balance remains, 
negative if a credit balance is created, and zero if the payment/credit 
totals equal the charged amounts.  This way I can create statements, 
bills, insurance claims etc from this one view.

bill

Ben Petersen wrote:

Hi all,

I'm down to the nitty gritty of an accounting package and wanted to make 
sure my take on accounts receivable for cash based customers was 
accurate.

For straight up transactions where there is an invoice and a payment for that 
invoice nothing hits the GL until payment is made. But in the instance where 
someone _partially_ pays an invoice, or, over-pays an invoice, this is what 
I've been doing in past systems:

Debit cash for the payment amount.
Credit A/R for the payment amount.
Debit A/R for the invoice total.
Credit income accounts for the items on the invoice.
In the case of under-payment this leaves an A/R balance. In the case of over-
payment there is a negative A/R balance. 

In my re-write everything is driven by views, so it is possible to have a 
circumstance where new invoices work directly against the customer 
account to reduce the credit and not be posted through A/R. My concern is 
that while it makes the A/R portion of the GL cleaner, it is possible, for 
example, to have an invoice detailed in A/R at one moment, and not the 
next, if a new invoice brought the customer account to zero. While the 
transactions would explain "what happened" I don't know that this is 
acceptable.

I'm looking for some outside confirmation and/or alternatives.

Thanks

Ben Petersen

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