Misc Payment w/o Vendor/Invoice

[iwells]

Hi,

In AP a user can make a misc payment without entering an invoice/vendor and can code it to whatever GL account they want. When comparing the AP and GL this can cause imbalances because in theory (which is obviously happening) someone can create a misc payment to an AP account with no vendor/invoice, flows up to the GL, then they have to create a GL-JE to correct at the GL level.

Problem is now at this point the GL is correct, but the AP subledger is now out by the amount of misc payment with no vendor/invoice and there's no way to now apply this misc payment to anything.

I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas on how to correct the issue in AP? There's no way to reverse or create another document to offset this is there?

Thanks.

 

[ettienne]

Not true - rethink your logic.

Sage 300 Certified Consultant

 

[Jay Converse]

Totally not true.

 

[iwells]

I'm not sure I follow, but I've played around with it at a subledger level in AP and I can't find a way to fix/correct the issue.

We could later it at the GL level, but then we have an incorrect balance being held in a liability.

The problem is the AP payment created a debit against an AP control account in AP (and there's more than 1 instance) so when we do our reconciliations between AP and GL they're off in AP because they've been corrected in the GL, but I'm missing how to correct them in AP to match the GL which is right.

 

[Jay Converse]

They've been corrected in the GL". That's where you screwed up. Undo the GL "corrections", reverse the payment, then code the payment correctly to an expense account. Finally, disable posting to your control accounts.

 

[ettienne]

The original error is that the misc payment was coded to the AP control account - that is just WRONG!!!!


Sage 300 Certified Consultant

 

[iwells]

A continuation of the same issue I'm dealing with ...

When trying to trace what invoices are unpaid and related aging for those documents and possible partial payments I normally look at APPJD to find all the relevant information, but if you type in an invoice number on the misc payment field there's no offsetting original credit for the payment to apply to. How do the standard sage reports handle this in terms of aging? Are these documents just excluded from the AP aging/outstanding reports?

The issue is of course again people code things to a payables account which creates a Dr to that account, but there was never an offsetting Cr for that to be matched up against to begin with.

 

[Jay Converse]

They're not on the aging because they're paid.

 

[iwells]

I guess my question from a database data standpoint is, what's paid?

There's no invoice created in APIBH or APOBL, you can wind up with generic debits to payables accounts with no originating credit to the account so when you attempt to calculate a balance based on APPJD that debit just exists in perpetuity.

As part of our accounting internal and external audit processes we balance our subledgers to our general ledger and the sum of the debit and credits in each are displayed on reports by document with related payments to see what's open and what's not open. From a record standpoint, these payments apply to nothing and in the end they don't match the GL. I know they shouldn't use this process the way they do, but many of these entries are 5 years old or more and I'm trying to find a way around that doesn't exclude data from reports because that ends up causing more questions and concerns.

 

[Jay Converse]

If you do a misc payment to a vendor, there's an invoice. If you don't do it to a vendor, there's not. Face it, your accountants have been screwing up for years by using control accounts instead of expense accounts. Turn that feature off!

 

[iwells]

I agree, our issue is that we have many non-accountants who use the system and we operate globally where people either don't have the knowledge of how the processes work or don't have the training on our processes.

Now coming in many years later after the systems have been in use for 5+ years and developing managements reports a

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1769049nd

reviewing the system I'm encountering issues that I need to try and clean up after the fact.

 

[iwells]

The other major issue is the majority of the reports from Sage are horrible in terms of formatting/content and the ability to manipulate them in to a useable format is virtually impossible. So many dead spaces, tabs, columns and etc.

We basically redesign everything in SSRS in nice list formats that are easy to use and analyze so we end up recreating the wheel, but really because the system reporting is useless.

 

[iwells]

Haha ... that was my friday morning pre-coffee vent about Sage.

 

[ettienne]

Have some coffee and let reality sink in

Sage 300 Certified Consultant

 

[iwells]

yea i agree the issue is user/process, but the reality is the reports don't function well (that's an understatement) in excel and are missing lots of relevant information most of the time.

 

[ettienne]

May usual path to get data into Excel is to avoid stock crystal reports at all times.
I use Excel data imports or SSRS, or sometimes Sage Intelligence - but I hate Sage Intelligence.

Sage 300 Certified Consultant