Allocating Debit Notes in Cash Account Spend Money

Last year, I created 3 Debit Notes (totaling $27.77) to reflect returned item credits issued by one of my suppliers. The Summary page then showed a -27.77 in Accounts payable.

Shortly thereafter, I made a subsequent purchase from that supplier and my $27.77 credit was used to offset my total purchase price. As with each of my inventory purchases, I recorded the purchase with a Spend Money, Payment transaction in a Cash Account. I added a line to the Payment transaction and allocated the $27.77 credit to Accounts payable and the supplier’s subaccount. By doing this, my invoice total was correct and the -27.77 was cleared from Accounts payable.

The numbers shown on both the Summary page and my Inventory look correct. However, the Debit Notes tab shows that I have 3 debit notes. Should they still be showing up in that tab if they were accounted for in last year’s accounting period? Or was the debit note allocated incorrectly?

As they should, it is just a list of past transactions it doesn’t mean that they are outstanding / uncollected.
The same thing occurs when you look at any Cash Account, you see a listing of past transactions.
Or the Expense Claim tab where one past transaction will be displayed.

First, I assume you must be entering the credit as a negative number on your Spend money form. Otherwise, you will drive the supplier’s subaccount balance in the wrong direction.

Second, if you want to apply a supplier credit balance, you can also use a purchase invoice. Once the supplier is selected, any credit balance you have with them will automatically be applied to any new purchase invoice. Of course, another transaction is required to pay the purchase invoice.

Noting the displayed tabs, all their transactions are conducted in cash as there is no Sales Invoices or Purchase Invoices tabs activated - so the appropriate use of Debit Notes was the correct choice.

Along the same line, if Sales Invoices and Purchase Invoices are not going to be used, there is no reason to have Customers enabled. Nor, except for creation of debit notes, is there any reason for the Suppliers tab.

@devan, in case you are not aware of it, cash receipts and payments are not linked through customer and supplier accounts. If a name comes up as you enter a receipt or payment, that is only because you have entered it before in that category of form. While your approach of creating debit notes and then backing into using supplier credits by allocating cash payments to Accounts payable works, and is somewhat creative, that isn’t how the program was meant to operate.

From the small number of transactions showing on your summary page, it appears you are just beginning to use Manager. Before you go much further, you might consider what is really the most efficient way to handle expected types of transactions. I say that because once you commit to a path, it gets harder and harder to unwind things so you can change. Manager will not let you delete any transaction that has been referenced by another. Better to think through your workflow now and test it out with an example company before committing to it completely with your actual accounting records.