Credit Memo line against expense claims payable

In our glider club our members are customers, we bill then for flight activity etc. Some are also tow-pilots etc. and buy fuel. They are set up as expense claim payers to reimburse this. We keep the expense claim process very clean for audit with receipts attached to expense reports. Most are reimbursed for their expenses. Some however want the expenses reimbursable to be transferred as a credit against their member account (receivable account).

Credit memo’s will not let me select the expense claims liability account on the credit memo lines, so when someone does request this I end up doing a journal entry between their expense claim account and member receivable account. Could you open up available accounts for credit memo’s to allow selection of expense claims payable (and payee) to allow use of a credit memo for a well documented transfer of expense payable to a credit on accounts receivable?

Thanks for considering.

This would be complicated, because expense claim payers can be of three types: capital account members, employees, or defined claims payers. All involve different control accounts. That means some expense claims would not be accessible by selecting the Expense claims account. To be workable, you could not just open up credit notes to Expense claims, but would have to include the other control accounts (Employee clearing account and Capital accounts), as well. Otherwise, you would have different procedures for different types of expense claims payers. The potential for confusion and mistakes is high (perhaps not in your situation, but certainly in some).

As has often been observed, expense claims are somewhat like purchase invoices. The business is, in effect, buying something from a supplier—the expense claim payer. When a customer is also a supplier, and there are offsetting sales and purchase invoices, the recommended adjustment is through a journal entry, just as you are currently doing. See Offset simultaneous sales and purchase invoices | Manager. The procedures there have the ability to handle multiple sales and purchase invoices (expense claims) simultaneously, as is likely to be your situation fairly frequently.

Thanks Tut. Appreciate the thoughts. FWIW - I am Not really trying to apply credit to a specific expense report. You don’t actually even pay specific expense reports just payer balances when you pay expense claims.

Given you can already do a JE to

Dr expense Claims/payer cyx
Cr accounts receivable/customer abc

Not sure why the same thing would be an issue when the accounting source transaction is a CM rather than a JE. Same resulting Dr/Cr at end of the day and same control accounts.

That’s all I’m asking. Allow the line on the CM to choose expense claims and a payer and Dr that liability in the amount of the line. No transaction to transaction ‘application’ or matching required - just the payer level in whatever currency amount entered on the line.

Anyway - I appreciate the input. You are right I have no idea how things are coded or how/if/why from a CM would be more involved than from a JE.

Regards,
Alasdair

You are, of course, right about the end results. I am just saying that your suggestion could not be implemented for only one category of payer and one control account. You would need to open it up to three control accounts and all their subsidiary ledgers, which opens the possibility of mayhem as users start posting credit notes to capital accounts, etc. Your current approach involves a single transaction entry, so there would be no work savings to do it with a credit note instead of a journal entry. And the consistency of approach for offsetting obligations has a benefit.

If you want to use Credit Notes (Memos) in place of the Journal Entries then the alternative is to setup those “expense claim” members as Suppliers. Then you would be entering Purchase Invoices instead of the Expense Claims. Now the Credit Note process is available for transfers.

This wouldn’t change using the Supplier / Purchase Invoice process.