Right now Auditors are doing their job for two of our companies. Per standards, they need signed statement from our Suppliers and Customers stating ammounts for all accounts they have with us on 31.12.2021. Every other software allows one click reports that show all accounts connected to one entity.
We also do these reconciliations randomly with our suppliers/customers, and we also get reconciliation requests from them regularly. This way we make sure no invoices or payments get lost.
Is there any plan to rework entities who can be used as customers, suppliers and for connection to special accounts so that we can have a tree of all accounts for these entities in one place?
@cavlovic, your request makes little sense. The only “account” a customer would have with you is their ledger in Accounts receivable. Likewise for suppliers and Accounts payable. The available customer and supplier statements would take care of these.
If you mean something different, please explain in more detail.
You will notice your question and my response have been moved to a new forum topic. The subject was unrelated to the topic where you originally posted it.
You are correct a single physical entity can interact with A business in different ways resulting in multiple roles in Manager. For Manager to report on these external entries reliably they need to be linked within Manager. A single contacts database would be to cleanest solution in my opinion. Many threads / users have requested similar functionality. See Copy Customer to Supplier and vice versa - #2 by Patch
Or do you need to link customer/supplier with multiple divisions which you have entered in Manager as multiple customers/suppliers. If so a contacts database would need more structure.
@Tut, thanks for moving the request to new forum topic.
Here’s one scenario that almost all companies face: your customer makes advance payment for a product or service. This advance payment needs to be recorded in a separate account and NOT Accounts receivable. Once the invoice for the product or service has been issued, we close both this advance payment account and accounts receivable for this customer.
As things currently stand, we need to REMEMBER that there is an advance payment from this customer and close these accounts manually. Otherwise, we would have outstanding ammount for this customer.
Manager does not a have single contacts database as @Patch pointed out. He explained it better than me in my first post.
I have tested at least 5 other accounting softwares and they all go about this problem by just having a single database and marking entity as customer/supplier/employee or all of these at once, since an employee can also be a customer and a supplier, all at the same time. Also, this entity can be connected to a certain special account. Once they are connected, within the entity you can see all connected accounts and print reports.
This is just a simple scenario, but there are much more complex scenarios with 8 or more connected accounts to one entity. Try taking care of those or memorising everything.
It would be wise to implement this one entity system, even-thoughI know it’s not easy. This is an accounting software and really needs connected accounts to entities.
You must operate a single account for all of the customer’s transactions. When receiving customer advances, do not choose any invoice. After receiving an invoice, you can update the transaction and link the payment (or a portion of the payment) to the newly issued invoice.
No Invoice was chosen. This will place the receipt On The Customer’s Account. This is how a Customer Advance is recorded. Use terms like Deposit, Advance, Payment on Account, etc. to provide a good narrative to the transaction.
For this particular payment, an invoice was chosen. In the description field, be sure to provide a good narrative that includes the invoice reference number. The description will appear on the Statement to help in the reconciliation.
In financial reporting, there is nothing improper with aggregating customer debit and credit balances. The same applies to customers.
Sorry, I should have added this. Suppliers who are also Customers should have two accounts. One for Account Receivable and One for Account Payable. You should never aggregate Account receivable and Account Payable.
This is actually not according to accounting standards. You can certanly do it this way, but it would not pass external audit because of breach of standards.
There actually is everything wrong with it. It’s just not good accounting. I can see how small companies do it this way as not many parties look at their financial reports.
Maybe I wasn’t clear before: they absolutely have to have 2 accounts, like you said. Right now their ID in the database is different which means they are different entities to Manager even-though they are exactly the same entity in the real world. This means you cannot make a report with all open accounts for a single entity in Manager. You have to REMEMBER that you have a customer that is also a supplier, that also has advance payment account, and so on.
Mention the accounting Standard. disaggregating debit and credit balances of the same class of account such as customers is encouraged but not required.
Again accounts of the same class can be grouped together regardless of their balances. If it’s material, then, it’s best to disaggregate. For example, if the overall receivable (debit balances) is 1 million but a customer has a credit balance of 0.8 million, this should be shown separately, it could be shown as “Customer Advances” under liabilities.
Also, if the nature of the business requires customers to make deposits or pay for products and services in advance, and customers rarely have debit balances, it is proper to place their control account under liabilities.
For accounting purposes, they are distinct entities. It would be great to have a version that includes a contact database and the ability to automatically separate balances for financial reporting, but Manager isn’t doing anything wrong right now.
I have been writting about this the whole time. And when we do put them in control account in Liabilities, we have to remember it’s there. It’s easy when you have only one customer, but when you have hundreds of customers paying in advance, then it’s almost imposible to keep track of it.
Manager isn’t doing anything. Users are. I am saying that as things are set up right now, it’s hard to keep track of all accounts connected to certain customer/supplier, and almost impossible if you have a lot of customers and suppliers.
Yes, it’s called contract liability as it is exactly that. You should have a base to receive funds from customers, and that base is a contract if you don’t have an invoice.
And yes, it should be recorded as liability and not like an asset, like it would be if you just put payment towards a customer.
I am failing to see the point you are trying to make. Do you think the way Manager is currently setup is better than what I am suggesting? Is it easier to make same entity 4-8 times, rather than mark a checkmark? Is it easier with one click to get a report with all customer or supplier accounts, or remember and search through chart of accounts where they may have one open?
Is there a single advantage of the way Manager currently deals with customers/suppliers/employees over the one contact/entity that can be multiple things?
This whole thread is about us doing it the right way and having troubles tracking the accounts. I had to point to accounting standards for you to understand this.
Who are you to Manager? Just a user or you are affiliated to them?
In my opinion there is a reasonable general use case for Manager being able to provide a summary report for a single external physical entity irrespective of how Manager internally handles the various ways a business interacts with the entity.
I thought the thread was useful as it was helping to define the range of ways users are forced to divide up interactions with an external entity, so what functionality would cover most use cases.
Discussions on if an individual would use the feature or not I find less useful because the first post I made links to a long list of threads all with a similar request, so clearly many users would use it. See Customers and Suppliers - #11 by Ealfardan
Personally I would not use it often however I think it addresses requirements of many users so would be of value. Having one of the many threads as an idea would help to group discussions and st least clarify what is actually needed by most users.
suppliers
customers
employees
expense claim payers
employees loans
separation of deposit reporting from accounts receivable/payable
Thanks for your research. It’s useful to know how other programs work.
Hopefully we can find a variety of ways programs actually solve the issue. Primary I would like to find a way to fix it once, addressing enough of the use cases without overly complicating the program and without creating excessive programming demands.
One of our current accounting software has a list of subjects. Once created, that subject can be nothing but a placeholder in the database. During creation proces, or later editing this subject, you can select it to be:
Customer
Supplier
Bank
City
Inventory location
Company department
Employee
and a few other specific things.
This is screenshot of part of the screen where you can select one or multiple checkboxes what this subject represents:
If the feature you are asking about is critical to your business, then Manager is not a good fit for your business and you should choose a different product.
If it is not that important, then you can use Manager noting that this feature is absent although it features in the list of ideas.
The length of this topic is indicative of the fervour of a few users for the feature but it has not given rise to much clamour amongst the thousands of users - imho, it is not a priority for the development team (if there is a “team”) and unlikely to feature any time soon
What this demonstrates, @cavlovic, is that the software you mention is actually treating a “subject” separately as a customer, supplier, employee, etc. It just has a completely separate “subject” management layer that (1) allows you to enter a “subject” once and rely on that entry when using the “subject” as a specific type of entity and (2) allows the possibility of combining reports about the “subject’s” different roles. That adds a lot of complexity to the software, but no actual improvement in functionality, although it may seem like a more convenient user interface to you.
I don’t know if it adds complexity because I have not seen the database structure, but it would take time to restructure database for sure.
@Tut, if you think current way is better can you explain how can I track 4-8 accounts for same subject that is both supplier and customer? Also, how can I get one report with balances for all of these accounts?
Again, let me reiterate: I do understand the complexity, but I am also trying to solve this issue because this software cannot be used for more complex companies unless there is a way to track accounts. I know we can use API and excel, and in excel manually record every account towards a customer, and then generate reports in excel, but if once someone forgets to add an account after created in Manager, the report is not going to be correct.
