Hi Admins,
I wanted to share an idea for Manager and also ask if something like this could be possible in the future.
In accounting, some accounts don’t permanently belong to just the Assets or just the Liabilities side. Their nature changes depending on whether the balance is debit or credit. However, in Manager every control account must be fixed under a single group, which sometimes gives incorrect presentation on the financial statements.
A very common example is customer accounts. Normally, customers appear under Accounts Receivable (asset). But if a customer makes an advance payment, or overpays, the balance becomes a credit — which is actually a liability (advance from customer / contract liability). In standard accounting:
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Debit balance → Receivable (Asset)
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Credit balance → Advance/Overpayment (Liability)
The same behaviour applies to suppliers, employees, and tax clearing accounts:
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Supplier debit → Advance paid (Asset)
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Supplier credit → Payable (Liability)
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Employee debit → Salary advance (Asset)
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Employee credit → Salary payable (Liability)
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Tax debit → Refund receivable (Asset)
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Tax credit → Tax payable (Liability)
This is how most modern accounting systems work, including SAP, Oracle, Xero, Zoho, Tally, etc.
My suggestion is to add an option in Manager that allows an account to automatically switch classification based on its balance. Something like:
“Automatically classify this account based on balance (Asset when debit / Liability when credit).”
This would not only help with customers and suppliers, but also any other type of account that users want to behave this way. For example, user-defined clearing accounts, deposit accounts, loan accounts, partner accounts, suspense accounts, or any custom control accounts where the balance direction determines its true nature.
This feature would make the balance sheet more accurate, eliminate separate “advance” accounts, reduce confusion, and help users present their books more closely to IFRS.
Is this something that could be possible in Manager?
Thanks for considering the idea.