Multiple control accounts

Dear Developer,

I have a suggestion that I think would make our work faster and easier.
I have created a new asset account “prepaid expenses” in the settings> chart of accounts. However, unfortunately when creating a new supplier I had to choose only one control account that would redirect the paid amount to the supplier from accounts payable to prepaid expenses. I have many regular transactions and purchase invoices with this particular supplier and I needed to assign only this specific transaction to prepaid expenses. If I changed the control account in the supplier settings it redirects all previous transactions and that’s very problematic. Temporarily I had to create another supplier account with the same name in order to separate this particular transaction from the others. I think adding the ability to choose multiple control accounts when creating a new supplier account would resolve this issue and gives the accountant the flexibility to manage the suppliers’ accounts in one place under the same supplier account. Possibly, adding an extra new field in the receipt & payment form would help, where you choose the accounts payable> choose the supplier> choose the invoice> and then choose the control account whether to be recorded in the accounts payable or prepaid expenses. Or any other way you @lubos @tut sees fit to do the job.

Best regards,
Ahmed A. Marhoon

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please explain why you want to show it in a separate account and not in Accounts payable?
this would help users give you alternate possible solutions if any.

even if there was an option to choose multiple accounts, the supplier statement would still be based on the Accounts payable account. so the result would still be the same when either having the ability to choose multiple accounts or creating it as a separate supplier.

It is the same idea of accrued expenses but in reverse! I don’t need an alternative solution cause I’ve come up with my own solution. But offering the option of multiple control accounts would help a lot even to know what pay and what you have paid already for but didn’t received the benefit yet, without affecting the accounts payables SUM due to Cr amount of the purchase invoice & Dr amount of the payment itself.

ok i guess this is a similar problem i had raised on the forum regarding managing customer deposits. its already in the ideas category.

Well it has the same core idea but different effect and application :thinking:
However, we hope we see some changes and fixes soon :pray:t2:

You misunderstand how things work in Manager. Suppliers are subsidiary ledgers of the control account, normally Accounts payable. Accounts payable are not subsidiary to the supplier. Accounts payable can have many suppliers as subsidiary ledgers, but multiple control accounts cannot be organized under a supplier.

For what you want to do, use Special Accounts. Read this Guide: https://www.manager.io/guides/10342.

See that’s the problem I deal with supplier ABC I have a “supplier” account for him, also, I have to create a special account for the same person, moreover he’s a customer too! I buy from him he buys from me, so I have 3 accounts for the same person that’s absolutely inconvenient, it is very hard to track a particular entity’s records while having three different accounts and every once in a while have to make a new journal entry to rebalance all these accounts as all businesses use netting in their transactions with each other.

I bought $100 from ABC (A/P as supplier) - ABC bought $50 from me (A/R as customer) = $50 remaining to be paid for ABC

what makes it harder if I’m paying in advance for service I wont get till 6 months later after the current fiscal year ends so I have to use (ABC special account) to record it in prepaid expenses and another special account under the same name ABC for accrued expenses. Thats 4 accounts for the same company imagine if I doing this for 20 other companies. It is chaotic to keep track on what has been paid and what’s to be paid!

Maybe my suggestion wouldn’t work but I am sure there is another way to introduce a solution to this issue. I am very sure the the developer have all the knowledge and skills to figure it out!

@Tut

The developer already has designed a method for prepaid expenses (or deposits or advances—call them what you will). Just post them to Accounts payble and the supplier’s sub subaccount. Read the Guide: Record supplier deposits and advances | Manager.

If that isn’t enough visibility for you, I already provided a link to the more elaborate approach of using special accounts.

Yes, when another business is both supplier and customer, you need to create them as both. Offsetting transactions are handled as instructed in this Guide: Offset simultaneous sales and purchase invoices | Manager.

The functionality of customers and suppliers as subsidiary ledgers of Accounts receivable and Accounts payable is the deepest foundation of Manager’s design. I seriously doubt you will see this change.

Well that’s very disappointing! Anyhow, thanks man for the guide links I already aware of how to perform it.

Waiting for the next update…

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i would like to share my views here since i had been asking on the forum for the same changes regarding handling of deposits and also the ability to link customers and suppliers.

the method explained in the guide is only suitable for a very small business (microscopic i would say) where the amount was prepaid for an order and there has been no transactions with the supplier till the same order was received.
it is not practical to track the same as a discount when there are higher number of transactions. the amount recorded as a deposit would simply balance with the received invoices.

special accounts has its drawbacks when issuing statements to a customer/supplier as there is a mismatch with their statements. this usually is always a headache for me personally as i have to edit the transactions and running balances in a spreadsheet before sending it to the customer or supplier. anyway this was discussed in the topic i had linked to earlier and i am hopeful there would be changes since its already in the ideas category.

there should never be a resistance to change. not all industry requirements are the same. a customer/supplier who is also a supplier/customer respectively for a business is not that unusual. some changes are necessary changes. :slightly_smiling_face:

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100% :ok_hand:

There are instances that a customer can have 2 or more A/R accounts. Say, a company is selling goods and at the same time selling services. Some companies need to separate the A/R for goods from that of services, because aside from the fact that collection strategies are different, such are being handled by different staff. Thus, A/R account is defined by a combination of the customer and sales type.

This is also required for non-profit organizations wherein a pledge from a certain member can be recorded into multiple accounts, depending on the fund category. The same goes to a car dealer where AR for repairs, vehicle sales and counter sales are all recorded separately.

It would really be nice for Manager to be able to have multiple control accounts. If we worry on reportings, well, adding the GL account as filter in Aging, Statements and other Subsidiary reports can help.

@jeffbangquil, you can already do what you want—have multiple control accounts made up of customers. You just need to assign a customer to the proper control account. For customer you want to handle differently, create a customer for each control account and assign them accordingly. This guarantees that you do not accidentally post a transaction to the services account of a customer instead of the goods account.

I agree to you sirs, @a_marhoon91 & @sharpdrivetek @jeffbangquil

Hello Sir @lubos, I would like to raise this concern/suggestion. I support their sentiments regarding this concern. In my case, having multiple control accounts for one customer is fairly useful. I’m currently in a hotel industry, advances from guest upon reservation would be under a liability account- “Advances from Guest”, hoping this will be a control account under the customer’s name- together with the “Accounts receivable” upon check out as control account for that specific customer also. So in any way, all transactions involving such customer can be monitored and reflected under his name.

And I have seen the guides on how to deal with advances & deposits, only “Accounts Receivable” is being used. Apparently, offsetting is being suggested here- which is a disallowed accounting and tax practice. AR is an asset account, there should be a separate liability account for advances & deposits- this is in accordance with the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles or accounting standards. And both will be control accounts of a customer.

I hope I get a response from you Sir @lubos. Also, thank you for this comprehensive system! Kudos to you!

Customers are assigned to Control accounts and not the other way around.

So you can create two control accounts Accounts Receivable and Customer Advances. Then for customer A, you create two customer subaccounts A 1 and A 2 and assign each a different control account.

When you enter a transaction from customer A you have to select either A1 or A2 to enter the transaction.

You cannot have customer A with two sub-accounts which seems to be what you are looking for.

It is useful to learn from how other applications deal with this. The most elegant is explained at Customer is Vendor in Odoo. Initially Odoo used check-boxes and that was clumsy. The current apporach is explained as:

Contacts become Customers and Vendors automatically based on the Invoices and/or Bills. This change was made after discovering that there was confusion amongst users and supporting a lot of databases that had duplicate records - one for the Customer and one for the Vendor.

This is a transparent and elegant way while preserving Manager’s deepest foundation as @Tut correctly refers to. The core of database designs is to avoid duplication of same information and as such automation can transparently help avoid this as in the case of Odoo. The implementation by Quickbooks is horrible as one can never have the same name so artificially have to add a C(ustomer) or a V(endor) to a name. What Odoo helps to avoid is to have 2 contacts databases and rightly associates the single contact to the different subsidiary ledgers based on the transactions.

Something like Copy Customer to Supplier and vice versa - #2 by Patch

No, it will still create 2 contacts databases. The principle is different in that it would assign multiple control accounts automatically based on “role” supplier and customers. In the past Odoo would have you manually check one or both options (vendor and / or supplier) only for programmers to realize it to be unnecessary as role is defined by action (purchasing / selling) and can automatically assign such boleans. It is an elegant transparent implementation using a single contact database with core contact information that then is linked to discrete sub-ledgers based on activity.

The check box is to remove contacts not appropriate during data entry from a drop down list.

Such as entry into accounts receivable; only customer should be shown in the drop down list.

You are correct when later looking at a receipt posted to accounts receivable, Manager can deduct the contact was acting as a customer at that time.

That is not what the linked post suggests

I was referring to your @Patch solution that still would create 2 databases one for customers and one for suppliers. Odoo uses a single contact database.