I have sales invoices with sales (positive amounts) and deductions (negative amounts e.g. where customer supplied parts or there was a management fee due back to the customer).
A negative amount on a sales invoice should be deemed a purchase for the purposes of GST reporting. This is to ensure total sales amounts are reported
These amounts are correctly shown on the Tax Reconciliation Report. However, the other Tax Codes reports appear to show the net amount of the invoice. Other reports include:
Tax Transactions
GST calculation worksheet
Tax Summary
This means we are not correctly reporting the total sales figure to the tax office.
Why does it report correctly on the Tax Reconciliation report and incorrectly on other reports? Is there a simple way to address this?
the simplest way is to use the program as per the accounting standards.
if you have a purchase from a customer, you should enter it as a purchase invoice and not enter it as a negative sales invoice. the account balances are then offset by journal entry.
if you have a sales return, then enter it as a credit note. the credit will be applied to the next invoice automatically.
to get to the point, you should not apply a tax code to negative values on a sales invoice.
It doesn’t make sense that one report in manager works fine and others don’t - it should at least be consistent.
I have sales invoice with a percentage management fee associated with them. It doesn’t make sense to enter them as a sale and a purchase. This is the industry standard.
I’ve compared the functionality against MYOB and Xero that both appear to report this activity correctly.
Is there a way we can create custom reports to address this?
@busy, you need to describe the circumstances more completely. Who is buying what? Who is paying the management fee, and to whom? Post a screen shot of the Edit screen for one of your invoices in question. (You can obscure proprietary information, or do this in a test company with artificial information.)
I have attached a sample sale record and reports from manager.io. I’ve also provided the equivalent screenshots from a sale and associated reports in Xero. MYOB also treats this type of sale correctly but I haven’t included sample screenshots.
As you can see, manager.io is not reporting these amounts correctly. The government requires us to report total sales (not sales net of management fees). Whilst the total GST paid will be identical, the total sales and total purchases amounts are not correct and are being queried.
The manager.io reports need to recognise the amount on a sales invoice is for an expense account and included it in the purchases total in the GST reports. At the moment it is deducting these amounts from total sales which is not correct.
You did not answer my questions. What I wonder is why you are including management fees in a sales invoice. What do these have to do with your customer?
This is standard practice for the industry. We provide consulting services whilst the client provides the venue, administrative support and some tools/equipment. They charge a percentage management fee for this service.
Sometimes they facilitate the purchase of some materials which are charged to us at cost.
Invoices are generated monthly in arrears and include a total sales amount, management fees and sometimes some material fees.
As stated, both MYOB and Xero report these invoices correctly - I find it strange the manager does not.
Technically, your “customer” is selling you something—venue rental, tools, administrative support, etc. So under Manager’s design approach, they have become a supplier and you should enter a purchase invoice. The purchase invoice will result in things showing on the tax worksheet the way you want. The purchase and sales invoices can be offset according to this Guide with a journal entry: Offset simultaneous sales and purchase invoices | Manager.
Financially, your negative line items on sales invoices accomplish the same end result, as you have seen. And it is completely legitimate to consider them as simple price reductions, since they are all part of the same overall deal. (You could have charged less and they could have foregone the back-charges.)
I doubt you will see a modification of the program or report to accommodate a workflow concept you are not really meant to use, especially since the present structure of the program is financially equivalent.
No it doesn’t - The government requires you to report GST Sales, that is sales where GST will be received. Your sales invoice shows the GST to be received as 70, it doesn’t show that you will receive 100 GST and that you will pay 30 GST.
This is no different to a Sales Invoice where goods are sold for 1000 + GST and on a separate line a discount of 300 + GST is shown. The discount is not a GST Purchase.
When you dispose of a fixed asset, you will charge GST, that GST becomes part of GST Sales but is not part of P&L Sales. While in some business, GST Sales and GST Purchases happen to equate to P&L Sales & Expenses, in most, especially those with Inventory, those figures never equate.
My accountant has advised that recording of net invoice amounts does not meet requirements.
Is there a way we can write our own custom reports against the manager database - this seems like such a simple fix. I would like to keep using manager.io but this is causing me issues.
In most jurisdictions the tax department will want you to keep documentation to support the tax you are claiming. For items your business purchased that means keeping receipts. For items your business sells, you must issue a tax invoice so the purchaser can claim a deduction.
If you interact with another business as both a supplier and customer you need to:
Record the sales in Manager with them as a customer (and you issue a receipt).
Record the purchases in Manager with them as supplier (and they issue a receipt to you)
Manager will then also record the sales and purchase totals as you describe
Alternatively if your customer is supplying some components, you can invoice the customer for the goods and services your business is actually supplying which is likely to show
Total project cost as a positive line item(s)
Items customer lends to you for commissioning (they were never yours to use as you wish), entered as negative line item(s).
Probably a commissioning / integration percentage for components supplied by the customer (a positive line item)
Invoice total showing net goods & services your business contributed
Note this approach does not require your customer to invoice you for components they supply, and correspondingly nor will these items add to both your total purchases and sales
Manager can record either business arrangement, you just need to enter purchases as purchases via the “Purchase invoice” tab and sales as sales via the “Sales invoice” tab. The totals and invoices are then efficiently handled by Manger.
A separate issue is the fluency with which Manger handles accounts between related entities such as
A business which is both a customer and supplier
A business which has several sub divisions
I can see scope for Manager to better handle these aggregate relationships (although I personally have no need for the capability).
I suggest you ask them to show you documentary proof where nett invoices don’t meet legal requirement.
Putting that aside, if you believe as per your previous comment “These amounts are correctly shown on the Tax Reconciliation Report” then why don’t you transpose those figures for the return purposes.
The GST calculation worksheet is just that, a worksheet, it is always subject to adjustments as required.
I’m still struggling to make this work in manager.
If I enter the data as a separate purchase and sale. Then I need to use two different card files (as a customer cannot be used on a purchase record). This means the amounts do not net out to zero.
I suspect I do not understand your business model.
Are you providing professional services through a Management organization, where the Management organization bills your actual customers, provides a point of sale system, provides your work venue, secretarial and other staff, billing services, advertising etc. In which case is what you refer to as an “Invoice” really actually an accounting summary of your work during the last month accompanied with a transfer if your funds from the Management companies trust to your bank account. If this is your business model, an invoice may not be the optimal way of importing the financial data in to Manager.
Alternatively do you travel around to many of your customers businesses and provide an “in-house” function partly using their facilities for which they charge you a variable amount depending on the functions they provide vs what you provide? In which case you are interacting with this entity as both a customer and a supplier so creating sales and purchase invoices together with a receipt documenting funds allocation to both would be appropriate.
Also are these arrangement relatively fixes for years or constantly changing.
I suspect your difficulty getting Manager to deliver what you want is related to issues beyond how to fill out two invoices a month. It is also possible a public forum maybe less than an ideal place to discuss intimate business structures.
Effectively, we invoice a customer for services.
The customer provides the parts at cost (if any are required)
The customer provides premises and support staff for a management fee (% of takings).
We have multiple customers that operate this way. These are regular invoices (though amounts differ).
So it could looking something like this
Services Supplied $1100 ex GST (GST on Revenue)
Parts Supplied by Customer at cost -$100 ex GST (GST on Purchase)
Management fee @ 40% of $1000 = -$400 ex GST (GST on Purchase)
Total paid to me (supplier) is $1100-100-400 = 600 + 10% GST ($660).
Instead of “negative invoices” have you tried entering your customer invoices as “credit notes”.
So you invoice them 1100 and then issue credit notes for the 100 and 400 as the contra.
Credit notes don’t work as the reports don’t show the correct data.
Using Patch’s approach does show the correct data in reports. But it is time consuming and error prone.
I think Manager needs to review their database schema. We should really be reporting at the sum of items level (not using the net amount of an invoice or payment record).
It would be interesting if people could both vote for features and/or contribute a dollar amount towards feature development.
I’m sure some people would be willing to pay to get the features they want/need implemented.
