Currently Manager allows one to post a single entry in payments receips and Journals, where the other half is reported into the in-built Suspense account. I see this a weakness because it does not meet the basic double entry principle that every credit entry must have a corresponding debit entry of the same amount. Almost all the conventional accounting software prevents you from posting a single entry. I personally have lost a many prospective clients to other software like Sage and Quickbooks because of this. The Developer should consider this. Allowing single entries and currecting the imbalance by investigating the suspence query is not good enough in Accounting. Prevention is better that cure. There could be, at least, the option to enforce double entry in Payments, Receipts and Journals to meet the basic double entry principle as ensrined in oist software.
Not sure what you are talking about. Journal entries should have both a debit and a credit entry, see example below. The suspense account demonstrates that something is wrong and needs to be corrected such as an imbalanced journal entry. See Clear transactions in Suspense account | Manager and note:
Any balance in Suspense signals a problem. Never attempt to clear the Suspense account with a journal entry. That only hides problems and usually makes both your Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss Statement inaccurate. Problems that caused transactions to post to Suspense must be identified and corrected.
The Journal Edit screen:
The Journal View screen:
Payments and Receipts always will ensure double entry even though you just assign it to one account. It prevents you from making credit & debit mistakes and is a much safer way to do these entries.
What I believe is that there should be the option/settings to disallow posting into the Suspends account because many users like myself find posting into Suspense account very useful. I have created a Suspense Item which I use as an inventory Item when enough information is not available to create an Item. I have a Suspense Customer (and Supplier) account which I use when enough information is not available to determine which party is a transaction affecting. It is quite useful in a not so organized businesses environment where transactions are many but information storing and organizing is poor, it helps to keep double entry and financial statements reliable, for example, cash flow from operating activities will be correct if Suspense customer is used instead of just using the default suspense account.
Sorry, but to me that seems like using poor accounting practises to hide poor procedures and workflow
I understand this. What I mean is that the program should not allow users to post transactions that are not balanced instead of posting imbalance into a suspense account automatically.
@bayeboafo, the developer chose the current approach for a very explicit reason. Rather than reject a faulty post completely, which could mean rejection of very extensive data entry, he decided to have the program preserve it by leave the transaction in Suspense until it can be cured.
In other words, he consciously and deliberately rejects the notion that “prevention is better than cure.” He believes strongly in avoiding lost data, providing the user with opportunity for cure through correction rather than frustration because of prevention through rejection.
Personally, I would never recommend an approach like that described by @Abeiku. But he is a very experienced accountant and expert in how Manager functions. He fully understands how he is challenging the boundaries of the program, so he is unlikely to get into trouble with his innovative actions.
But many less experienced users could experience great disappointment under your recommended change. Imagine someone creating a journal entry to distribute earnings to 25 partners’ capital accounts and being unable to save the results of hours of work because of a simple error in defining capital subaccounts. The developer’s approach would allow that user to create the transaction, knowing it was unbalanced, and then go find the solution to the problem.
I agree with @Tut. and also add something, kindly incorporate a mandatory field into the Receipts/Payments, etc all forms, and let’s give us the permission to decide which forms should be obligatory and which ones should remain optional.
In my view, that is the best way to handle this. We could be given the option to enforce double entry. Thise who want to have the flexibility of posting to the Suspence account can ignore this feature. To me it’s not a good idea to innote basic accounting principle on the alter of flexibility, especially where we can enjoy both.
For a start, Lubos could include out of balance notice, which is already incorporated in journal entries, on all forms. This will show users that something is wrong with the entry which needs investigation. But I strongly believe that we should have the option to enforce double entry.
Imo that would cause a horrendous amount of program complexity.
Allowing invalid data entry is not the problem, Manager already does that. Expecting any report to be accurate or even meaningful when some invalid input data has been entered would be extremely complex.
If want a single entry accounting system you will need to buy a single entry accounting system.
It is not poor accounting practice. Suspense accounts exist to hold accounting data temporarily due to discrepancies or incomplete information. It doesn’t matter if you have 10 suspense accounts so long as they are helping you with your work and so long as the business has processes and procedures that ensures those suspense accounts are emptied when information is available or before publication of the accounts. A company with divisions for example should have a suspense account for every division and depending on the size of the business could even have suspense accounts for some areas of the business. Financial institutions (both big and small) have suspense account for customer liability and asset accounts and every branch or division could have their own suspense accounts if the business has branches. This ensures liabilities (sundry creditors) and assets ( sundry debtors) balances are correct ensuring reliable financial statements and facilitates their analysis though suspense account are involved. Chat of accounts should be designed to show such accounts on the summary screen.
@Abeiku, now I think you are straying very far from the developer’s intent. I understand that you have the skill to bend Manager to your desire for temporary lodgement of information. But the suggestion that users be able to define multiple suspense accounts for divisions or cost centers and use them for their own purposes was never the plan.
The built-in Suspense account is, as you know, a default feature that preserves incomplete or erroneous entries—pending correction—while still balancing the basic accounting equation.
Absolutely. I was just explaining things to @Patch
There is indeed confusion with the labelling and use of the build in Suspense account. Manager does not treat it as Temporary account, as which they are often defined in accounting, but elevated it as an automated catch all for mistakes made. While Temporary accounts can be many they include conscious decision making about the entry to be assigned to them.
If you created a Temporary account in Manager and forgot to assign that account then it would be lodged in Suspense. Suspense probably could be better labelled Error or Mistakes account or something similar. The Users could themselves create one or more Suspense accounts. Alternatively, we take the Suspense account as the error basket it is and advise users in need of Temporary accounts to create them.
We disagree.
The suspense account in Manager is what the program does with user data entry errors.
If the user habitually enters erroneous data then the reporting from the program will abide by
Garbage in garbage out.
To get reliably useful data out in these circumstances the user must already know the answer, which means the user actually doesn’t need to use the program at all.
The suggestion Manager classify a users data entry errors would be a complete waste of programmer resources.
The only generally useful programming improvement with the suspense account would be to label all reports using data after an entry in the suspense account as”Potentially erroneous and not to be relied upon until after the errors in all transactions in the suspense account are corrected”.
I didn’t suggest Manager should have suspend account for every Division. Manager’s division account is very basic, you cannot even designate accounts for divisions (limit access to accounts using on divisions).
I only responded to this comment
If you have ever been part of a big accounting team, you would have noticed several Temporal or Suspense accounts in the general ledger of the business, especially if the business has many divisions or branches.
I have no problem with a user generated and controlled account for purposes useful to a knowledgeable user. Temporary or otherwise.
I do however have a problem with a user trying to use the Manager “Suspense Account” as another general account in Manager. Simply put, doing so is misuse of the program which will unpredictable effects.
I couldn’t help but to notice your insisting in “out of balance”. 
I can’t see how that’s the case for you. If it was out of balance then by extension:
- Your debits & credits for the Journal will not match. See
- Your balance sheet and trial balance will not tie-in.
And I don’t see neither. As others said, Manager automatically creates a balancing line in the Suspense account.
Many other software have suspended transactions and suspended accounts and they are sometimes called “clearing accounts”.
However, I can totally understand your desire to have a notice to track incomplete entries and you have a few options:
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From the Summary screen, you can track your suspense account balance.
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From your Tabs, you can go to the lines (e.g. Receipts > Receipt - Lines) and then create an Advanced search to track suspense transaction by Tab.
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For Journal Entries specifically, you can sort the tab or use Advanced search to filter the
Statusfield forunbalanced– which I believe the default sort shows unbalanced first anyways.
Anyway, you could argue that Suspense creates a problem with classifications, and you are absolutely right @bayeboafo.
But from a cost-benefit pov, the Suspense account solves a bigger problem which is completeness which makes it beneficial for most users.
You can always go back to correct improper classification with relative ease and the Suspense account provides a finite and exhaustive list of your mistakes, but you can’t ensure completeness if you missed a few transactions and you have nowhere to start.
I would not even go as far as a notification on all the reports. A simple notification on the Summary page which indicates that the suspense account has a balance would be sufficient in my opinion. I love the suspense account feature, and once users understands the feature, they will know to check if the suspense account has a balance, but it will definitely improve the system if this fact is made visible to users.