Does anyone know why purchases that I add to a project via a purchase order end up in the suspense account?
Thanks
Please show the EDIT screen of one of the transactions
I suspect that Manager does not know which accounts will be affected when the purchase invoice is raised as you have not selected an item
I don’t think that that is the case because when I select the project via a Purchase Invoice (without selecting an item) it doen’t end up in the suspense account.
The issue is that purchase order are not yet transactions and if not associated with an account via items selection will be in suspense. The invoice has accounts assigned and thus will not end up in suspense. See also similar questions on Sales Orders and why they actually are not assigned to projects at Is it possible to link the sale order to projects? The last post by @Tut is clearest on this.
Thank you for explaining
I also think you should not select projects for Purchase Orders. You can use a custom Field to keep track of the project the PO relates to but you should only use the project code provided by the system only when a purchase invoice is generated.
I agree with @Abeiku. In fact, I disagreed when the ability to designate projects for purchase orders was added to the program, because purchase orders do not yet represent actual costs to a project. They are only prospective costs. But many users wanted the capability, and it appeared.
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I totally agree. Indeed, they are not yet costs, but they will be when the purchase order is copied to a purchase invoice. Maybe Manager should, if a project is selected and the purchase order is copied to a purchase invoice, also copy the selected project to the purchase invoice (greyed out).
That said, the situation as is is not ideal but workable for me.
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Please show the EDIT screen of one of the transactions
That is in previous post.
Shouldn’t the ideal workflow is like this ?
- We create purchase orders,
- Then copy it to purchase invoice,
- Then from purchase invoice we create new payment
But the problem is
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If we create purchase order without assign it to a project, then when we copy the PO to purchase invoice, the purchase invoice cannot be assigned to any projects (no project field appear). Purchase invoice’s project field only appear when it is not linked to any PO.
-
But if we create PO and assign it to a project, then it is automatically added to suspense account in the Project Report
Why not make it like this
- Create a PO and assign it to a project, then this automatically put the amount under suspense account
- Then we copy the PO to purchase invoice, after the PO is linked to purchase invoice, then the amount in the Project’s report is moved from suspense to accounts according to where it was assigned in the purchase invoice?
Please read https://www.manager.io/guides/7106 , specifically:
Any balance in Suspense signals a problem… Problems that caused transactions to post to Suspense must be identified and corrected…"
In a nutshell the suspense account signals that something is wrong with your accounting. To deliberately put something in suspense is therefore no solution.
I think those link talked about suspense account in Summary Report, to which I have none.
But I talked about Suspense account in the Project’s Report
The amount in “Biaya Kirim” and “Harga Pokok Penjualan” is from Purchase Invoice that was produced directly (not from copying from the Purchase Order)
While the amount in the suspense seems to be from the Purchase Order, because in Purchase order every items were not assigned on any accounts yet, but when I generate Purchase Invoice from by copying from Purchase order, these items were assigned to their respective account. So logically, to move this amount from Suspense to other accounts should be do-able. The programmer should be able to detect it from Purchase Invoice.
So :
- Purchase order assigned to a project generated → move the amount to suspense account on the respective project
- Purchase invoice copied from the purchase order → the amount from suspense moved to their respective account that was assigned in the purchase invoice
I am not aware that Manager creates a suspense account in Profit & Loss (Direct costs) accounts. I guess that this is manually created by someone in the business in the Chart of Accounts. I noticed the that the report is a View from the projects tab and not from standard reports.
I just did the following in a test business and it worked correctly:
- Created purchase orders with assigning a project. I made sure to select a Supplier and an Item (that is assigned to a cost/expense accopunt)
- From View of the purchase order I copied it to a purchase invoice
- Then from View purchase invoice I created a new payment
When viewing the project from the Projects tab it correctly assigned the Direct Costs as per screenshot below:
I can replicate this behavior and I can confirm that this is by design.
The current behavior can be described as follows:
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Whenever a Purchase Order is assigned to a Project, the amount goes to suspense since Purchase Orders don’t have Accounts.
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Later when the Purchase Order is copied to an Purchase Invoice, the assigned Project does not get carried over to avoid double counting of both Purchase Order and Purchase Invoice.
This also means that whatever amounts assigned to a certain project using a Purchase Order will remain in suspense.
I agree that this isn’t the best possible treatment, but this has been discussed before and wasn’t included in bugs or in ideas. Maybe @lubos can take a look at this.
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I’m surprised you can do it correctly 
Can you share your step? I suspect your step 1 : select a supplier and an item (that is assigned to a cost/expense account?) → is this possible? to assign an item to an account in the purchase order?
Because I think the items can only be assigned to an account when it is in the purchase invoice, not in the purchase order.
Correct, please read carefully my steps. I only assigned a project when creating the purchase order. When creating (using View) a new purchase invoice I did not select (is not even possible) a project. After paying for the invoice (using View invoice) then all was as shown in the tab View.
That could be significantly improved imo.
All other entries in suspense are data entry errors indicating a user has not entered correctly or completely.
However in this case the purchase order has been entered correctly so is not an error condition.
In my opinion amounts recorded in purchase orders but not invoiced
- should be available in a report.
- If appearing on the summary page at all should be in an “Purchase orders not invoiced” account.