I know I’ve read something on this somewhere, my searches aren’t hitting it.
Purchase invoices are allocated against a supplier, clicking a supplier shows you the available purchase invoices
Purchase invoices are only meant for future payments
How do I spend cash amounts from the cash accounts that get attributed to a supplier but are also allocated to the correct expense account?
I feel like I’m missing something
You are not missing anything. Suppliers represent subaccounts of Accounts payable. To associate a payment with a supplier, you must allocate to the Accounts payable account and the Supplier’s subaccount. If you Spend Money directly from a cash account you are only involving the cash account and the expense account. This is true even though you may put the Supplier’s name on the payment.
So if you want to track all payments to a supplier, you need to use purchase invoices, even if not purchased on credit.
@Tut, that’s what I thought. I know I’ve read a post about it, I just can’t find the specific one I’ve been looking for.
@lubos I’m pretty sure I’ve read posts from yourself regarding purchase invoices and only using them for future payments. Immediate payments should only be done using the spend money feature of the cash accounts.
Is there any chance that cash payments against suppliers will ever appear on the suppliers page directly? (ie, is it on the roadmap at all?)
It would negate the need to create a purchase invoice for immediate payments and allow for a more complete picture of expenses against a particular supplier. For example, it would be very handy in the suppliers tab to see the following:
OR is there a better way to handle this I’m not thinking of yet?
@d3mad, there really isn’t a better way. You can allocate a cash payment or receipt directly to Accounts payable or Accounts receivable and the desired supplier or customer, but the amount sits as a supplier or customer credit. It never makes it an income or expense account because debits and credits must balance.
For example, if you spend money directly with a supplier, you are debiting an expense account and crediting a cash account. You cannot also debit Accounts payable and the supplier’s subaccount for the same funds. And the same is true in reverse for receiving money. So if you want to maintain the history of a supplier, what you are really trying to do is maintain the history of a subaccount of the Accounts payable control account. That is pretty fundamental to the way Manager works. I’m not saying there couldn’t be some kind of auxiliary linkage, but I don’t think it would be trivial.
Yeah I did extensive experiments on it trying to orchestrate a way to spend the money against the supplier but also classify it as an expense.
The Purchase Invoice and spend money against it appears to be the only option for now. It would be nice to see it all linked together.
The linkage shouldn’t really be a problem as it should really just be another select against the supplier field of the cash accounts | spend money feature
I don’t do (and won’t be playing with) Sales Invoices, but are they dealt with in the same way? I’m thinking all sales would generate an invoice regardless of whether paid on the spot or not (but that IS my accounting naivety talking there) as you’d always want a record of whatever you sold to a customer whether it was cash or (future payment) account. I would just like to do the same for suppliers. (I have a sneaking feeling that I’m probably wrong about the sales side of it too, but—for the time being at least—all our sales are immediate payments over the counter).
Sales Invoices, Accounts receivable, Customer credits, and the Receive Money function are exactly parallel with Purchase Invoices, Accounts payable, Supplier credits, and Spend Money. Many retail establishments would not even be using Manager to record every transaction, but would do that with some point-of-sale system, entering daily totals. Most over-the-counter customers would become very frustrated watching you interact with your accounting software. And the pressure to get things right while doing so would not be conducive to quick service when there are several customers waiting.
If you really want to capture customer information for whatever reason, that goes beyond accounting to customer relationship management. And that is not Manager’s goal–at least for now.
@lubos, I know I’ve discussed it here and others have as well in other threads, but I would like to bring your attention to my question above.
Do you have it on the roadmap at all to link in Suppliers to the Spend Money button from Cash Accounts? It would be an awesome feature and make tracking immediate expenses against suppliers so much easier. Even if it was only at the report stage for the time being.
I mean, the Spend money / make a payment page is almost identical to a purchase order anyway, to create a linkage form the Payee field to the suppliers would save creating a fake purchase order, since the cash payment could be it’s own pseudo purchase order that’s immediately paid in full. It would just make supplier tracking so much easier when picking up large orders and paying on the spot and being able to do it in one hit.
