Hi,
I am using manager 20.7.84
I switch from an older version and I notice that all the blank lines in bills and invoices are automatically put in the suspense account. Aparently I have a lot of blank lines because the suspense account is full… 
I am not sure this is wanted behavior. Could somebody comment on it? Why are blank lines automatically put in suspense account?
Best,
Mike
Update your software. You are almost 50 versions behind. The general ledger engine was revised since your previous version. If that doesn’t resolve your problem, post a screen shot of the Edit screen of an invoice on which this happens and of the drill-down on your Suspense account.
Hi Tut,
OK I will upgrade, I though I did not so long a ago. Newest version (for linux app-image) is now: 20.8.20
In my suspense account overview I see for example this (there are 4 lines from the same invoice 19027):
These 4 lines come from empty lines (with default suspense account):
Is this how it should be? Do I have to delete all the empty lines from the invoices and purchase orders to get rid of the lines from the suspense account?
Thanks for your help!
Mike
It is not clear from your last post whether these two screen shots were obtained before or after updating your software. Which is it, please?
Also, show the entire Edit screen for the sales invoice #19027. Obscure only proprietary information. I suspect these lines are included for reasons other than being blank, because I cannot duplicate the problem of blank lines showing up in Suspense.
It’s the new version 20.8.20
I will generate some new screenshots
when I delete the empty lines (with default suspense mentioned in the account column), the lines also are deleted from the suspense account overview.
OK, I made a example manager file (suspense acount test):
suspense acount test (2020-07-31).manager (56 KB)
There is only:
1 sales invoice (with 1 sales item, and 2 empty lines).
1 bank transfer (payment of invoice)
In the summary, it looks like this:
The invoice looks like this:
The 2 empty lines from the the invoice appear in the suspense account overview:
OK, this is a little complicated to understand. In the sample business you provided, the entries in your Suspense account for the blank lines show for only one reason. You do not have an account selected for the line item of the receipt. (I know, that is a totally different transaction.) But, if the receipt was intended to be against the sales invoice, you should have selected Accounts receivable >> customer1. Selection of the unnumbered sales invoice would be optional. Because the receipt was incompletely filled out, it was thrown into Suspense, making the balance of Suspense non-zero.
Once the balance of Suspense is something besides zero, the account and its balance are displayed on the balance sheet. At that point, you can drill down to see what is in the account. And you see all the blank line items because each is entered separately in the general ledger. Since you never changed them from their default posting to Suspense, there they are. In other words, you see the blank lines from the sales invoice because of your error on the receipt.
If you could see the balance for Suspense when it was zero, you would have seen all these blank line items, but you couldn’t, so you didn’t.
What is the lesson? Don’t use blank line items for spacing or layout purposes in an accounting program. They are not just line spaces like in a word processing program. They are actually accounting entries. Do they do any harm? No. But they make it harder to find real problems.
Now, turn back to your real business. The fact you could drill down to see the list that includes the blank lines means your Suspense balance was not zero. So you had incomplete or erroneous transactions waiting to be fixed. There should never be anything in Suspense. Drill down on that account, sort the Debit or Credit column to group all the non-zero amounts together and fix those transactions. Then repeat for the other column. See this Guide: Clear transactions in Suspense account | Manager.
Hi Tut,
Thank you for your deep analysis and explanation. I understand a bit better now.
And indeed I have some “real” work to do: there are some entries in my suspense account that I need to clear.
Best,
Mike
I found this issue with my invoices as well - I often put in lines to show that the customer was paying for shipping, serial numbers on a bundle of items that didn’t easily fit along with the sales item, etc.
I’ve created an item called INFO with no cost and now enter that as the Item Number when I need to add this kind of thing to an invoice. It solves the problem and was a quicker way to update past invoices to get rid of the suspense listings.
Hi Kris,
Thanks for your feedback. And I think you have an creative solution.
But once I cleared the suspense account, I did not bother so much anymore about these lines. They do not contribute any value to the suspense account, but I was bothered a little bit about them before I knew this.
Best,
Mike
