Re: Prepayments & Accruals

[Raouf Malek]

We run Education courses, the course start on 01/06/2007 & finish on 01/08/2008 & Students pay the cost of €1600.00.
Most of the time the students pay in full €1600.00 & some time deposit.
My accountant he wants to see the Transaction monthly as Prepayments & Accruals.
1 – I set the Customers on Sage Line 50 FC as Students.
2 – I set the Course in Products & Nominal Code as well.
3 – I went to Customer Process (New Invoice) & I input the details, then Post Invoice & update the invoice
4 – Receive payment here I am confused, If I said June €200.00, July €200.00, August €200.00, September €200.00 & October €200.00 and so on but the fact he paid the full price €1600.00 and it should appear in the bank. What the best solution do Journal entry every month, what the same situation if he pays only deposit only €800.00.

Your help much appreciate

[brucedenney]

As far as the customer / invoicing is concerned, you do nothing special.

The process is explained on the pages below. In practice, the Sale is reversed and put into the balance sheet and then drip fed back into the profit and loss account from the balance sheet each month.

If you are in the situation where part of the cost is incurred up front then the amount you do does not have to be the whole amount so there is no link between the actual sale and the accrual.

If all the students are starting at the same time, then you can do one entry for the whole amount (not such a good idea if anyone drops out and want s a refund)

http://sage.support.makingithappen.co.u ... m#Accruals

http://sage.support.makingithappen.co.u ... ccrual.htm

Personally I don't like the automated process in Sage, it is rigid and doesn't allow for manual adjustment. If you have a lot of these for a lot of courses and students coming and going all the time, perople paying months before the course starts and so on. Then I would set up a spreadsheet to manage the whole lot and calculate the prepaid amount each month and just do one journal. This way you can have a control account for each type of prepayment/accrual the current balance of which is "explained" by the current schedule in an excel spreadsheet.



The sheet would be:

Student, Amount Paid, Amount Released, Amount Held, Start Date, End Date

Amount Held is Amount Paid divided by Length of Course (End Date - Start Date) multiplied by the number of days we are into the course (Current Date - Start Date)

Amount Released is Amount Paid - Amount Held

The Current Date is just a single cell on the sheet used to set the date for the calculations.

You need a few "If's" to deal with complete courses and one that have not started

The total of the amount held column is the amount your balance sheet account should hold at that date, so do an adjusting journal to make it so.

This is very flexible, can handle people coming, going, ending early, paying months in advance and so on.

If you need more help with Excel, you can ask...

[Raouf Malek]

Many thanks

Student ID - Receipt No:- Student Name & NO - Course Name -Course Start - Course Finsh -Fees - Fees paid - Balance -Date of Payment -Balance Paid /May-07/Jun-07/Jul-07/Aug-07/Sep-07/Oct-07/Nov-07/ Dec-07/Jan-08

The Accountant wants to issue Invoice & Statements for outstanding fees for the students. My problem is logic where I am going to put 1600, I issue invoice for 200 or 1600 but I have received 1600 where I am going to lodge them.

Regards

[brucedenney]

Why would you invoice for 200?

You said the course was 1600

[Raouf Malek]

Because the course is for 1600 for the whole year divide by 8 months it gives 200
Charging 200 every month and he wants to see the transactions in real time

[brucedenney]

If you are raising 8 invoices (one per month) for 200 then you don't need to do anything as they are paying each month for what you have delivered to them each month so they have not prepaid you.

(Well if you are invoicing a month or more in advance then you need to defer the income)

You only need to do something if you are invoicing in advance and generating a "false profit" because you have not delivered the course or incurred all the costs of delivering the course at that time.

Whether they have paid or not doesn't make any difference the profit is generated the moment you create the invoice.

You need a "fees invoiced" column it doesn't matter if they have paid or not as far as the journal is concerned. (It does matter in terms of credit control and I can understand why you might add that as well, but it is not relevant to this aspect)

The amount of fees invoiced for a course that you release back into the P&L account is dependant on how much of the course you have delivered.

If you have costs for the course, that are invoiced in arrears then you need to also account for those (unreceived) costs if you are looking to generate a true picture of the profitability of the course.