SAGE PROJECTS

[suzyg09]

Please help. I use Sage Job Costing and very occasionally Sage Line 50 Accounts, and last week I started work for another very small company. I was told by the lady who left that they had Job Costing and so agreed to take on the work. I had about 3 hours tuition before the lady left but, to my disappointment, they use Sage Projects. One of the notes I took from her was "how to access the activity screen so that I could see what payments had been made etc". She told me "Customers", "Edit Customer Screen". That doesn't bring up the activity screen. Please help!

[--andrea--]

Hi suzyg09,

Firstly Sage Projects is a huge improvement on Job Costing, and I am sure you will come to love it!

Click on the 'Customers' option in the bottom left menu, then click on the 'Project List' in the middle left menu, this will bring up your list of projects, highlight the project you are interested in and click the 'Activity' option from menu at the top of the page.

Alternatively, you can click the 'Projects' option in the bottom left menu (if you can't see it, click on the drop down arrow under the menu to add more buttoms). Highlight the project you are interested in and click the 'Activity' option from menu at the top of the page.

From either of these two place you can use the 'Reports' option from the menu at the top of the page to select more specific reports.

Good luck,
Andrea

[suzyg09]

Andrea, Sorry I've taken so long to respond but thank you very much for your reply. I took on the job through necessity and, as you can imagine, I'm on a steep learning curve but enjoying it; the more I learn, the more interesting it becomes.

Could you tell me how you'd deal with these:-

A. When a customer makes a payment but deducts (i) a discount and (ii) a retention?

I've been looking at the Customer Activity screen to see what's been posted previously. Sometimes the payment was posted as a part payment with the remainder of the invoice showing as outstanding. At other times the payment was posted as a part payment and the remainder as a discount.

Any suggestions more than welcome.

[suzyg09]

Andrea, Sorry I've taken so long to respond but thank you very much for your reply. I took on the job through necessity and, as you can imagine, I'm on a steep learning curve but enjoying it; the more I learn, the more interesting it becomes.

Could you tell me how you'd deal with these:-

A. When a customer makes a payment but deducts (i) a discount and (ii) a retention?

I've been looking at the Customer Activity screen to see what's been posted previously. Sometimes the payment was posted as a part payment with the remainder of the invoice showing as outstanding. At other times the payment was posted as a part payment and the remainder as a discount.

Any suggestions more than welcome.

[--andrea--]

Hi Suzy,

I was pleased to hear you are getting to grips with it, and enjoying it.

If your company is cash accounting (i.e. vat is paid over when invoices are paid), then posting a part-payment would be ok. But if your company is standard accounting (i.e. vat is paid over when invoices are raised), it can have cashflow implications leaving part-paid invoices on the system, particularly if retention periods are long. Under normal rules the vat would fall due at the basic tax point, however regulation 89 of the vat regulations applies in these circumstance and the tax point for retentions is delayed until payment of the retention is received.

I deal with retentions and discounts by raising seperate Sales Credits against the original invoice.

Retentions
I raise a Sales Credit against a nominal code in the 1100's somewhere, as retentions are a Debtor to the company and need to appear as such on the balance sheet. I keep an extra copy of the retention credit in a seperate folder to ensure I remember to invoice it when the retention period has expired!

When I raise the invoice for the retention at the end of the retention period, I post it against the 1100's nominal code used for retentions. Thus reconciling the retention account.

Discounts
Discounts I deal with in three different ways;

1. If I have raised a Proforma Invoice, when it is paid I change the invoice from 'Proforma' to 'Service' (or 'Product'), and adjust the original invoice by using the discount facility in the 'back-office section' of the invoice (get to this by pressing F4 when in the 'description' cell of your invoice).

Alternatively, if the invoice is already updated, therefore cannot be changed...

2. When I record the receipt (>bank, >customer), I apply the discount here.

Alternatively,

3. I raise a Sales Credit against my 'discount allowed' nominal code (in the 4000's).

It depends on what sort of paperwork trail is required by your company.

Note: if you have to deal with Cis Deductions these are dealt with in the same way. For Cis Tax my company withholds from subcontractors I raise a Purchase Credit against the subcontractors invoice to a nominal code in the 2000's. Thus creating a liability waiting to be paid over to HMRC. If Cis Tax was witheld from my company I would post to another nominal code in the 2000's.

I hope all that makes sense, and is of some help.

Good luck,

Andrea

[suzyg09]

Andrea, Thanks very much for your help. I've printed your reply and filed it in my 'Retentions File' for future use.