Checking your Payables numbers in a report against your Balance Sheet or Trial Balance is a good way to check for errors in your accounting file regarding the purchases and sales transaction types.
Accounts Payables report totals generally match the Balance Sheet total for this account. The reports need to be run with the same date to do this check. The Trial Balance and Aged Payables reports are date sensitive in Saasu as we have multi-year accounting system so if you run the following reports the totals should match:
- Reports > Aged Payables > as at you balance date
- Reports > Trial Balance > as at your balance date
If they don’t, it is usually caused by one of the reasons discussed below.
You have entered an opening balance for the Payables
Then it may also be out by this amount. That is, if you entered an opening balance instead of entering each unpaid purchase at the time you changed over your accounting system to Saasu.
Transactions such as Journals have been coded to your Payables account
If you code transactions to the Liability: Accounts Payables your balance sheet will be out by these amounts. Sometimes customers think they need to code a Purchase to Accounts Payable, but they don’t as Saasu does this entry. The Purchase should be coded straight to the Cost of Sales or Expense account for which it was intended.
Report Dates don’t match
The date range is different in the reports you are comparing.
Payments pre-dating Purchase Invoice date
If you make a deposit payment that is dated before the report date but you then date the Purchase Invoice after the report date you will have the situation where Saasu has money posted to Account Payable on the Payment Date but there is no offsetting entry in the Balance Sheet for Accounts Payable because the Purchase Invoice is dated after the report date.
- Money may have been posted to the Liability account via a Journal or other transaction type they causes it to get out of balance with the Aged Payables and Receivables reports.
- You have foreign currency Payables (or Receivables) in which case they are posted to a separate Foreign currency Liability Account called either Liability: USD Money I Owe -or- Liability: USD Accounts Payables. In this case it gets more complex as you need to consider both currency Accounts.
Troubleshooting differences between Balance Sheet Payables and Aged Payables
It’s a good idea if the above fails to narrow down the problem by checking each month from the beginning of your file. Do a month at a time until you find the month that doesn’t match. Your issue will then be in that month period and should be easier to find.