Balances owed to HMRC should not be in trade creditors

Hi Kevin and Richard

Here's my response to Jonathan's post of a few days back on the same topic:

"Just for some background - this used to be a common way of keeping manual records back before computers and it was carried on after computerisation with some systems.

Also, from a users point of view, many do like everything "payable" to be shown in one place, whether that be VAT, PAYE, employee expenses or salaries, consequently, as Kevin mentions, if the statutory accounts require these balances to be separated out on one day of the year then it's quite easy for the accountant to do so.

As and when CB's Final Accounts encompass "small" as opposed to "micro" formats then it's likely the system will do this separation automatically."

My main point above is that it's only really for Companies Act purposes that the balances need separating, ie once a year and so the balance stays with the majority of users I think who prefer to see all their debts on one screen.

Having said that, the VAT & Expenses creditors can be toggled out of trade creditors (before my time Kevin) and so I'd suggest a toggle for PAYE and salary creditors as well (there is no feature in CB to automatically generate a bill for CT).

I'll have a chat with the developers but toggling may be easier than enabling yet another supplier field as I think the accounts payable (and receivable) is like a sealed system, unlike the Directors' loan account under banking, that has it's own account code and so can be shown separately from Bank Accounts in the balance sheet.

I have to be honest however and say that, unless this gets lots of votes, it's going to be some time before it reaches the "top 50" list.

Exactly what I was getting at Richard, that would be perfect in my opinion.

Could this be done in a general way by having a per-suppler setting for which balance sheet account unpaid bills from that supplier are recorded in? This would default to "trade creditors" but could be set to a different account for your HMRC contact(s) our whoever else.