How to deduct a supplier debt from a bill without any money going through account?

Question asked by Iain Warren 9 years ago

I have a situation where our suppliers accrue debts as well as earning money. So in those situations I will simply create a bill for a negative amount.

For example I have a supplier with the following bills:

Debt 1 - £75 Debt 2 - £75 Earnings 1 - £450

What I would like to do is somehow mark the two debts as paid against the balance so that the remaining payment on the bill is £100. However as no money enters or leaves the account I'm not sure how to do this. Is this even possible?

3 Replies

I Iain

You can still pay a negative bill so the above 'contra' situation works fine.

If you're struggling to use the money in/out function just go into the bills themselves [both positive and negative], scroll to the Quick Pay feature [bottom right] and pay them both to the contra bank a/c.

I've just tested it in the demo a/c, works a dream.

Settings > Configure > Toggles > Inv & Exp > Quick Pay Inv's [ticked] - just in case you're not already using the Quick Pay option.

Morning

Wouldn't the remaining amount be £300 in the above example not £100?

Either way, just create a dummy bank a/c called 'contra' then pay off the relevant fictitious amounts using this account. Once you're done the account should show a zero balance and one of your bills should be left showing the required amount.

PS you would probably be better creating a sales invoice instead of a negative bill so as to show the figures in the P&L correctly.

thanks for the response. I am still having problems with this as the only way I can pay off negative bills without a physical transaction going out of the account is to refund the bill. Which works but I would prefer to mark the bill as paid so I can send statements directly to the suppliers without confusion.

For the record - the reason I don't create an invoice rather than a negative bill is because it will give a false impression of how much money is owing to the company. This is because of our industry. We are a modelling agency.

When a model joins the agency they agree that we can deduct things such as printing costs from them but we don't charge money - we only deduct these charges from their earnings. So if a model only earns £100 but has £200 in deductions, we kind of have to write off the missing £100. So if we put a £200 invoice on their account the problem is that there is no real guarantee we'll ever see this money so we don't like to put it in as an outstanding invoice as it can mess up our cashflow forecasting. By adding them as negative bills it avoids this problem.

But as I mention the problem is using a dummy transaction to pay off a negative bill without classing it as a refund. In order to add "Money In" as a dummy transaction it can only be linked to an invoice not a negative bill, even if I turn the supplier into a customer as well.

I Iain

You can still pay a negative bill so the above 'contra' situation works fine.

If you're struggling to use the money in/out function just go into the bills themselves [both positive and negative], scroll to the Quick Pay feature [bottom right] and pay them both to the contra bank a/c.

I've just tested it in the demo a/c, works a dream.

Settings > Configure > Toggles > Inv & Exp > Quick Pay Inv's [ticked] - just in case you're not already using the Quick Pay option.

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