I need some guidance if possible on the following issue which I have been trying to tackle but just cant seem to fathom out
My clients company made a payment to a supplier for which I had no outstanding invoices for.On checking with my clients they advised it was in fact for an outstanding old invoice. I have only recently taken over the books from another bookkeeper and after checking for the invoice in previous years accounts I found that it had in fact been entered correctly into the books in December 2007 and it was in fact part paid. The bookkeeper from whom I took over was appointed to do the books in Sept 2008 at which the time I understand the books were in a bit of a mess, from what I can see she entered this part paid invoice under the suspense account when setting up the accounts on Sage.The invoice then appears to have remained outstanding until March 2010 when the previous bookkeeper in effect removed the invoice from the books (along with several others for the same supplier) by entering a dummy purchase credit note on the system thus removing it from the suppliers account and the suspense account.This reduced this particular suppliers account balance to nil, so I can only assume that the previous bookkeeper has decided that after investigation (as the accounts were in such a mess) that this invoice and several others should not have been shown in the accounts.However it now appears that the invoice still has a part outstanding balance and Im not sure how to re- post it into the accounts. As it has already gone through the books and been posted to the purchases nominal code in 2007 Ive come to the conclusion it would now need to be posted to the suspense account, but from what I can see this would mean the entry would ultimately just sit in the suspense account with nowhere for me to journal it to in order to clear it out.Has anyone any suggestions how I might be able to re-enter the invoice back into the books correctly and ultimately have no outstanding balance in the suspense account? (I use Sage by the way).
Also just to complicate matters the invoice was from a foreign supplier and was in Euros so if I re-enter the invoice in this years accounts would I use the current exchange rate or the one that applied at the time the invoice was originally entered in the books in 2007?
Really sorry for the length of this post but I wanted to paint the full picture for you.
You could post the payment as a bank payment, rather than supplier payment, to the correct nominal account (ie stationery, materials etc) and keep the purchase ledger clear.
I have almost identical problem in my new job as Richard. Do you have any other ideas on how to account for the very old invoice that is not in the system but just received payment for? I am also using Sage and I would rather enter invoice than use suspence account. However, i do not know what date to put on it? Actual date would be outside the financial year, what may affect begining balances for next year end accounts. On the other hand, if I put the date of the invoice same as date of the payment it would increase sales, which is not true.
Many thanks in advance for any help in this matter!
