I'm after some thoughts on the best approach to deal with our annual invoice run.
We issue around 450 invoices in February with a due date of 1st April. Our financial year ends on 31 March. Having issued the invoices we start to receive appx 20% of payments pre 1 April which are banked immediately.
We need to process these payments and easily identify the value of payments effectivley made in advance.
We use SAGE as our software - the invoices though are raised from a membership database (which also provides debtor control and also records when payments received). An internal invoice is raised in SAGE for the amounts received on a weekly basis.
Now - if we raise this internal invoice in SAGE with a due date of 1st April but mark it as paid prior to 31 March will the income be shown correcly in the correct year?
Do we need to post the invoices to say a different nominal code and then do a journal adjustment for their value at the start of the year.
I want the process to be as simple as possible and avoid error.
I haven't used sage for a long time, but use VT transaction+ to do all the membership invoices etc for one of the clubs I am treasurer which also has the year end 31 March
I actually date all the invoices 1 April with the same due date, even though the invoices are sent out before. All payments received prior to 1 April are allocated against the invoices as paid on the date the money is received. This puts the debtors accounts at year end in credit. So in the final balance sheet I show these as creditors - under "Prepaid subscriptions"
The correct way to show any debtor account in credit at year end in any final accounts is as a creditor.
