I'm not after a new job but I like to look at job adverts every now and again.
I saw one and one of the duties was " maintaining accruals and prepayments", and I wondered what people think this might be? I get the accrual and prepayment concept, i've never had any experience of having to actually do anything with them except for posting bits and bats at year end.
I'd have thought pretty much the same but done on a monthly basis for management accounts. When I worked in importing animal feed / edible oils it was a significant part of my month end routine.
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Tony
Responses are intended as outline only. Formal advice should be sort from your Institutes Technical Department or a suitably qualified Accountant.
Naww, it's just something I see pop up now and then and I start wondering if it's something I should do as part of my year end, before everything goes to the accountant. Either make a report of what is accrued and prepaid or actually post them.
I couldn't really leave my job as it ties in perfectly with school
I use accruals and prepayments on a monthly basis for management account purposes - every sale in a given month needs all associated purchases and costs relating to it to be reflected in Sage in that month too so I'm constantly entering journals in and out of both accounts.
In order to keep me sane I now do two spreadsheets with a column per month which I can then check against the montly trial balance totals so I know I've got all movements accounted for - it's so easy to lose track of it all otherwise - particularly if some costs need to be spread across a few months and aren't immediately put into the next month or reversed if the related invoice comes in...
Took me ages to get my head round it but just finished 8 months of management accounts and Sage matches it to a penny :)
I'd really love to see a template of what you do. Like I say I get the concept and have an idea of where I'm heading with it, but just don't know how to show it to the accountant without looking like a bumbling fool.
For example, I can imagine it will be a big task for a freight forwarding company making sure that all the purchases are matched with the sales especially when you could have five or six invoices (i.e. shipping freight, inland transport costs, customs handling etc) relating to the same sale.
I use accruals and prepayments on a monthly basis for management account purposes - every sale in a given month needs all associated purchases and costs relating to it to be reflected in Sage in that month too so I'm constantly entering journals in and out of both accounts.
In order to keep me sane I now do two spreadsheets with a column per month which I can then check against the montly trial balance totals so I know I've got all movements accounted for - it's so easy to lose track of it all otherwise - particularly if some costs need to be spread across a few months and aren't immediately put into the next month or reversed if the related invoice comes in...
Took me ages to get my head round it but just finished 8 months of management accounts and Sage matches it to a penny :)
If you're talking about tying specific costs to specific sales, which it sounds to me like you are doing, then what you're actually talking about is keeping an accurate track of work in progress.
And on that basis, it also sounds as though you might be making it more complicated than it needs to be. Have you considered using Sage Job Costings or Project Management to do this? (Job Costings is an additional piece of software that works with Sage 50, and Project Management is a module in Sage 50 Accounts Plus/Pro).
For an example of Job Costings being used to produce an accurate WIP figure: http://posts.softrock.co.uk/2009/11/obtaining-a-work-in-progress-figure-from-sage-job-costings/ (As noted at the start, the client uses the software in an odd way, so I had to devise an alternative strategy for getting their WIP figure, otherwise it wouldn't have merrited writing about!)
I've yet to look properly at Project Management, but it ought to be capable of similar results. They now have a suitable version of Sage, and I'd like to migrate them away from Job Costings - but they have an awful lot of active and recently completed jobs set up, so it would be a big job!
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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software
(I only came here looking for fellow apiarists...)
