Fwd: Re: Receivable Ageing report options?

[Wm...]

Tue, 13 Oct 2015 23:17:51 <561D830F.3050900 at yahoo.co.uk>
Katie Eldridge <eldridgetideswell-katie at yahoo.co.uk> wrote...

>Thank you for your response Wm... The version of gnc I'm using is 
>2.6.1.

That's Jan 2014, I'm on 2.6.9 now.  Newest isn't always best, it just 
means we're using different versions.

>Perhaps I didn't explain what I wanted clearly enough. I can indeed go 
>from the total to the 'customer report' (statement of account), where 
>there is a breakdown by invoice, and I can edit the date on the 
>customer report to get the amount outstanding from that customer at the 
>year end (although the ageing summary at the bottom is then incorrect, 
>as that still reports on today).

that is strongly dependant on allocation of payments and may have been 
fixed between 2.6.1 and now.  My clue is the ageing summary being wrong 
and memory of that being fixed (not the report, the "inside the files" 
bit, i.e. which payment matches which invoice).

> The issue is that at the year end there were outstanding invoices from 
>other customers which have now been paid, but the receivable ageing 
>report only includes the customers with invoices currently outstanding, 
>rather than showing the position on the date requested.

Hang on.

For *audit* purposes you need to say some stuff and show traces and so 
on.

Are you muddling audit requirements and statutory accounting reporting 
requirements?

>So it would have worked if I had run it literally at the year end, but 
>I cannot use it retrospectively.

Ahem, actually, you can do exactly that but it is a bit technical (in 
plain terms you take the database of transactions and get rid of all the 
ones after date yyyy-mm-dd and report on that) but I don't think you 
need to do that yet.

>Whilst I could manually collate the customer reports for all our 
>customers, that would take more work than just typing out the 
>outstanding invoices at the year end...

How many customers-ish? 10, 100, 1000 ?  Spreadsheets can be good.

> It may be that the receivable ageing report was not intended for 
>anything other than showing the current position?

That is mainly what it is for though it can be used for other things.

>Please do let me know if updating will solve this, or whether there is 
>a completely different report which would be more suitable for the 
>information requested. Thanks again, Katie

I think you need to kick the person asking for the report and ask them 
what they really want to know.

Katie: my reading is that your auditor / accounting person (you don't 
say what their formal position or title is, I don't need a name) is 
asking the wrong questions.

In written-down-in-a-book accounting would your person want to know 
outstanding invoices at year end?  The answer is DEPENDING as I said 
before.

If you are being charged for this I think you are being taken for a ride 
and should look for another auditor / accounting person if s/he 
continues with this.

-- 
Wm...