Can't use AR type accounts with invoices

[Geert Janssens]

Adrien,

To clarify your experience: the limiting  factor is indeed the account type. 
A/R and A/P type accounts can only be used to post invoices/bills/vouchers to 
and to assign payments to customers/vendors/employees. This is a limitation 
embedded deeply into the design and can't be easily changed unfortunately.

As you found you can create an account of type Asset instead of A/R to do what 
you want. What is not clear in your report is that you can add this Asset 
account under your A/R account as a subaccount so at least your chart of 
accounts continues to make sense.

Similarly for A/P you can create subaccounts of type Liability. You can *name* 
them A/P-something if you prefer, but the account *type* must not be A/P.

To be complete, I haven't verified if all reports will be able to handle this 
unusual arrangement of accounts though.

Regards,

Geert

Op dinsdag 19 december 2017 06:11:10 CET schreef Adrien Monteleone:
> So, trying to work around the multi-period posting date issue in another
> thread, I opted to bring in a vestige of paper accounting and utilize an
> Accrued Revenue account. (otherwise known as ‘unbilled revenue’ or
> ‘unbilled work’)
> 
> The guidance I found online suggested this should be a Current Asset,
> generally of type A/R.
> 
> I tried to create an A/R sub-account. This worked until I tried to adjust an
> invoice so it’s line items hit this Accrued Revenue account instead of an
> Income account. The invoice feature won’t let me see it in the list to
> select it.
> 
> So, I moved the account out of the parent A/R and placed it under Current
> Assets. Still no dice.
> 
> Apparently, the account ‘type’ was ‘A/Receivable’ and the business features
> look at this when deciding what to allow you to use in an invoice and bill.
> This type is apparently not allowed, even though it isn’t the main A/R
> account created by the Business Features and to which I do not manually
> post.
> 
> Note, I can *post* the invoice to the standard A/R account (or likely any
> other A/R type I create) but I can’t use other A/R types for the line
> items. This means contra-accounts are not allowed.
> 
> The solution was to delete the Accrued Revenue account I just created, and
> re-create it with the parent Current Assets and give it type Asset. Now
> everything works, but instead of being able to roll this under A/R where it
> belongs, I have a flatter account tree. Now I recall a similar issue trying
> to create A/P sub-accounts some months ago. There’s no point. The business
> features won’t let you use them. (except to post to, you can’t use it for
> bill line-items)
> 
> I suppose this behavior is intended and I understand the urge to prevent
> people from using accounts that make a mess of things, but it requires yet
> another work around.
> 
> Just passing this on in case anyone else runs into this.
> 
> Regards,
> Adrien
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