lynuslynne's dashboard

prolibris,

That - an option 'billed on' or 'incurred on' date which can be set earlier than the bank transaction date - is something we've been mulling over for some time.

Our treatment of normal expenses on, effectively, a cash basis (apart from Bills) is mostly 'good enough' for the speed at which most purchases pass through the banking system nowadays. Certainly you won't find that many accountants worrying too much that your weekend purchases appear on the statement as Monday.

The existing treatment is driven to some extent by the desire to keep things as simple as is acceptable from an accounting point of view.

But you're right - it's not strictly correct and I think that before long we'll be adding that option 'billed on' date.

Ed,

While I appreciate the solution that the Bill Tracking module provides, I'm not sure that it's the simplest solution to the invoice/cash accounting problem. At least not for me.

I don't really want to track bills, as such - merely to make sure that the bill falls into the correct period based on the date of the invoice not the date on which payment leaves the bank account.

Most (legitimate) retailers will supply an invoice with the date of purchase, but only charge the bank account on the date of despatch, so there's frequently a bit of a gap. Even suppliers collecting by direct debit will have different billing and collection dates (our ISP, for instance, bills on the 20th of the month and collects on 8th the following month). These are not bills I want to track.

To ensure that I'm accounting for VAT in the correct period I would now have to identify those bills with different billing and collection dates, manually enter them (with a contact name) and effectively reconcile them against the bank statement, which is almost a return to the QuickBooks approach I've just abandoned.

I love the simplicity of bookkeeping based around the record of the bank statement. Is it not possible simply to have an adjustable "Billing Date" field on the bank record which, if set, ensures it falls into the correct period (as suggested by the OP) ? Rgds Tim

So everyone should now be aware that we now support Bills...

That's good. As long as it's a planned development then we are very happy. If it could include a supplier invoice payment timeline similar to sale invoicing currently, we would find that very beneficial. I must say that having just finished the evaluation period and signed up, I am very impressed by the solution and it will benefit us greatly as a new start-up. My accountant was new to FA but was also very impressed - his actual words were "I quite like it" which means he loves it but he knows it means less business for him... :-) – lynuslynne, on August 08, 2008 06:32

lynuslynne,

I can't give you a fixed date, but I can confirm we are working on this as a matter of priority.

Hi Ed, we're new users to Free Agent and my accountant has just reviewed it and not having the functionality to record/handle invoice accounting was his main concern. It is something we will need as our business expands we expect our associates & suppliers to invoice us. It would be really good to have the same functionality for recording & tracking supplier invoices the same as we currently do for our invoices. Are you in a position to confirm when you plan to implement this please? Thanks, Lynne – lynuslynne, on August 07, 2008 18:23

No need to look at this one now. I've resolved it after realising that I had previously made a manual receipt of funds against an invoice. Hence the negative balance on the bank a/c. Getting to grips with this system now. Cheers.

Lynne,

Currently we only recur each expense (or indeed invoice) as the date arises for it to be recreated.

We're going to update FreeAgent in the next month or so to support the behaviour you're probably expecting: that you should be able to create a sequence of historical recurring expenses leading up to today, right?