ok, so with this setup, at the point of allocation, the gain/loss should of been debited/credited based on the invoice's exchange rate amount. After you allocated the payment to the invoice, did you look at the GL transaction of the payment? Did the differences go to the gain/loss? Try invoicing it at a different date and then paying it at a different date and see as well.
27 12/22/2008 05:30:27 pm
Re: Foreign currency transactions (20 replies, posted in Setup)
Hmm strange that it didn't put into the gain/loss account at the point of allocation. Are you paying a US customer using your USD account?
28 12/20/2008 05:58:40 am
Re: Foreign currency transactions (20 replies, posted in Setup)
When you make a payment to a US customer, how are you doing it? Do you apply the payment of your US customers to your USD account directly? If so... is this usually payed at par so that the difference is put against the gain/loss account?
From what I know our USD bank account GL always shows the exact amount of USD on the balance sheet, any conversions differences would be put against the gain/loss. So in order to achieve that. Try changing it so that when you apply the payment, go to the bank and general ledger setup => Go to the exchange rate and for the day of payment make the exchange rate 1.00. Then go back and make the payment for the US customer to the USD account, this will debit USD bank and credit A/R for the USD amount. Now here, there's still a difference left from the exchange rate left by the invoice initially, so by allocating it against an invoice, it will make the adjustment and credit/debit the A/R accordingly and post it to the gain/loss of the differences.
The main purpose behind the allocation is for the system to know which invoice to based the payment from, this is where it would knows to look for the exchange rate information at the time invoice so that it knows what adjustments to make to correct the A/R due to currency conversions made initially from a US invoice created. Cause remember, it converts it to home currency when posting to the A/R and sales, so when you pay, it should correct itself.
Ideally, when we pay a foreign account using the respective foreign bank, we should be able to change the rate as well in this case. If this works for you as well, FA should make this small change to allow people to post at par when they are applying a payment to a bank account that is the same currency as the customer. Cause in our case it makes more sense. This works the same way for Suppliers with A/P as well.
Let me know if this works for you.
29 12/19/2008 05:49:42 pm
Re: Foreign currency transactions (20 replies, posted in Setup)
Hi, I too run a canadian company and have been testing FA for a month now so maybe we can help each other out.
Ok so it seems like you have two accounts right. A Canadian Account and a USD account. Do you usually apply payments to from your USD customers into your USD account? Or mix and match?
The gain/loss will only recorded at the point where you apply an allocation of the payment to the invoices. Did you do this first? Cause when you apply the payment, the gain/loss doesn't get posted yet and the A/R , A/P will not get adjusted until an the actually invoice is allocated. Let me know if you've done this yet.
30 11/26/2008 03:56:17 am
Topic: Stock availability at Sales order entry (0 replies, posted in FA Modifications)
It would be a cool feature for sales to have an indication if an item you item is or will be available or not right at the sales order entry. The system would check if there are expected existing POs, Inventory, etc to see if stock will ever exist to fill this order.
For instance, if a sales guy starts entering in a sales order blindly it would be cool for the system to give a slight indicator that this item is currently not available or is not expected to be available based on current stock level and PO. This is more for a mental reminder really for the person entering to sales to remember to dispatch purchase orders when needed.
31 11/26/2008 03:28:12 am
Topic: Old sales orders with backorders cancellation (0 replies, posted in Wish List)
Would be cool to be able to cancel the rest of an existing sales order with a click of a button that has had partial shipments already, instead of having to manually edit the sales order and delete the lines and qty so that the sales order won't show up in the pending sales anymore.
For instance if had an old sales order that's sitting there with backorders that I will never fill cause i'm not reordering the stuff, i'd like to just cancel the rest of the sales order.
32 11/11/2008 05:01:32 pm
Re: varying sales tax for a supplier/customer (15 replies, posted in Setup)
Ya I think FA has it ready for GL accounts to be able to tie in with the tax somehow, but has not been implemented yet. If you put it as GL Items for this Invoice for Tax it should show up at the bottom under General Ledger no? Maybe you have to specify the Tax Groups first or something, did you set it under Tax Types?
33 11/11/2008 04:27:22 am
Re: varying sales tax for a supplier/customer (15 replies, posted in Setup)
If supplier invoice tax is unique beyond tax on items, what we've done to pay utilities, bills, etc through creating an invoice is by adding "GL Items for this Invoice", then you just choose your Tax Accounts (GST / PST) and manually put the amounts in.
34 10/24/2008 07:23:55 pm
Re: Currency Exchange Problems (5 replies, posted in Report Bugs here)
Hi Joe, sorry to bring this back up again. Everything works fine except for let's say the date of the invoice and the date of payment was the same day. I know theoritically checking to see if it the invoice date is different than the payment date is different before dumping the difference of exchange variance to the gain/loss account, but I think it should also account for same day transactions as well, even though the exchange rate for the same day is usually the same, I think for flexibility for the way some business does their accounting.
For example for me, we pay USD from our USD account at par always and record the gain/loss on the difference of the exchange rate when we create the invoice to what we pay.
So the way we handle it using FA is that we create a supplier invoice using the exchange rate for that day and post it. So let's say the exchange was 1.50. The supplier invoice for USD for 1000 will be posted as 1500 to payables, etc.
So now we have a scenario where we want to pay it right away on the same day, so we would go to the exchange rate option in Banking / GL and change the days exchange rate to 1.000 and then go back to the supplier payment and choose our USD banking to pay a USD supplier, and pay 1000. What should happen in this case is that the extra 500 should be debited from payables and 500 should be credited to gain/loss account so that payables is accurate and that we have recorded and accounted for the exchange variance as well.
I've posted this on Mantis as well
35 10/23/2008 04:44:30 am
Re: Control Accounts and More safety to ensure books are always accurate (2 replies, posted in FA Modifications)
I think the approach of 1) is more like it and more secure. I was just suggesting going to the extent of adding a password on TOP in the case even the admin may make the error, even a little popup asking for 1234 password would do, so that whoever is doing this is absolutely certain. But I think as a start I would only allow admin to do be able to do these entries ya.
Good stuff on the trial balance.
What about the warning for the inventory valuation comparison thing? What do you think about that?
36 10/21/2008 09:27:02 pm
Topic: Control Accounts and More safety to ensure books are always accurate (2 replies, posted in FA Modifications)
The main control accounts for financial are A/R, A/P, and Inventory. I think there should be a safety measure in place to ensure that no journal entries are to be performed to these sub ledgers unless absolutely necessary. I think there should be a warning with a (yes or no) and even a enter in password feature (as is the case in larger ERP systems) to ensure end users know exactly that doing journal entries on these accounts should be avoided and that postings to these accounts should be done using the business logical steps designed for the system.
Another thing also is the Inventory Valuation. In alot of cases, Inventory is given its value based on Supplier Invoices on Received Goods or through an inventory adjustment. The only TIME the inventory account on the balance sheet is NOT equal to the value shown on the inventory valuation report is when goods are received but has not yet given its value because an invoice hasn't been issued against those received items yet. There shouldn't be any other time where these numbers are out of synch. So with that being said, I think the system should somehow prompt up a message everytime the inventory account balance and the inventory valuation total is out of synch so that if cought early on, we can determine if it just outstanding received POs (GRN) yet to be invoiced and to go about clearing those up, Or it could be something completely different (which we want to fix right away before things get perpetual worse and our accountant can't figure out why the number are the inventory value is out of synch. I think having this safety / warning in place will allow FA also to determine scenarios fixes early on. I've tried to test as many scenarios as I can recently but i'm sure there may be cases that could pop up that haven't been considered so its important I think to have these measures in place to get at problems early on. I think perhaps the best would be to have the system always check if Inventory account + outstanding GRN = Inventory Valuation Report Value, then its ok, otherwise raise a warning/error right away cause there is an obvious problem here.
Also, it would also be good on the trial balance page to show the credit and debit total balance at the end so that we can quickly catch out of synch accounts early.
I think this piece software is great and has improved so much since the version 1 thanks to the FA developers.
37 10/10/2008 02:39:11 pm
Re: Ajax loading/processing bar (6 replies, posted in FA Modifications)
Yes, a central indicator would be good as start, maybe in the same place as the hint box? I also think buttons should at least be disabled when there is a post submitted or while there is an Ajax processing/loading. Is it possible?
38 10/09/2008 08:56:05 pm
Re: Ajax loading/processing bar (6 replies, posted in FA Modifications)
I think the best would be to hide the submit button (for search / post / submit buttons ) and also the search combobox and toggle it with a loading animated gif and toggle it back when the process is done. (if the screen doesn't get forwarded so another screen). This way, users will know that what their request is being processed and will avoid them clicking on the button repeatedly. This should easier to implement and would be both small and at the same time make an impact.
Anyone of these small ajax indicator gif would be fine.
http://www.ajax.su/ajax_activity_indicators.html
Have you also considered the Jquery Library? It has quite nice plugins and now has a UI frawework now.
39 10/09/2008 04:30:28 am
Topic: Ajax loading/processing bar (6 replies, posted in FA Modifications)
This is more cosmetic / usability thing, but sometimes when there is a long search going on I find myself clicking the button twice out of pure impatience. I know that in FA 2.0 a progressbar was updated, but I haven't seen it show up anywhere... Is there plans to have a process / or loading status for long searches or longer than usual posting of data? Would be cool to have like a lightbox affect where the screen would fade out leaving just a middle a box that says loading... followed by an animated loading gif commonly seen out there.
40 10/01/2008 02:59:46 pm
Re: Any work around to add a customer with a forward balance? (2 replies, posted in Setup)
yah that's what I mean, tried doing just a service invoice but it's still posting to the GL postings when the invoice is created. The only account that I wouldn't mind affecting is the Accounts Receivables since if i'm bringing old accounts into the new system the account receivables will be added accordingly to the balances forwarded. But I don't want it to post to sales, tax, etc
41 10/01/2008 04:39:26 am
Topic: Any work around to add a customer with a forward balance? (2 replies, posted in Setup)
I have a customer with a forward balance from an old system that I want to add into FA. To find the customer's old invoices i'd just go back to the old system to look at it. But for future receivable payments i'll use FA to clear off the balance owing. Rather than having to manually input xxx amount of invoices for this customer, is there a way to do create just a forwarding balance and keeping the GL accounts currently exactly the way they are ?
A backdoor method perhaps?
42 09/26/2008 07:02:15 pm
Re: Modifying Sales Invoices vs Customer Credit Notes (14 replies, posted in Accounts Receivable)
ok they are up.
43 09/26/2008 02:39:41 pm
Re: Modifying Sales Invoices vs Customer Credit Notes (14 replies, posted in Accounts Receivable)
Ah ok. I tried to do a test and edited an invoice's qty and took off one item, the result is that it shows credited -1. But I also have to change the delivery note to reflect what's actually being delivered now with the invoice change. How do you do that?
44 09/25/2008 11:54:01 pm
Topic: Modifying Sales Invoices vs Customer Credit Notes (14 replies, posted in Accounts Receivable)
Currently, I see two ways of modifying an existing invoice with FA. You can modify an existing customer invoice and change the quantity, which results in credit -# being showed or you do a customer credit notes which should be allocated to a particular invoice. I'm just wondering at which instance would one be use over the other?
* Also to note, when I do a 'credit this' on the invoice and go through generating the credit note shouldn't it not automatically allocate to that invoice? Cause right its done manually. Just an observation.
45 09/22/2008 05:57:28 pm
Re: Currency Exchange Problems (5 replies, posted in Report Bugs here)
Looks good so far Joe!
46 09/19/2008 07:02:07 pm
Topic: Currency Exchange Problems (5 replies, posted in Report Bugs here)
Not sure if this applies for others, but I think there should be a mandatory account for gain/loss on currency exchange to take the difference of exchange between the time the invoice was posted and the time of payment (cause the exchanges could be different at the those two periods).
Here's my scenario:
If I had a supplier invoice in USD posted at a certain exchange, it converts it to the home currency and then posts it to the payable account. Let's say the amount was 100 and conversion was 1.50. So the Payables would be credited 150
Right now 150 is sitting in payables
A month down the road, I decide to pay it. The invoice was in USD and i'm going to pay with my USD bank account. I would pay the 100 in USD as stated on the invoice.
The problem is... FA converts it to the home currency in accordance to the exchange rate for that date no matter what out of the payables. Let's say in the case, the exchange rate for the day of payment was 1.40. So the payment would debit payables 140.
Right now payables shows 10. This 10 should be 'somewhere' not sitting in payables. In my old system, this gets put into a gain/loss currency exchange account.
I think with FA current design, the only way for it to know when to take this difference is at the allocation level somehow
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47 09/18/2008 10:14:47 pm
Re: Retained earning (7 replies, posted in Banking and General Ledger)
I'm having issues with this... My trial balance is out of balance because i'm not factoring in the Current Earnings. Here's my scenario.
I have a Retained Earnings - Previous Year account. Basically an accumulation of RE year to year. When I close off the fiscal and start of a new one. My current 'calculated return' on the balance sheet shows a profit or loss. So this technically is my Current Earnings, but since I have closed off the year I want to debit/credit this current earnings and put it to the Retained Earnings account (which is from last year). But since this 'calculated return' comes out of nowhere how do you go abouts doing a journal entry to update the Retained Earnings? Which account would we debit/credit from??
48 08/25/2008 10:27:08 pm
Topic: Inventory (3 replies, posted in FA Modifications)
In the future would be better to have the ability to make inventory inactive, since if they have been used on transactions already you can't delete them, but by making them inactive they don't bog down or show up on lists and reports.
49 08/14/2008 09:33:48 pm
Topic: Packing List (1 replies, posted in Wish List)
Would be cool to have Packing List which supports Carton No, No of Carton, Weight, Length, Width, etc.
50 08/14/2008 09:27:24 pm
Topic: Test Case Scenario for Purchasing Receiving and Invoicing & Sales invo (1 replies, posted in Report Bugs here)
I posted this in Mantis but I just thought i'd also include it here to see if anyone else has this issue or has a work around.
_____
Here is a test scenario I have which as a result shows an inaccurate inventory amount. I start this case with a Trial Balance of everything 0, from scratch and here is the result.
I'm not sure if there is a work around, but it causes problems to the balance of my inventory/purchases account:
1) I create a PO for an item at 500 units at 10 dollars
2) I then receive the PO items stating that 500 was delivered (Price is not changed since I haven't received the invoice yet till later).
3) I haven't yet created the PO invoice since I didn't get it yet, but I create a sales order for that item at 300 qty for 15 dollars price and create dispatch the sales order for 300 units, since the PO has been received already and inventory is available. Result of GL is that it debits Purchases account for 3000 (300 x 10.0) and Credits Inventory for 3000
4) I then invoice the delivery note which credits Sales account and debits AR
5) After all this, I finally get an invoice from the supplier, which I now create an invoice for it. So I enter Supplier Invoice and choose the Items Received Yet to be Invoiced, in this case 500 was received and Qty for invoice is 500. Original order price was 10.0... but in this particular case supplier gave me a better price so I put in 8.0 instead. After entering the invoice. AP is credited 4000 and Inventory is Debit 4000.
The problem is that now Inventory shows 1000 with 200 pieces left over instead of being 8 dollars a piece average cost value its 5. Purchases account is out of synch as well since it recorded at the point of Delivery based on the original PO price of 10.
The ideal scenario would be if the invoiced price differs the order price, that an automatic adjustments would be made to correct the difference to the Purchases and Inventory Account.
I'm not really sure on what the work around would be, since information is entered at different times using the same data, which really messes things up.