New Functionalities suggestions

It would be very helpful if the development team can add chart of accounts view with a column showing current balance of each GL account on right hand side.

Deven

I know you can use quick entries but if you have 40-50 different expense accounts then it's lot of work. One more functionality which is missing or needs modifying is "Revenue/Costs Accruals". I think we need proper recurring journal like in many ERP system including open source xTuple. You should be able to save a multiple recurring journals with starting and expire date for accruals and prepayments and post each journal at the end of each period/month or at users wish. At present the system posts transactions for all numbers of period entered and if your prepayment fall in next fiscal year, it throws an error.

Deven

I like most of the functionalities of Frontaccounting. I was just giving my suggestions which might help improve the system.

Deven

1) You should entry such an invoices via normal purchase Direct Invoice interface. Just create separate inventory item with type service for the accounting services and you can use it Direct Invoice. Then you have all needed taxes calculated automatically, there is no place for errors.
2) I'm not sure about this preposition. Where such a constraints should be added? (journal entries has its switch in access setup, so you can keep newbies away from the journal funtcionality)
3) Introducing complex taxed transactions via journal does not make sense. In many countries beside taxes you have to register also respectoive net amount. There is no easy way to link tax lines to net value GL lines in journal, also other things aree important like vat category for posted item etc, so you should just do taxed postings as described above (p1)

Janusz

I see you tend to think from accountant perspective, while most people less skilled in accounting have problems with proper GL postings. This is why entering costs via purchase module is preffered over  low level GL journal. When you entry cost invoice via journal  you must to know what you are doing. For example taxes included in invoice depends on your supplier location, so you have to know how to post cost transaction in case o import, trade in EU or domestic supply, and all the 3 cases are posted differently to GL. Taxes can also depend on category of purchased goods. All this can be configured once for ever in supplier/items tables, then used flawlessly entering purchase order. This is why we prefer to not extend GL interface more than needed in favour to other higher level tools (yes, UE trade definitely need more support in FA).

I agree with the 4 preposition. Current accruals interface seems to be not the best way of dealing with the subject.
Finally thank you for all your warm words. Regarding UK COA I will contact you by email, you can also send it to contributions mailbox.
Janusz

Janusz

Janusz

I think you misinterpreted my comment. An invoice from supplier SHOULD NEVER be posted via a journal. You have to use purchase module i.e. Supplier Invoices to post expense invoices on any accounting system. General Journals are only used to reallocate costs from one department to another or accruals/prepayments or nominal adjustments. Firstly I feel that when posting expense invoices via Supplier Invoices, we should have auto calculation of tax for each line value or total taxable amount on the invoice (Just like purchase order entry form). Now tax rate assignment to each GL Account (which I suggested in my first comment) is useful for calculating tax on a purchase invoice. For example, a supplier has supplied me few items of which some are VATable @ 20% and some are Non-Vatable. On current FA supplier invoice form there is no auto calculation of tax. You can enter VAT amount either by creating new line with VAT GL account (not advisable as you don't want users to enter amounts in VAT accounts) or do a quick entry which enters tax amount for you based on the amount you put in the left text box. The user has to manually calculate total VATable amount to do the correct taxing and exclude non-vatable amount. Less user intervention/calculations in terms of taxes are highly recommend and should be auto-calculated be the system.

My suggestion is if you have tax rate assigned to each GL Account, then at the invoice level you can write a short code which calculates totals for each different tax rate for the GL accounts on the invoice and then auto insert tax line/s as per the tax rate of the GL account. Or for each GL account line VAT is auto calculated based on the tax rate of the GL account. i.e. On a supplier invoice I have 2 different GL account line (stationery & uniform which are VATable @ 20%) and 1 GL account line (refreshments – Tea which is non-vatable). The Invoice form then total of stationery & uniform line and generates a line with 20% tax. There is no tax line generated for non-vatable amount and is excluded for taxable/VATable purchases.

I think to do this you will have to create a 2 new columns in chart_master table (tax/vat rate & tax/vat amount) and a small script in supplier_invoice.php.

I hope it’s not too demanding.

Please let know contribution box email.

Many thanks

Janusz

As I said before, I have thoroughly tested FA and I think I know each and every module and the working of it. I know that you can assign tax group to each and every item. This is the correct way to set up taxes on the system. I am not at all taking about items and “Purchase Order Entry” & “Direct Invoice”. These parts of purchase module are fine. I am discussing about GL account (posting general expenses invoices). All I am saying is that just like item is assigned a tax group/tax code, all GL account should have tax rate assigned. If you read my previous post again, I have not mentioned Items or purchase order entries as I know it calculates tax/VAT automatically depending on assigned tax group. The general expenses are posted on “Supplier Invoices” this is where my previous comment was related to. Please test me COA I have email. This will make things clear.

Deven

Janusz

Yes it can be done by creating service item for any GL account but than option to post GL item expenses in "Supplier Invoice" doesn't make sense. Another issue is if you have categories GL ledger format then using service item is not possible. Please have a look at my COA.

Deven

Hello guys,

The Gl Items in supplier invoice is an extreme fine possibility to enter supplier invoice for phone bills, maintenance, various cost scenarious. Especielly if we use quick entries for this.

I see no way of entering these kind of cost elsewhere.

If we remove this, I guess we loose many users.

Joe

When you make a COA report, you can select to see the balances.

Joe

FA core is okay as it is. Make extensions for peculiar (country specific / rare legal) needs. The programming paradigm - KISS - is well protected here and that is why most non-programmers have found it easy to fathom the code. Extending the COA is inadvisable - porting from other accounting systems / fa versions, inadvertant switch flag type fields, backward compatibility issues pervade.

[RANT]:
Non Accountants and Non Programmers must be able manage FA without having to bother with Government - businesses need simple acounting info / capability for day to day operations. Most countries have begun to question the need for Statutory Audit - Self Audit is being encouraged. In the aftermath of Enron / Arthur Anderson / and other major corporations / audit firms / banks fudging accounts, Governments too will soon have automatic billing systems in their countries from which their VATs will be auto-calculated instead of summary submissions each month/quarter/year! There seems to be little trusted data on countries printing / creating money and providing huge windfalls to select individuals of choice - insurance, subsidies, rights.

{NICE]
If you do not sell in currencies (debt denominator) issued by governments - you do not need to pay tax! Corollary - no one pays any taxes for using FA! No one's paying Joe/Janusz any monies for coding and preserving the FA source! Yet FA users will look after you (tax free) when you visit their countries.....People like them are the real assets worth preserving.

Thank you for the explanation, it helped me a lot. If everybody will use FA in the future we would not have a discussion about editable tax entry possibility. But for the moment it would be ideal to have a TAX field that is normally calculated automatically but which can be erased and changed to the amount we want it to be. This way we do not have to make an other entry line to make things Legal and saving a lot of work.
Thank You