• From: Dutch Caribbean
  • Registered: 12/02/2013
  • Posts: 39

Topic: How do I book a difference between invoice and amount actually paid?

This is the situation:

I made some telephone orders with the airline. So I gave them my credit card#. After a while I received and invoice by e-mail. Now when I match the credit card payments with the invoices, I see that there are differences between the invoice and the amount actually paid. Sometimes I paid more, sometimes less. The differences are too large to shuffle them in banking costs.

What I need to do:
(1) Anyway I need to pay the invoice so it is marked paid and does not show an open amount.
(2) When the amount I paid is higher than the invoice, this amount should go somewhere.
(3) When the amount I paid is lower than th invoice, the amount should go somewhere as well, preferably in the same account as when I paid to much.


This is what I tried so far:
Amount paid is higher: Just pay the invoice and enter the account paid as the amount which was actually paid.
Assume the invoice is $240
Amount paid is $340
The journal entry looks like this:
Accounts payable                       340
Bank                                                    340
Accounts payable was only credited with $240 when I entered the invoice.
So I have to make a correction on A/P in Memorial:
Misc costs:                                 100
Accounts payable:                               100

For actual amount paid lower than the invoice, I need to pay the complete invoice amount. If not, the invoice is never marked as paid. So I enter a purchase discount.
Assume the invoice is $240
Amount paid is $160
When paying I enter a supplier discount of $80. So the journal entry is this:
Accounts payable                        240
Supplier discount                                    80
Bank                                                      160
Then when this is booked I must make another memorial to transfer the discount to misc costs:
Supplier discount                          80
Misc costs                                                80

From an accounting point of view this is eventually correct. But is there an easier way to handle differences in invoice amount and amount actually paid?

I was thinking about additional invoices or credit invoices, but since they were not actually supplied by the supplier, it is difficult to enter a non existing invoice.

jlinkels

  • elax
  • Senior Member
  • Offline
  • From: UK
  • Registered: 05/17/2011
  • Posts: 326

Re: How do I book a difference between invoice and amount actually paid?

I know that's not the question, but how can you get a different price on the invoice that what you actually paid ?
Is there no way you can get a 'correct' invoice from your supplier ?
I'm asking because I can't see any good reason why you can't get a correct invoice , except if one of you is trying to avoid tax.
In that case, I don't think FA provides any good way to help tax avoidance.

(Your solution with creating additional invoices/credit notes would be the FA solution. Nothing stop you in FA to enter a invoice which doesn't exist. The problem is : the taxman will probably not be happy with that, except if you can justify it.
If your confident with your justification , then enter the invoice/credit note and explain what happend in the comment field

/Elax

3 Reply by jlinkels (edited by jlinkels 01/28/2014 08:04:08 pm)

  • From: Dutch Caribbean
  • Registered: 12/02/2013
  • Posts: 39

Re: How do I book a difference between invoice and amount actually paid?

To provide an answer to a comment to something which was not the question smile

This happened when I had to make quite a few changes in airline bookings. Usually you do this on the airline's web site, but KLM's web site is always in various stages of beta testing, and simply does not allow you to make changes on-line. Hence I had to do it by phone.

Now there is a penalty when you change a ticket (fine)
But there is also often a fare change involved as well.
And sometimes they issue a complete new ticket for a leg.
The new ticket contains the new fare, which includes the fare change and the already paid ticket price.
So sometimes you have an invoice for a penalty alone, sometimes for penalty + fare change, sometimes a new ticket invoice.

Now the KLM invoicing system is pretty chaotic as well for this aspect, and sometimes they sent 1, 2 or 3 invoices. Sometimes each invoice is for a separate amount, sometimes for a combined amount.

Once I complained and with the proper e-mails and invoices at that time I could reconstruct what my costs were and that seemed right.

Problem is that when I entered all those invoices in FA I completely forgot this mess.
Once I entered I tried to match them with the CC payments. And they didn't match. And they don't match by a big difference. The figures in the example are about right.

That is how it happened. No tax avoidance involved.

See, in this country I don't pay VAT on foreign purchases, KLM doesn't charge VAT because they don't have to. And it is no use to increase costs to avoid tax on profit because we don't pay tax on profit.

jlinkels