Re: [SL] AR balance sheet vs trial balance vs outstanding

[<ma...@hu...>]

> Chris Johnson wrote:
>> Mark, your clue re receipt and invoice happening in different years
>> definitely seemed promising.

> To me it seems you use a mixture of cash based accounting and accrual
> based accounting?
> AR for accruals, cash customers for cash based?

This, I believe is the crux of the matter.

If you are doing cash-basis accounting, I think you technically should not
be using invoices--you should enter cash receipts when the money comes in.

However, DS has given users like me enough rope, which I have used
liberally.  (A situation I prefer.)

That being said, I think technically it is possible to create cash-basis
reports that ignore invoices (and their dates) and just use the cash
receipt date.

But it can convoluted--what cash-basis date would you use for an invoice
line item that is associated with an expense account?  For example, say
you want to book advance payment discounts to a marketing expense and you
put that discount as a seperate line item on an invoice using a special
part number.  You can't use the invoice date, in case the invoice is never
paid.

I guess you would book this as cash when the invoice is fully paid.  A
partial cash payment would not trigger it.  There are probably other
complicating wrinkles I am not considering, like returns, credit memos,
etc, etc.

I'm not an accountant, but I've thought about this one a lot.  Improved
cash-basis reports was the first item on my wish list.  :)

m