Accounts Receivable Questions

An accrued receivable is either a trade receivable or a non trade receivable for which a business has earned revenue, but for which it has not yet issued an invoice to the customer. You normally create an accrued receivable in either of the following scenarios:

* Milestone. A milestone has been reached in a contract with a customer, where you are clearly entitled to a specific, pre-defined amount, but the contract does not yet allow you to issue an invoice; or
* Services. The contract with the customer states that the customer will pay you for hours worked, rather than for a specific work product. For example, there may be 10 hours of work that will eventually be billed at a rate of $80 per hour, so you accrue the receivable for $800.

The journal entry to create an accrued receivable is a debit to an accounts receivable account, and a credit to the revenue account. It may be useful to create a unique general ledger account for accrued receivables, rather than using the main trade receivables account, in order to clearly show these transactions. In addition, you should set these journal entries to automatically reverse themselves in the next accounting period; you would then replace the accrual in the next period with the actual invoice (assuming that there is a billing event in the next period). If you are unable to create an invoice in the next period, then you should continue to accrue and reverse the revenue and accrued receivable in every period on a cumulative basis until you can eventually issue an invoice.

For example, ABC International has completed a milestone in a project to install a dam, though it is not allowed under the contract to issue an invoice more frequently than once a quarter. It therefore accrues revenue and a receivable of $50,000 at the end of January. The journal entry automatically reverses at the beginning of February. ABC then earns another $30,000 on the next project milestone in February, but is still contractually unable to issue an invoice. It therefore accrues revenue and a receivable of $80,000 in February. The journal entry automatically reverses at the beginning of March. ABC then earns another $70,000 on the next project milestone in March. It is allowed to issue a quarterly invoice at the end of March, so it issues an invoice for $150,000. By using accruals, ABC has recognized $50,000 of revenue and receivables in January, $30,000 in February, and $70,000 in March, rather than recognizing all $150,000 in March, when it issues an invoice to the customer.

You should not use accrued receivables if you cannot justify to an auditor that there is a clear obligation by the customer to pay the company for the amount of the accrued receivable. Otherwise, there is a presumption that the business has not yet reached the point where the customer has a clear obligation to pay. If you use accrued receivables, expect auditors to pay particular attention to their justification. For example, you should not accrue receivables in a case where a business is providing services under a fixed fee contract, and it earns revenue only when the entire project is complete and approved by the customer. Revenue has not really been earned prior to completion, so there should be no accrual prior to that point.

A powerful tool to import and validate transaction data from other financial systems and create invoices , debit memos , credit memos and on-account credits

Setup steps:

1. Define the line ordering rules

2. Define the grouping rules - attache the line ordering rules to the grouping rules

Drop Ship refers to, a manufacturer shipping goods directly to one of its customers' customer (instead of delivering the goods to the customer that placed the order with the manufacturer).

This concept of shipping goods is called as drop ship, drop shipping or a drop shipment.

Trade receivables are amounts billed by a business to its customers when it delivers goods or services to them in the ordinary course of business. These billings are typically documented on formal invoices, which are summarized in an accounts receivable aging report. In the general ledger, trade receivables are recorded in a separate accounts receivable account, and are classified as current assets on the balance sheet if you expect to receive payment from customers within one year.

To record a trade receivable, the accounting software creates a debit to the accounts receivable account and a credit to the sales account when you complete an invoice. When the customer eventually pays the invoice, the accounting software records the cash receipt transaction with a debit to the cash account and a credit to the accounts receivable account.

Trade receivables vary from non trade receivables in that non trade receivables are for amounts owed to the company that fall outside of the normal course of business, such as employee advances or insurance reimbursements. Also, most or all of the transactions passing through the main accounts receivable account are generated by the accounting system, as you create customer invoices and credit memos, whereas the transactions recording non trade receivables nearly always involve journal entries.

Finance:It is the branch of economics that studies the management of money and other assets.In simpler terms it can be defined as the commercial activity of providing funds and capital.It addresses questions like -- what funds are required by the org & How they can be raised &  How they have to be allocated etc.

Accounts: It is the occupation of maintaining and auditing records and preparing financial reports for a business. Accounts provides quantitative information about finances. It addresses issues like what amount of funds have been allocated to various activities, how the book-keeping is being done etc.

Both functions are distinct but complimentary to each other.

Finance and accounts are highly specilized and distinct areas and hence most organizations have seperate sections of finance and accounts.

Absolutely. Two examples involve unsustainable improvements in working capital (a company is selling off inventory and delaying payables), and another example involves lack of revenues going forward in the pipeline.

After posting the all accounts in the Ledger a statement is prepared to showing debit and credit balances.Debit balances must be tally with the Credit side balance is called trial balance