Unbilled Receipts vs. Accrual Balance

There are 3 journal types that affect the Accrued Payables account in the ledger:

1.Receiving Journal: Records the receipt of inventory.

2.Payables Journal: Records the entry of a Payable upon receipt of the vendor’s bill (occurs when inventory Receipts (F5) are associated with an invoice in the Billing Entry screen in Payables).

3.Inventory Journal: Records changes due to receipt cost corrections.

Step 1: Find the Total of all Unbilled Receipts

The following should be done at the end of a business day. To get the “close receipts” total, go to the Payable menu, Utilities, and Close Receipts option. Choosing View (F8) provides a listing of all inventory receipts that have not been billed. This listing is a current (real-time) listing, so it changes through the day with receiving and payables activity.

The upper right-hand area of the screen displays a panel listing the totals for material and adders. Add these 2 amounts together. This is the total for unbilled receipts that we will use to reconcile to the Accrual account in our General Ledger.

Step 2: Post All Journals

Early the next day (after the prior day’s Journals are generated and before any new receiving or payable’s activity), make sure that all your journals entries are selected and posted in your GL. The Accrual account’s balance should have the same total as the “close receipts” screen from the night before.

Some possible reasons why the totals would not match:

One or more Manual Journals were made to the ledger’s Accrual account.

On the “close receipts” screen a receipt was selected and closed (removed from the listing). Closing receipts creates no journal entry in the ledger for the Accrual account (in this case, we assume that the purchase was manually invoiced).

Invoices for inventory purchases were entered in Payables, Billing Entry, without using the Receipts (F5) function. Invoicing a purchase without linking it to a receipt can cause the accrual account to be affected (if specified) while leaving the receipt in the list of “unbilled” items.

An invoice was entered in the AP Billing entry screen and the F5 receipts procedure was done, but the billed and accrued (ledger) amounts were changed to an amount not matching the original receipt (a receipt cost correction should be done if the receipt amount isn’t correct).