Unique Business Challenges and General Discussion

[CPA]

Hello, I have a client that used Mas 90 version 3.70. We are having a problem where we can enter an invoice today 10/21/11 for let's say 9/30/11. So the invoice date reads 9/30/11 but the posting date reads 10/21/11. This is messing up our reports. Say our period is for 1/1/11 thru 9/30/11. The invoice history reports prints correctly when those dates are entered. But the general ledger, balance sheet, income statement and A/R history report are all incorrect. On those reports the invoice is not showing up because of the posting date 10/21/11. It will show up if we change the date to go thru 10/31/11. Is there a way we can fix this? A simple journal entry does not seem to help. I think we need the invoice date and the posting dates to be the same. Any help would be great.

Thanks

[SRYork]

The posting date is controlled by the register date. You can change it before printing the register. All invoices on the register are posted using this date.

So, to post then to different dates you will need to segregate them into separate posting batches where each batch contains the invoices to post to a given date (or period).

There was only limited batching capabilities in 3.7x.  If memory servers me correctly, batching was only available in SO Invoice Data entry. Hopefully, you are entering these there.  If not, you will need to enter the invoices that need to be posted to a different period separately after you have updated your main journal / register for the current period.

[BigLouie]

The posting date is taken from the module date. If you want the posting date to be other than the current date then you have to change the module date to the date you want to post in. This will solve your issue.

Welcome to the Sage Community.

[rmikolainis]

This might interest you:

http://dsdinc.com/enh/by-module/accounts-payable/es-ap-1118.html

AP-1118 A/P Invoice Date as G/L Posting Date

Otherwise, you might consider changing your invoicing practices:

Setting up Batch Entry using batch names such as Sept-11 , Oct-11, etc.

Then entering invoices into the respective batch. Then you'll know to use an account posting date of, lets say 9-30-11 for the Sept-11 batch.

Edit:

Just realized you were talking about AR or SO.  My bad!

[SRYork]

Please note, batching functionality was not available in all data entry programs until they were moved up to the 4.0 framework standards. Since you question was referring to version 3.71, using the batching option as a work around maybe limited.

[pauline]

Batch entry was available in both AR & AP in 3.71.  It does take a little user attention to keep them separate, but user attention is a good thing.

[TomTarget]

---

BigLouie wrote:

The posting date is taken from the module date. If you want the posting date to be other than the current date then you have to change the module date to the date you want to post in. This will solve your issue.

Welcome to the Sage Community.

---

Clarification:   The posting/transaction date DEFAULTS from the module date.   It can be changed at the time you run the journal register.

Definitions:

Module date:   The default date for transactions entered in particular module.  On first entry to a module you will be prompted for a module date. 

Document date:   The actual date printed on a document (such as a check,  invoice,  etc.).   Will default to the module date but can be overridden.

Transaction/posting date:   The date that the item is posted to the general ledger.    Will default to the module date but can be overridden.

Current module period end/date:   Keeps you from posting back into prior periods and depending on settings into future periods.

As already noted in this thread,  the last two items are not necessarily the same,  although I would argue that in most cases they really should be the same with the exception of  a/p invoices (due to accrual accounting issues).  The ability to mismatch these dates unfortunately can lead to various reports not matching the general ledger.

I'm kind of picky in making sure that people understand this,  because I had a client panic one day while doing period end processing because they forgot to change the module date to be the end of the current month.   In their panic,  they shut down the computer in the middle of the processing which really made a mess out of things.   The module date meant nothing.

[CWACCOUNTING]

Is there some way in MAS 90 to have the default posting date to equal the source document date?  In other words, if I enter an invoice (whether AP or AR) with a date of 1-31-12, I expect it to be posted to the GL for January 2012.  As a CPA I cannot imagine why I would ever want my source document date to have a different GL date and do not understand why it automatically overrides to the current module date and you have to manually force it back to the period of the source document.  Also being forced to open different batches for different time periods/months is also very time consuming and can cause confusion to have to switch between batches when entering 2 different months' data.  Is there an option to have the source document date be the GL posting date as a default?  And if not -WHY?

[kanes]

The module date is the default date for the document (invoice, etc.) as well as the default for the GL posting date. The module date defaults to the current date when you first enter the module.

Steve

MAS200 V4.30.21

[CWACCOUNTING]

I override the module date with the actual invoice date when I enter the invoice.  A/P invoices can take up to two weeks to arrive or can arrive before the material so I rarely used the module date for my data entry.  Once again, I want my GL to post to the same date as the source document.