The Accounts Payable module tracks all financial commitments that the company makes to other businesses. This includes rent, utilities, etc. as well as orders of goods and services.
A vendor is any business that the company agrees to pay money to. One can enter vendor information under AP→Vendors→Add Vendor. The vendor list can be searched under AP→Vendors→Reports→Search. In older versions of SQL-Ledger, vendors would continue to populate the list of active vendors forever and there was no way to delete them. Now one can enter start and end-dates and this can be used to filter out vendors in searches or drop-down boxes. A few fields that need explanation are:
BIC Bank Identifier Code is often the same as the S.W.I.F.T. code. This is a code for the bank a customer uses for automated money transfers.
IBAN International Bank Account Number is related to the BIC and is used for cross-border automated money transfers.
Terms is the number of days one has to pay the invoice.
Vendor Number is automatically generated.
AP Transactions are generally used for items other than goods and services. Utilities, rent, travel expenses, etc. could be entered in as an AP transaction. If the item is paid partially or in full when the transaction is entered, one can add payments to the payment section. All other payments can and should be entered under cash payment (below). The PO Number and Order Number fields are generally used to track associations with purchase orders sent to vendors, etc. These fields can be helpful for adding misc. expenses to orders for reporting purposes. The department drop-down box appears when one has created one or more departments. A transaction is not required to be associated with a department, but one can use this feature for budget tracking. With AP Transactions, there is no option for internal notes. All notes will appear on any printed version of the transaction. Note: Printing a transaction does not post it. No data is committed until the invoice is posted.
AP Invoices are used to enter in the receipt of goods and services. Goods and services are deemed entered into the inventory when they are invoiced. This screen is reasonably similar to the AP Transaction Screen, though the part entry section is a bit different. The AP Invoice section has a capacity to separate internal notes from notes printed on the invoice. Note, however, that since these are received invoices, it is rare that one needs this ability. Note that SQL-Ledger can search for partial part numbers or descriptions. Also if you have a group you can use this to select the part. To remove a line item from an invoice or order, delete the partnumber and click update.
If an invoice is entered improperly, the methods used to correct it will vary depending on whether transaction reversal is enforced or not. If transaction reversal is not enforced, one can simply correct the invoice or transaction and repost. If not, one needs to create a ^duplicate* invoice with exactly opposite values entered. If one part was listed as received, then one should enter a negative one for the quantity. Then one can enter the invoice number as the same as the old one (though I like to add an R to the end to show that it is a reversing transaction). Once this is posted, one can enter the invoice correctly.
In general, it is a bad idea to repost invoices/transactions just in order to enter a payment. The Cash> Payment window allows one to enter payments against AP invoices or transactions. The printing capability can be used to print checks. The default template is NEBS 9085, though you can use 9082 as well (as Quickbooks does). The source field is used to store an identifying number of the source document, such as the check number. One must select the item to have it paid, and then enter the amount. One can then print a check.
One can also use the rapid payment entry screen to print multiple checks. However, this does not allow you to print the multiple checks to the screen as a separate document is created for each check. In this event, one must print directly to a printer as postscript.
This report is designed to help you locate AP transactions based on various criteria. One can search by vendor, invoice number, department, and the like. One can even search by the shipping method. The summary button will show what was placed where, while the details button will show all debits and credits associated with the transaction. To view the invoice, click on the invoice number. In the detail view, to view the account transactions as a whole, click on the account number. Open invoices are ones not fully paid off, while paid closed invoices are those that have been paid.
The outstanding report is designed to help you locate AP transactions that are not paid yet. The ID field is mostly useful for locating the specific database record of a duplicate invoice number exists.
This report can tell you how many invoices are past due and by how much. A summary report just shows vendors while a detail report shows individual invoices.
These reports are not generally used in the US because most of the time wholesale goods are not taxable. However, for businesses with offices in other countries including Canada, it is often important for them to be aware of this functionality. In these countries, one generally pays sales tax even on wholesale goods and then takes a tax credit for these when when paying the sales tax to the country of province. Thus one needs to be able to track taxable and non-taxable expenses, and how much was paid. For now, it is sufficient to know that they are there.
The Vendor Search screen can be used to locate vendors or AP transactions associated with those vendors. The basic types of reports are: All Lists all vendors Active Lists those vendors currently active Inactive Lists those vendors who are currently inactive. time frame. Orphaned Lists those vendors who do not have transactions associated with them. These vendors can be deleted. One can include purchase orders, Requests for Quotations, AP invoices, and AP transactions on this report as well if they occur between the from and to dates.
This report can be used to obtain information about the past goods and services ordered or received from vendors. One can find quantities, partnumber, and sell prices on this report. This facility can be used to search RFQ's, Purchase Orders, and AP Invoices.
Next: AR
(First version from: An Introduction to SQL-Ledger by Chris Travers, 2006)