I have an invoice with a date before my post date. For example: Invoice is dated 4/15/06. I want to enter this invoice on 4/5/06. How does this effect the General Ledger? How will this effect posting status? Thanks, Kathy

Kathy, My experience with these dates are as follows: Once you post the following will occur... The Accounts Payable Aeging will be effected on 4/15 while the General Ledger will be effected on 4/5/06. You must take this into consideration when reconciling AP to the GL.

Yes I am having a terrible time with the ageing report at month end, because a/p will not balance with g/l. If invoice is for March we post date on 03/31/06, but some reason I can't get them to balance. I include all invoice dates. Any suggestion from others would be helpful. Hayley

The rule we have implemented is that we never enter an invoice date that is not in the same month as the post date. If I have closed payables for a month (like March) the earliest invoice date I will allow to be entered is April 1. This will solve reconciliation problems related to invoice/post dates. Unfortunately, unlike some other systems I have used, there is no way to enter a business rule for this.

Has this completely solved your A/P reconciliation? (i.e. the aging ALWAYS equals the g/l balance)

For the most part it has. Occassionally human error occurs and a data entry error happens. With out the ability to implement a business rule in the software it's pretty tough to totally eliminate. But understanding how the different dates you enter affect the different reports is critical to getting the system to work the way you want it to.

I wish Blackbaud had a feature that would allow you to actually close payables in the system. As it is now, you can't close payables without closing G/L as well. Other systems I have worked on had these two segregated as you usually close payables and then still have some g/l entries you need to do to finish and close the month.

I use the A/P open invoice report to balance A/P to g/l. You can then utilize the aging report to determine the age of the outstanding invoices.

I believe the reasoning why AP can't really be closed has to do with the Project Module...

The system implemented by Dave Weaver also works for me...I've never had a rec problem once I realized that the invoice date and the posting date must be in the same period.

I just wanted to add a quick affirmation. If we ever have a issue reconciling AP to GL, it is always a date problem. I have learned to always be sure that all of AP is posted at month end, and then I print an Open Invoice report as well as an AP Aging report. This has solved all of my problems.

That is correct Renell... Blackbaud is very date sensitive... Your A/P reports should also reconcile to the GL if you understand the date concept... Instead of accruing at the end of each month, we continue to post to the prior period for another 15 days or so...so when an invoice is input with a March invoice date...we use a March post date also to reconcile to the March GL.

Also be careful of "Recurring Invoices". We issue checks in the current month and charg them to the next month...so the vendor can get paid on time... This is one reason why I run reports with future dates.