Debtor Journal

There are times when you require to post a correcting journal against a debtor account. A common example would be to write off a small amount due to rounding difference or exchange rate difference. You might have a number of transaction lines against the debtor which can be considered 'settled'. Since you can't issue a receipt against it, the alternative way is to use Debtor Journal Program.

From the program, you can post balancing or correcting figures against the debtor and it will update both Debtor Subledger as well as the General Ledger. This ensures that your GL and Subledger remains in balance.

Debtor Ageing

Have you ever wondered why your Debtor Ageing figure doesn't look right? It is probably because you forgot to run the Debtor Month End Process.

Before you run this, you need to make sure that ALL your Debtor Statement has been saved or printed. This is very important since once you run the month end, you will not be able to reprint a back dated Debtor Statement.

After printing/saving all your Debtor Statement, all you need to do is to specify what is the first date of the next month for the Debtor Month End Process.

You can tick Archive Transactions if you want to get rid of all the fully paid lines in the Debtor Statement.

Once you have run the Month End Process, you will see that your Debtor Ageing Report would display in the correct ageing category.

Never Under Estimate the Importance of Bank Reconciliation

Like it or not, businesses MUST diligently run Bank Reconciliation reports at least on a monthly basis. There is no excuse not to do it. If your business deals a lot with bank transactions, it can be a tedious exercise to go through the bank statement and tick off every single line. However, this painful task pays off since it will give you an idea of where your money have gone to and whether you are collecting enough.

UNITS has a built in feature to assist with Bank Reconciliation. It can be a bit confusing to start off especially if you don't regularly process your Bank Statement. Trust me it is a worthwhile thing to learn and regularly monitor. For those with access to internet banking, you can spare 15 minutes a day to reconcile. This will save you a lot of grief as compared to doing it once a month.

The downside to not monitoring your Bank Reconciliation is too hard to swallow. I know someone who learnt the hard way. By 'assuming' that this is being done correctly, a company has lost a huge sum of money over a period of about 6 months!!! Bank Statements were not reconciled and neither were Debtors and Creditors.

There are many ways to beat a system but it is not easy to manipulate Bank Statements. So please monitor them closely and tie them up with postings in the system.