Help:AP1-About

About Accounts Payable Manager

The Accounts Payable Manager is used in an accrual accounting system. It is a mechanism by which invoices from the various vendors can be accounted for in the proper accounting period and paid whenever the company chooses. It maintains a subsidiary ledger of the currently posted but unpaid invoices, grouped by vendor. At any time, this subsidiary ledger should correspond to the amount in the specific general ledger control account for the accounts payable subsidiary ledger.

Checks can be easily produced for multiple vendors by selecting which invoices are to be paid. The checks are accounted for in the General Ledger Manager and Bank Account Manager modules, preventing the need for duplicate data entry.

It also maintains a history of the invoices which have been paid to each vendor and on which check the invoices were paid. This makes any inquiry by the vendor as to the paid status of an invoice an easy process.

Accounts Payable Subsidiary Ledgers - The Accounts Payable Manager is designed to maintain up to 99 different Accounts Payable Subsidiary Ledgers. Most single-branch companies use only one Accounts Payable Ledger. If your company has multiple branches, each branch can have its own unique Accounts Payable Ledger. Checks can be written to vendors for the entries in a single Accounts Payable Account or for all of the entires in all of the Accounts Payable Accounts which are posted to that vendor. This affords maximum flexibility in posting, accounting, and printing checks.

Accounts Payable Vendors - The Accounts Payable Manager can maintain up to 999,999 different vendors. These vendors can be accessed either by Vendor Name (Sort-Locator), by Vendor Number, or by Zip Code. New vendors can be added during the invoice posting process, if needed. Vendors can also be looked up on the screen whenever a Vendor Number is needed by any of the procedures in this program.

Multiple Accounting Years - The historical information in the Accounts Payable Manager is maintained for as long as you wish. The cumulative amount paid to each of the vendors is maintained by calendar year for the purposes of printing the Forms 1099-Misc, as required. Multiple years are automatically maintained by the program. The information from previous years can exist simultaneously with the information of the current year. The IBS System is continuous and does not need any formal closing. Therefore, there is no year-end closing in the Accounts Payable Manager module.

Journals - There are two transaction journals maintained by the Accounts Payable Manager---Purchases Journal and A/P Checks Journal. These journals are grouped by A/P Account and Posting Month/Year. They maintain all of the historical processing information in the Accounts Payable.

Check Writing - Checks can be written in batches or individually. Invoices can be posted as a Bank Adjustment if an electronic funds transfer has been made to pay for an amount which has already been posted to the Accounts Payable.

Important: Only one user may select and pay invoices at a time. All other users MUST exit the Accounts Payable Manager module when invoices are being paid, whether such payments are made by actual checks, bank adjustments, or by the offset invoice process.

Recurring Payables - This program can maintain a separate listing of accounts payable invoices which recur each month with the same amount. This is useful for vehicle and mortgage payments. You need to enter this information only once. Then once each month, you merge all these entries into the regular accounts payable detail without any duplicate data entry.

Reports - There are many standard reports built into the Accounts Payable Manager. These can give listings of current or historical invoices, along with the amounts paid. If more reports are required, you may purchase an optional Clarion Report Writer program which allows you to generate user-defined reports. Please note, however, that support for the optional Clarion Report Writer program is provided by Clarion, not by Direct Systems.

Invoice/Payment History - A complete history is kept of each invoice and each payment made against that invoice. An invoice can be paid by multiple checks, with only a portion of the invoice being paid on a single check. All of this historical information is maintained.