How Account Numbers are Used

When setting up any product or price in NetForum, you need to choose what G/L accounts are related to it. The different accounts you choose determine the transactions that will hit your General Ledger, so it's very important that you choose the correct ones. Here's a basic guide to how the accounts on the price profile are used. For more information, please see Accounting Use Cases .

A/R

This account is debited every time your product is sold. Even if your association operates on a cash basis and you only create pro forma or prepaid invoices, the A/R account on your product is still debited when you sell the product (note that pro forma invoices are not released to your G/L until a payment is on the invoice). For this reason, it is important to create and choose an actual A/R account (even if it is a dummy account that you don't really use). The A/R account is credited when a payment is made, when the invoice is written off, or if the invoice is canceled before payment is received.

Revenue

If you have not checked the deferred checkbox for this product, this account is credited when your product is sold, and debited when you void an invoice in a closed batch. If you have checked the 'deferred' checkbox on the product, it is not credited until you run the recognize revenue process for the period in which the 'recognize after' date for the product is included.

Liability

This account is credited when a paid invoice is canceled. This credit resides on the customer's record, where it can either be applied to a different invoice, or refunded. The liability account would be debited when either of these actions is taken.

Return

This account is debited when an invoice is canceled. For most associations, the return account is the same account used for the revenue account. However, if you track cancellation expense instead of just reducing your revenue, it would be an expense account instead of the revenue account.

Write-Off

This account is debited when a write off is created. This is typically an expense account or the revenue account for the product.

Deferred

This account appears only if you check the deferred checkbox. If a product is deferred, the deferred account is the one that is credited at the time the product is sold. This account is debited when the recognize revenue process is run for the appropriate period.