How to record this in Sage?

System

Hello, everyone!
Just received an invoice for next financial year(01.04.06-31.03.07) which we will pay in 10 installments.But how should I record it?
One solution:
Cr crditor £1000
Dr prepayment £1000 (I am not sure about this one)

then after every payments(every payments actually is not the same,so I can not set a recuring entry)
Dr crditor £100
Cr Bank £100
Dr expense account £100
Cr Prepayment £100

Do you think it is right?

System

Re:How to record this in Sage?

Hi, hope you don't mind me subscribing to your thread.

I don't work on sage, but work on Access Dimensions (which is similar to sage - I have been advised today).

As far as the entries are concerned - that is the way I would deal with it in access. Of course you are dealing with 2 elements here - your cash book and your nominals.

Some of our prepayments - which relate to a trading year, but are settled in 10 months rather than 12, we will work out a prepayment schedule analysis to charge the value to the nominals over 12 months, whilst paying in 10, for example rates; it works out even stevens at the end.

I am surprised that you cannot post this via a recurring journal, as I thought that these are normally in batched journal fields which you can edit before any posting?

Also, just out of curiosity, do you keep schedules to analyse and control your balance sheet a/c's, and if I may ask what type of expense is it?

Hope this has been of some help,

System

Re:How to record this in Sage?

As the invoice is for the future (1st April 2006 to 31st March 2007) then it would have to be posted as a prepayment.

This would then be written off in 12 monthly installments over the life of the invoice regardless of how the invoice is actually paid. A good example would be business rates (due about now and possibly what this invoice relates to?). These are usually paid in 10 monthly installments but are always written off over 12 months.

I confess I never used the recurring entries element of sage, I preferred to do a manual monthly journal, but is there an opportunity to write the first or last payment off as an adjusting amount or to make payments over, say, 11 months with a final amount unposted that you could manually write off?

Hope this helps.

System

Re:How to record this in Sage?

Dear Ruby and TLG,
Thanks for the reply.
Yes,this is an rates invoice.Because it will actually be paid over 10 months, so I was not sure should I record it as a prpayments.Now I know it.
I had thought that it have to be the same amount to using the recurring entry,I will find it out if I can adjust it every month.
There is only recurring entry for bank payments, isn't it? I don't know if there is recurring entry to do a monthly journal entry.
Thanks

System

Re:How to record this in Sage?

Ah! The recurring entries through the bank can be adjusted before posting (I've used the function quite a few times) and this would indeed be 10 payments beginning April 06. There is a monthly journal/prepayments option in sage that I haven't used, but I'm guessing there would be an option to adjust that too.

If you need any further help with the monthly bank payment, I will try to answer any question but I'm not currently using sage to give precise instructions :?