Accounts Receivable Posted Twice to Revenue Account

Back in May I created an Accounts Receivable entry and posted the amount of the A/R to a Revenue account. When the customer paid the bill in July and the bookkeeper made the bank deposit he forgot about the A/R and posted the amount to the same Revenue account. I cannot figure out what entry or entries I have to do to debit the revenue account and clear the A/R without affecting the bank deposit. any help on this much appreciated. (In case it is not obvious I am not an accountant).

  • 0

    As the second entry was not processed through the Accounts Receivable I would suggest that you process another invoice for this A/R account using all of the same information as was on the original entry with two exceptions. The invoice number could be the same followed by REV to indicate a reversal. The second exception would be to show the quantity as a negative number. If quantity is not used then the dollar value should be negative. This will effectively reverse the entry that was originally made. Before posting check Reports to verify the journal entry is correct. It should be a credit to Accounts Receivable and a debit to the Revenue account. If correct then post the entry. 

    There is one more step and that would be to open the Receipts module for this same A/R account. There should be two lines in the window one for the original entry with a positive number and one line for the new entry with a negative number. These can be cleared against each other with a zero dollar balance, then post the entry.

    Hope this helps

  • 0 in reply to Alwyn

    Thank you very much for your help. I hadn't mentioned before that the original A/R entry was in our previous fiscal year so I was hoping to retain the revenue there. That meant finding a way to debit the revenue account for the recent credit posted with the bank deposit and also crediting the old A/R. However since the amount is not large and will not have a great effect on the previous year's income I am using your suggestion of reversing the original A/R. Incidentally I don't quite understand your second paragraph. Doesn't viewing the account in the Receipts module just show the two transactions? What is there to post?

  • 0 in reply to Legionnaire

    These two entries will stay on the account forever if you do not clear them. Change the Paid by from cheque to Cash so that you do not use a cheque number. Use any date after the second entry was dated, I usually use today's date, highlight both entries so your total payment amount is zero and post. This just keeps the accounts clean.

    Also, I would not suggest using the date of the invoice as it is last year. Any change like this, even a small amount, will cause the year end work by your accountant to increase. Once the books have been passed to the accountant for the year end there should be no further activity other than adjusting entries from the accountant.