- Posted on May 27, 2020
One of our client’s wanted to review their vendor expenses to see where some money could be cut. I pulled an expenses by vendor summary report for 2019 and changed the columns by month that way they would see what was on a recurring basis. The accrual report displayed fine, but the cash report was showing zero amounts for the rent in some months which was odd because they pay that out every month.
After digging into the activity, I noticed that this was happening because the payment was dated before the bill was dated. The rent bill is dated the 1st of every month, but sometimes it gets there early in the prior month. When this happens, the cash basis expenses by vendor summary report does not reflect this payment whatsoever.
There are a couple scenario’s to fix here:
- Re-date the payment to the same date as the bill. The payment will no longer match to the bank statement however.
- Re-date the bill to match the payment; the end result may have a couple bills under the same month on accrual basis.
A permanent fix moving forward is to always date your bills before your payments go out.