Sage 100

Question about Return of Goods and PO clearing. - this is on Sage100 2015 ... User does a return of goods, referencing a PO and leaving the invoice # blank (as the invoice is issued by the vendor after the receive and evaluate the return, which can be weeks later.) Updating the return puts in in purchase clearing - both the G/L and the Purchase Clearing report. All good so far. They can track it on the Purchase Clearing report until the credit invoice comes through. Then they do a Receipt of Invoice when the credit comes in, using a qty of -1, and update, and the credit memo appears on the vendor, the G/L for purchase clearing is balanced, and the PO is off the Purchases Clearing report. Seems to work very well... BUT - if they have to return something that does not have a PO, (for which there are a lot of reasons), the Return of goods allows you to do it, and puts it into the purchase clearing G/L, but does NOT put it on the purchase clearing report, which seems to toss the idea of having the purchase clearing report tie to the G/L out the window. And then how do they track it and do they put the Credit through A/P and charge off to purchase clearing G/L ? does anyone have a elegant, or better, (or anything) on how to handle return of goods without a PO, with the invoice # blank, and handling purchases clearing - ... a beer (or beers) at M.O.T.M. for help....!!

The ability to receive (or return) without a PO number is an old conversion feature allowing a customer to convert to the Sage 100 system and receive goods/returns/invoices that may not have a PO on file. IMHO it wasn't intended to be used after conversion.

No way! I have people doing that all the time. What do you do when you have some old stuff that needs to be returned and the PO has long since gone to the History file?????????????

That's from the very old days when Jennifer Lee had me put in the How to Convert your system in the PO manual.

Return the item, do NOT reference a PO, create an invoice number with a type of coding that indicates to the AP person that this credit is on hold pending vendor evaluation and actual credit memo. Process the real credit memo as an adjustment to the original credit when received. It really doesn't matter if the $$$'s sit in AP or purchase clearing GL account. Purchases Clearing should be classified in the AP section of the G/L. You might also trying creating a check flag (hold invoice) in the return of goods PO panel and try to flow it to the AP open invoice table as the invoice on hold flag. This will prevent accidental credit usage. Sage promised to take a look at the purchases clearing issue in 2014 at Vegas. I wonder where THAT flip chart ended up.

I wrote a Crystal report that brings in all PP journals and AP journals (yes, the customer posts return credits to purchases clearing) then any non-offsetting entries are entered in Excel and carried forward each month. No, not pretty but it gets the job done. Any other methods being used??

Good news. If you process the return as a credit memo, you can put it on hold via the hold flag located on the totals panel.

I'll have to discuss with my customer but I know she will be confused if there are credits on the vendor's account and she can't take them. Plus, they don't always give a full credit. She would have a hard time reconciling the open credits with the actuals, I think.

Change is tough sometimes. Since they have a system already, probably won't change. But it could create an efficiency that might be worth the effort.