Changes in Accounts Payable 5.5

Here is a summary of the changes and new features in Accounts Payable 5.5.

• We introduce the most sophisticated treatment of currency revaluation on the market.

  With this version, exchange gains and losses are treated as permanent or temporary, depending on the exchange Gain/Loss Accounting Method specified for your Sage 300 ERP system (in the company profile).

  • If you use the Recognized Gain or Loss accounting method, revaluation transactions are considered permanent. In this accounting treatment, exchange gains and losses are recognized immediately when you post them, and they are not reversed in the next period. Furthermore, under this method, you can backdate revaluations, and when you revalue backdated documents, Accounts Payable automatically revalues transactions affected by backdated activity.
  • If you use the Realized and Unrealized Gain/Loss accounting method, revaluation transactions are considered temporary, or unrealized, gains and losses. Therefore, they are posted to General Ledger as reversing transactions, meaning that General Ledger simultaneously posts reversing transactions to the first day of the next fiscal period following the revalued period. In this way, revaluation has no permanent effect on the general ledger. Under this method, realized exchange gains or losses are calculated only when you post payments to pay invoices and debit notes, or when you post credit notes to pay down invoices.

  We have also made the following changes to support this new revaluation method:

  • Account Sets

    The Realized Exchange Gain and Realized Exchange Loss accounts are renamed Exchange Gain and Exchange Loss accounts.

    If you change the Gain/Loss Accounting Method to the Recognized Gain/Loss option, the Unrealized Exchange Gain and Unrealized Exchange Loss fields you used previously appear, although you cannot edit the fields.

  • Vendor Activity

    An exchange gain or loss transaction now appears as Gain/Loss not Realized Gain/Loss.

  • Report changes

    The changes to the accounts and terminology used for revaluation are reflected in the following reports:

    • Account Sets
    • Posting Journals
    • G/L Transactions

  Click here for more information on how revaluation is handled in Accounts Payable 5.5.

• New accounts accommodate changes to revaluation.

  The general ledger accounts used in multicurrency account sets depend on the Gain/Loss accounting method you use for your Sage 300 ERP system.

  If you use the Realized and Unrealized Gain/Loss accounting method, you use the Unrealized Exchange Gain and Unrealized Exchange Loss accounts for gains and losses calculated during revaluation. The Recognized Exchange Gain and Recognized Exchange Loss accounts have been renamed Exchange Gain and Exchange Loss in version 5.5.

  If you use the Recognized Gain/Loss accounting method, you use the Exchange Gain and Exchange Loss accounts for revaluing transactions as well as for exchange gains and losses that arise upon settlement of transactions.

• You can process advance credits in Payment Entry in all series of Sage 300 ERP.
• There is a new posting date field for transactions.

  You can now specify the date that a document is posted to General Ledger as well as a document date

  The ability to specify two separate dates is particularly important if you need to post a document to a different year or period from the document date.

  Accounts Payable uses posting dates, rather than document dates, to select open documents for revaluation, so that exchange adjustments are posted to the correct fiscal year and period.

  The A/P Options form provides new options that let you specify the type of date to use as the default posting date on the Payment Entry form and the Invoice Entry form. (You can select Document Date, Batch Date, or Session Date as the default posting date.)

  You can change the posting date for particular transactions when you enter or edit them.

• You can specify source codes for transactions.

  The G/L Integration form lets you specify source types for general ledger transactions.

• You can specify different accounts when entering transactions.

  Invoice Entry and Payment Entry let you specify an account set that is different from the vendor's account set. In a multicurrency ledger, the new account set must use the same currency as the vendor.

  Note, however, that you cannot specify an account set for the following types of transactions:

  • Apply Transactions (Payment Entry).
  • Miscellaneous Payments for vendors with no vendor number (Payment Entry).
  • Adjustments (Adjustment Entry and Payment Entry).

• You can apply credit notes to fully paid documents. (Previously, the document had to be unpaid.) You can also apply a debit note to a fully applied credit note.
• You can specify particular accounts for distribution sets.
  • The Distribution Sets form lets you enter General Ledger accounts as well as distribution codes. (If you want to reuse the description and discount status from an existing distribution code, insert the distribution code in the distribution set, as usual. Then clear the code, and enter the General Ledger account you want to use.)

• We have improved integration with Project and Job Costing.
  • You can now apply credit notes and debit notes to job-related documents in Invoice Entry, and you can apply prepayments, credit notes and debit notes to job-related invoices, credit notes, and debit notes in Payment Entry.
  • You can now set up job-related recurring payables. When you select the job-related option, the Detail tab provides additional fields that let you enter the contract, project, category, and resource.
• Keeping history is now automatic in Accounts Payable.

  You no longer select the Keep History option in the Options form. Accounts Payable automatically keeps batch data during posting.

• Batch entry counts and batch totals appear on all transaction entry forms.
• A new option lets you set the default tax class to 1 (instead of the vendor's tax class) for document details.
• There are a number of enhancements to recurring payables.
  • You can create an invoice manually for a recurring payable, if necessary.
  • You can now set up job-related recurring payables. When you select the job-related option, the Detail tab provides additional fields that let you enter the contract, project, category, and resource.
  • The posting date for generated invoices always follows the document date, regardless of the setting for the invoice posting date in the A/P Options form.
  • Accounts Payable now tracks posted and unposted invoices for recurring payables. The Statistics tab includes Posted Total Invoiced and Number of Invoices and Unposted Total Invoiced and Number of Invoices fields. You can edit these fields to include historical amounts.
  • The Create Recurring Payable Batch form now lets you choose whether to create a new batch or add invoices to a specified open batch. Alternatively, by selecting the Default method, you can let Accounts Payable add invoices to an open batch that has the same run date, if one exists. If none exists, the program creates a new batch.
• You can now list documents in ascending order or descending order in the Vendor Activity form.  

  Click the button () beside the Order By field on the Transactions tab and the Payments tab to change the display from ascending to descending order, or from descending to ascending order, of your Order By selection.

• When you print voided checks, the printed check includes ***VOID*** above the payee.
• The Aged Payables and Aged Cash Requirements reports are available only in letter format. (Previously, a legal-size report that contained the same information was also available.)
• You can include group subtotals when you use sorting criteria to print the Aged Payables, Overdue Payables, Aged Cash Requirements, Vendor Transactions, and Aged Retainage reports.
• The new Print 1099/1096 Forms icon, available in the A/P Vendor Reports folder, lets you print 1099 and 1096 forms for reporting amounts paid to vendors in the U.S. The Print T5018 (CPRS) Forms icon lets you print CPRS amounts on the T5018 required for Canadian filing. (Previously, you used the 1099/CPRS Forms icon to print these forms for both jurisdictions.)
• The 1099/CPRS Amounts form has been renamed 1099/CPRS Inquiry. Also, you can now print a report with the same information that is displayed on the Inquiry form.
• When you reverse a miscellaneous payment, the associated invoice is reversed automatically, too.
• You can post batches at the same time others are posting batches, but you cannot post batches that others are using.
• You assign separate security authorization to post batches and to enter them (as required under Sarbanes-Oxley legislation), if you use security with your system. (Previously, having authorization to post a certain type of batch also gave you authorization to view and enter and edit  transactions in that type of batch.)
  • Accounts Payable now integrates with Sage Fixed Assets.

    You can now identify purchases of fixed assets for Sage Fixed Assets.

    When you enter an invoice for a fixed asset in Invoice Entry, you can open a separate form where you specify the Sage Fixed Assets database, company (or organization), asset template, asset description quantity, and the unit order of measure for each detail.

    When you post the Sage Fixed Assets-related invoice, Accounts Payable creates records for Sage Fixed Assets Integration as part of the transaction.

Note: You cannot convert from ACCPAC Plus for DOS to this version of Sage 300 ERP .

Upgrading from an Earlier Version?

• If you are upgrading from version 5.3, see Changes in Accounts Payable 5.4.