Academy / Lessons / Day-to-day practice

Day-to-day practice

The things you touch every week: receipts and claims, receivables and payables, payment vouchers, stock, job costing, and what an invoice must carry before anyone talks about e-Invoice.

• EP5

  Expenses and claims: stop keeping receipts in your pocket

  Does the company pay it directly, or does someone pay first and claim later? Receipts arrive from email, apps, paper and Touch 'n Go — bring them to one place first, then set the rhythm. Forget to claim and you have burned the money and paid extra tax on top.

• EP6

  Receivables, payables and contact records: making money is not the same as having money

  The statements say you made a profit, the bank account says otherwise — because the money is still in somebody else's hands. Who owes you and who you owe starts with a proper contact record and runs all the way to the ageing report.

• EP8

  Payment vouchers and document classification: when do you actually raise one?

  Where there is a document, follow the document. Where there is none, raise a voucher. And classification does not turn on which card you swiped — it turns on when you paid. Swiping a card is not buying on credit.

• EP9

  Stock valuation: perpetual or periodic? Do you know what each item earns?

  Do you find out at month end, or can you see it any time? Best-selling is not the same as profitable — margin per item is what gives a decision its backbone.

• EP10

  Job costing and cost allocation: did that job make money or lose it?

  Look at it by month and all you learn is that you were busy. Look at it by job and you learn what you earned. Charge it where you can, pool it where you cannot, and have a fixed rule for the pool.

• EP19

  Before we talk about e-Invoice: does your invoice pass?

  The description has to make sense to an outsider, the unit has to be clear, and the amount carries two decimals. Deposits, final bills, money collected on behalf — each has a way it should be recorded.

• EP26

  Incomplete records: the money really was spent, but there is no document. Now what?

  Lost it, the trade does not issue documents, or the other side refuses to. Three situations, three treatments — the five things an internal voucher must carry, and three red lines you never touch.

• EP31

  Transaction sets: give every entry a complete evidence pack

  Did it happen, did it arrive, did the money move? All three have to be answerable. One pack for the purchase on credit, another for the payment — do not bundle them into one entry.

• EP35

  Manufacturing accounts: the cost of one unit is not on any invoice

  Trading has one store; a factory has three. When a traditional allocation is enough and when ABC is worth it — and the order cannot be reversed.

• EP41

  Rental accounts: which unit is feeding you, and which one are you feeding

  Ask a landlord with several units which one earns the most, and nine out of ten cannot answer. Not because they do not understand — because nobody ever put them on one table together.