Printing Aging Reports and Activity Reports: account balance

[Customer Service]

Message received when printing Aging reports and Activity reports: Period calculated total does not equal control account balance

These messages are Accounting Integrity Warnings and can be seen in Receivables and Payables.

You can configure User IDs to display a new “accounting integrity” warning message when the user prints the Receivables and Payables Aging and Activity Reports. A new test has been built into the system that displays the message if a discrepancy exists between customer or vendor account balances and the G/L control account balances.

This message does not necessarily mean that there is a new problem in your data. The discrepancy may have existed for some time. You may have posted in error to a control account. Or the discrepancy may have been introduced at some point by some other posting anomaly.

If you see the message in Receivables, do the following:

1. Make a backup of the company
2. Run the System/Company/Verify Verify A/R Statement Aging and Verify A/R Summary Information tests with Repair enabled.

If you see the message in Payables, do the following:

1. Make a backup of the company
2. Run the System/Company/Verify Verify A/P Summary Information test with Repair enabled.

If you continue to receive the data integrity warning when you print the Receivables and/or Payables Aging and Activity reports, follow the instructions below.

Correcting the Discrepancy Between Customer and Vendor Accounts and Control Accounts

You may want to discuss the best way to correct the discrepancy with your CPA. The discrepancy is usually due to general journal entries. Check to see if you may have entered general journal (GJ) transactions to a Receivables or Payables control account, causing it to disagree with the customer or vendor account balance.

Procedure 1 If a GJ entry is the origin of the problem, to find the period when the discrepancy was created, follow these steps:

1. Run the Customer or Vendor Activity report (going backwards from the present) for a period 6 periods ago, then a period 12 periods ago, and so forth, until the message does NOT occur. The discrepancy was introduced in one of the 6 periods after that last period you just printed.
2. Now work forward from that “non-message” period, printing the Customer or Vendor Activity report for one period at a time, until the message does occur. You have found the period when the discrepancy was introduced.
3. Print the General Ledger Activity report in Preview mode for the control account(s) for that period. Summarize by source code. Search for a transaction with a source code that is NOT related to customer activity (ARIJ, ARRJ, ARFC, CKCP) or vendor activity (APVJ, CKAP, CKMC) — such as a General Journal Summary entry (GLGJ). THAT's the origin of the discrepancy. In Preview mode, you can drill-down to the source code transaction details to learn more about the nature of the discrepancy.
4. Make a journal entry to the control account for that period to back out the non-Receivables or non-Payables entry to the Receivables or Payables control account.

Procedure 2 You may be able to skip printing Customer and Vendor Activity as recommended in Procedure 1. As an alternative, follow these steps:

1. Print the General Ledger Activity report (going backwards from the present) in Preview mode for the control account(s) for a fiscal year at a time. Summarize by source code. Search for transactions with a source code that is NOT related to customer activity (ARIJ, ARRJ, ARFC, CKCP) or vendor activity (APVJ, CKAP, CKMC) — such as a General Journal Summary entry (GLGJ). Those transactions created discrepancies. In Preview mode, you can drill-down to the source code transaction details to learn more about the nature of the discrepancy.
2. Make journal entries to the control account for each affected period to back out the non-Receivables or non-Payables entry to the Receivables or Payables control account.

Notes:

*In some cases the accounting integrity warning message appears in one period's data and not in the next, or the amount of the discrepancy shown in the message changes. A correcting entry may have been made in one period and a journal entry made in another period that reintroduced the discrepancy. Journal entries to control accounts may have been made at many different times. You may need to look in the General Ledger Activity report for non-Receivables or non-Payables entries to control accounts in a number of periods.
*Users often find that the discrepancy occurred in BPI Accounting before the data was converted to 21st Century Accounting. In some cases, the conversion is unable to convert all of the sub-ledger detail transactions that occurred in a period, usually because some of the details are no longer available. Conversion will nevertheless ensure that the general ledger account balances in 21st Century Accounting are the same as BPI account balances by making a GL Historical Balance (GLHB) entry. The GLHB entry may include the affect of various transaction types. If you find that the discrepancy occurred in a period that has this condition, it may not be possible to determine a particular transaction that is the cause of the discrepancy. In this situation you and/or your CPA will need to use your judgement to make some appropriate journal entry to bring the control account in balance with the subledger total.