Sales Posting Procedure

The following procedure is performed in order to audit daily sales (accounts receivable invoice) activity and to post this activity to the general ledger.

1.  Ensure that all invoicing for the date range to be posted has been completed.  Sales are posted in batches by invoice date.  Therefore, all invoicing, same day voids, and invoice editing for the date range to be processed must be completed prior to posting sales. Note: Editing or deleting invoice amounts after they have been posted to the general ledger will cause the general ledger to go "out of balance" with the AR sub-ledger.

2.  Print an Invoice Register for the range of invoice dates to be posted.  Select "Y" to Audit GL Posting Information.  The Invoice Register performs a thorough audit of each invoice in the selected range, checking that all of the information used by the Sales Posting process is present in each Invoice Header and Line Item record.

3.  Examine the Invoice Register for the date range to be posted.  If any error messages appear on the report, the cause of the error must be corrected before proceeding to the next step.  The invoice register will print a description of each error discovered.  This error will usually indicate the problem encountered.  A list of the error messages that are produced by the Invoice Register and the procedures to be used to correct them are presented later in this document.

4.  Select the Sales Posting Loader program from the AR utilities menu and enter the invoice date range to be posted (this should be the same as the date range selected on the error free invoice register).  The Sales Posting Loader loads the selected invoice information into a temporary file for processing by the Sales Posting Program.  It also outputs a report much like the one produced by the Invoice Register.  Compare the net invoice total on the report to the net total on the invoice register.  The two reports should agree.  If not, the difference must be resolved before proceeding to the next step

5.  Select the Sales Posting program from the AR Utilities menu.  Select "Y" to Report Summary Only, and "N" to Post Sales to General Ledger.   The Sales Posting program jumps into the Invoice Line Item file (F58) by transaction date, and posts in order of Date, Division, Department, Location & Invoice #, breaking at the location level.  A multi-sectional journal entry is created, with each section consisting of a balanced transaction for each Div/Dpt/Loc set.  When run in this manner, the Sales Posting program will output a report of the journal entry or entries that would be made by the system if a "Y" was entered in the Post Sales to General Ledger selection.  If any section of the journal entry is unbalanced, an error message will print both at the point of unbalance, and at the end of the report.    Once the report is printed, check that.

•      The journal entry (or entries if the company has multiple divisions and or departments) is in balance (total debits equal total credits), and that all account numbers on the report have an account description printed next to them (if a description is not printed next to an account, it is likely that the account is not set up properly in the general ledger (there is likely a required auto post account missing).  Note:  If you are creating foreign currency invoices, the system will adjust for any rounding due to the currency conversion when the sales are actually posted.  The rounding line will not be shown on the preliminary sales posting report so if the journal entry is out of balance by a small amount, the system will handle the amount when the sales are actually posted to the general ledger.

•      The total amount to be posted to the general ledger accounts receivable control account(s) is equal to the net invoice total on the Invoice Register, and Sales Posting reports produced in the previous step. 

6.  If there are any errors on the preliminary sales posting report you must correct them before continuing.  This may require analyzing the detailed version of the Sales Posting report (this will show the invoice line item detail for each account being posted to) and or re-running the invoice register audit until the problem is resolved an error free preliminary posting report can be produced.

7.  Once the first sales posting report is "in balance", re-run the Sales Posting program, select "Y" to Report Summary Only, and "Y" to Post Sales to General Ledger.  You may then accept or change the general ledger posting period and/or posting date to be used for the journal entry (depending on your operator security rights).  The system will post the journal entry that was previewed in the last step to the general ledger and print a report with "****Posted to GL****" printed across the top.  Once the program has completed processing, confirm that

•      The journal entry or entries created by the program and listed on the report are in balance and that the amount posted to the general ledger accounts receivable control account is the same as the "net invoice" total from the Invoice Register, and Sales Posting Loader reports printed in the previous steps.  If the totals do not match, the journal entry or entries produced by the program should be reversed using the Journal Entry program and the sales posting procedure should be repeated until the totals match.

8.  Attach the "error free" Invoice Register, Sales Posting Proof Report, and Sales Posting reports together to provide a record that the invoices were posted and file them.  A physical file or some other method should be used that allows you to quickly check whether or not a given invoice date range has been posted to the general ledger (this will reduce the chances that a date range is skipped or posted more than once).

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Re-Posting Sales