Posting charges for a vendor we have a credit with

[gccc]

At the end of our last fiscal year, we paid a year in advance for some radio spots to use up the money left in our advertising budget. I now receive a monthly invoice, but do no remit a payment as we are using up our credit balance. I'm pretty sure I should be posting these charges as they come in to offset the money paid out, but am not sure how to do this. Would appreciate some advice.

Thanks,
Kathy

[NeilZ]

At the end of our last fiscal year, we paid a year in advance for some radio spots to use up the money left in our advertising budget. I now receive a monthly invoice, but do no remit a payment as we are using up our credit balance. I'm pretty sure I should be posting these charges as they come in to offset the money paid out, but am not sure how to do this. Would appreciate some advice.

Thanks,
Kathy

Unfortunately, this was paid out from last year's budget and funds, so there's no way you can account for any of those funds in this year's budget or spending. I would just file the statements showing the charge, and the remaining credit balance in a folder. The other thing you can do is add an entry to the vendor's record on the NOTE tab.

Click on the Add Time Stamp button which will add the date and time to the large NOTES window, then where it says Add Comments Here enter something like: Received STMT: 2017-08-01 - charged $100.00 - credit remaning $500.00

This way you have an audit trail in the system, along with the paper trail in the folder.

FWIW ... 'using up the money' in a budgeted account, just shows that you set the budget too high in the first place. The money will be going out one way or another. Its best to reflect that spending in the year its actually being used, in this case 2017.

[gccc]

Thanks for your advice. I'll enter the notes as you suggested and try to dissuade future requests to "use up" monies still left at the end of the year.