Entering a purchase with every transaction

[TanyaWaight]

Hi

I have been using spend & receive money for all our transactions and using GST (Summary Cash) to transfer the correct amount of money over for our BAS.  I now have to use the sales & purchases to record our transactions and the GST (Summary Accruals).  I also use the bank feeds section.

I have a few questions to make sure I am doing this right:

• Do I have to enter a new purchase for every transaction?
• Then do I apply a new bill rule in the bank feeds section because I feel I am taking a step back, time wise by creating the purchase then approving in bank feeds?
• I have a lot of small visa transactions, do I have to enter them in as a purchase every time and the weekly / monthly direct debits?
• On a weekly basis I transfer money over to our GST account ready for the quarterly BAS - now that I am using purchases & sales do I transfer the money from my accruals rather than cash?

Thank you in advance, any help would be appreciated as our Accountant is on holidays

Regards

Tanya

[Steven_M · Accepted solution]

Hi @TanyaWaight

Generally there would be two reasons why you wouldn't record a purchase transaction and record say a Spend Money transaction,

• You are not paying the money straight away. For example you might purchase some goods but not have a full amount of money to pay or would like to take advantage of the terms offered by that supplier.
• Its a minor purchase that doesn't require a proper bill for i.e. minor supplies for the office (Tea, Coffee, Milk...) or fuel for a car....
  

There are exceptions but basically I would go by the rule if you think you ever want to print out the purchase then make it a purchase otherwise Spend Money would be the way to go.

In terms of bank feed rules for bills, you can setup them up via Banking>>Bank Feeds>>Manage Rules>>New>>Bill. When a bank feed transaction meets the conditions of the rule it will look for open bills for that supplier on the rule to apply the payment to. Please note that the bill would need to be entered prior to applying that payment via bank feeds.

Credit card purchases should generally be accounted for individually via a specific account.  You would record the individual expenses paid via the credit card by using the Pay from Account being that credit card account. When the time comes to make payment you would a separate transaction from the bank account to pay off that credit card account.

For the GST transfer as you are on a payments basis I would still do it the same way that you have been doing.

[TanyaWaight]

Thank you so much for your info Steven.

After using spend & receive money for several years I am just trying to get my head around understanding the purchases / pay bills area of the program.

Kind regards

Tanya