My trade debtors balance in the balance sheet doesn't match the total balance shown on the aged debtors report

I am Alison’s accountant. I am working at Alison’s office to help her straighten out the company’s sales ledger but I have noticed the total balance of all of the customers accounts doesn’t agree to the nominal ledger. The difference is £5,973.08 (customer accounts exceed nominal ledger balance). I have added the first two columns from the aged debtors report (NOT YET DUE + TOTAL OVERDUE) and deducted the third column (CREDIT) to compare totals. I have tested a couple of accounts using the above formula and they agree. I have reviewed the nominal ledger report for the debtors control account since the date the company started to use Quickfile and I cant find anything other than sales invoices and sales receipts etc. there are no manual journals and no opening balances to reconcile. From what I can see the nominal ledger account for trade debtors is a system account and so shouldn’t include any transactions other than those going through the customers’ personal accounts so why is there a difference?
Anthony

I’m not sure about the debtors side, but in the equivalent creditors report I’ve noticed it only includes suppliers that have at least one outstanding invoice. In particular it doesn’t include suppliers with credit held on account but no invoices outstanding. If this is the same on the debtors side it might explain the discrepancy.

The ageing reports show the current position, any comparison with the balance sheet or trial balance would first need to be set to today’s date in order to compare like for like.

As @ian_roberts mentions, the ageing reports also don’t include any payments held on account, only aged invoices. You can quickly isolate all your payments on account within the client overview screen. Pop open the advanced search box and tick the option to show all credits.

Now order your results by credit balance.

If you total up the figures in the credit column you should get a figure that matches the difference.

You can also use the historic invoice report, which allows you to see point in time debtors/creditors and it will break down the prepayments separately for you.

Thank you Glenn and Ian for your prompt replies. I had already checked that the dates coincided and that the credit column was factored into my aged debtors total so I suspect the difference could be accounts with only credit balances and no outstanding invoices. I will look through the sales ledger to test this, If that is the case could the aged debtors report be modified to include all balances? As an accountant that’s how I would expect it to work.

No problem!

I assumed we’d included credit balances on the ageing reports some time back and having now just checked I can see they are present.

One thing that may cause some confusion here is if the client does not have any outstanding invoices, then there will be no row on this report and consequently no credit balance shown, even though they may have one but minus any outstanding invoices.

The full list of clients with credit balances can still be isolated in the main client list. We’ll consider changing the ageing report to include this too, time permitting.

Hi I have similar problem. When I run Historical Sales report it gives me a list of outstanding invoices £3,747.50 however trade debtors balance is £2,262.50.

Below the invoices there is also additional info with 1100 balance being TB amount and also BANK, showing £1,300. Journal shows Nil. I am not sure how to read this BANK information and how to establish why Trade Debtors is off by £1,485. Also in Client Management window, with credits ticked, I can only see the same balances as per Historical Sales.

Daniel

Hi @Daniel_Jaworski

I’ve taken a quick look at your account for you.

The ‘Bank’ label refers to something that’s been tagged to nominal 1100 by using the “Something else not on the list” option while tagging it.

There was a slight issue on the account with one invoice which was spotted while taking a look, and this has now been corrected. Everything should now balance all OK.

You end up with 3747.50 being outstanding, but as 1300.00 has been allocated via the tagging option as mentioned above, the balance of 1100 is reduced by 1300.00

Thank you for that. It is now agreeing.

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My Balance Sheet Trade Debtor figure is not correct and this appears now to be a historic problem. The Balance is lower than trade debtors I have. It also appears that an item was not included last year and that this was shown in the "TransCredit’ column rather than the balance sheet.

I am totally confused and do not know where to start to find where this issue stems from?

Hi @artrefuge

Just to confirm - the figure on your balance sheet for your debtors account (1100) is lower than your debtors report?

I’m not sure what you’re referring to here I’m afraid?

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