[kbadeaux]

Hi, I am new to Blackbaud, actually we are setting up the software. One of the reasons we chose Blackbaud is that we would be able to enter a separate transaction description line for each account entered on a multiple account invoice such as a corporate credit card. It appears that there was a misunderstanding on the part of the Blackbaud employees when we asked them this question prior to purchasing the software because they said yes but today in training, we were told no there isn't a separate trasaction description line that you can enter information on in the G/L Distribution tab on the A/P Invoice record.

We are looking for a way of typing in a description of what was purchased. Is there a way of adding a field that you can manually enter information and have that information show up on the reports? How do you handle this problem when you have an invoice like a corporate credit card that is used to make purchases for several departments and you want to list what was purchased and have it shown in the G/L Account Detail?

Thanks for any help that can be given my way!

Kathleen

[JeffMon]

Hi Kathleen,

I do wish there was a reference field on the Invoice distribution! Or, even better, line items on an invoice. Without those, I can only think of two workarounds:

1) Use attributes on the distribution to indicate what each was for (see pic below)

2) If you have the Purchase Orders module (which I recommend), create a PO with your line items then pay it with your invoice. This trick works for credit card bills as well.

Good luck!

Jeff

[kbadeaux]

Thanks Jeff. We didn't purchase the PO module and we ended up adding the transaction attribute to help with the purchase description. I sure hope that Blackbaud does add a separate reference/description line in the future.

[slogan]

Kathleen,

We do in the Account Distribution Tab. We create a separate line for item, and then we use a transaction code named "description" to enter a description.

Steven Logan
Director of Information Technology
Mount Paran Christian School

[Anne]

Hi,
I have the same problem and think what I will do is under my credit card Vendor name, I will enter an invoice for each transaction I wish to track. I will then use the invoice number tab of my invoice to describe the transaction (I personally want to know the name of the actual vendor like Office Depot or American Airlines so that's what I'll write in the invoice number but it works for departments too). Since the invoice number appears right next to the vendor name in GL, I will then see both in my GL expense account. I also thought of another way which is a little more tricky and I would first check with my auditor that it's OK with him but I could also enter a single invoice for the monthly statement and charge it to a transfer account in AP. Then on the GL side, I would enter an adjusting journal entry to credit my transfer account, debit my individual expense accounts and write the description in the Journal Reference column of the batch. The draw back is that you can't track the expense accounts in AP but only in GL. Anyway, hope this helps.
Anne

[kbadeaux]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anne

Hi,
I have the same problem and think what I will do is under my credit card Vendor name, I will enter an invoice for each transaction I wish to track. I will then use the invoice number tab of my invoice to describe the transaction (I personally want to know the name of the actual vendor like Office Depot or American Airlines so that's what I'll write in the invoice number but it works for departments too). Since the invoice number appears right next to the vendor name in GL, I will then see both in my GL expense account. I also thought of another way which is a little more tricky and I would first check with my auditor that it's OK with him but I could also enter a single invoice for the monthly statement and charge it to a transfer account in AP. Then on the GL side, I would enter an adjusting journal entry to credit my transfer account, debit my individual expense accounts and write the description in the Journal Reference column of the batch. The draw back is that you can't track the expense accounts in AP but only in GL. Anyway, hope this helps.
Anne

We thought of doing it that way as well but it's a lot more data entry to go and enter each charge as a separate invoice. What we did do was add a transaction attribute that is mandatory for certain accounts and depending on the account, the descriptions are "canned". It adds more information to the entry, the trick is to customize a report that will display the attribute information.