I know this has been discussed before but I'm looking for new ideas for handling credit card payables (transactions we charge to credit cards). We use the Job Cost module for tracking jobs, and AP for vendor invoices. Our goal is to make this as simple a process as possible (the economy has forced us to cut staff, therefore our time is limited) and accurate for our financial statements.
For my example, I will use "AMEX". We use AMEX for the following "types" of charges:
A. Any charges that are charged to the credit card, either over the telephone or online that are to be applied to the cost of a job. We do not have credit terms with these vendors and they are used VERY infrequently, sometimes only once. They are not entered in AP as vendors and we don't need to track them that way. When we receive the AMEX statement, they are applied to the job at that time - and in the description we put who the charge was made to. We cant therefore track the costs in JC this way.
B. Charges that are put on our credit card that can be applied to various G/L accounts, and not to jobs, depending on what the charge is for. Ex: Staples charges are applied to our office supplies GL. We do not care if all office supplies are tracked by specific supplier and they do not get put in AP. They are entered when I get our AMEX statement and put to the correct GL code.
C. Vendor Invoices that we have terms with. The vendor invoices are entered as they come in - into AP. They are applied to a job, or to the proper G/L code (sometimes stock)in AP. We rarely pay these vendors by credit card until 30-45 days after the invoice is entered into AP. When we receive the AMEX statement, they are entered to a specific G/L code (credit card payables) as part of the AMEX invoice. We then create "manual" checks for only these invoices, coded to the same G/L code as entered when we put them to the AMEX statement in AP.

Our accountant found at the end of the year that we had double payables in our financial statement. Some charges were in our payables GL and the same charges were in the GL "credit card payables" account.

I can't set up vendors for all charges to our AMEX (and other credit cards) because there are so many "one-offs" that the time to do so, and then create the manual checks to get them off the books and shown as paid would be too time consuming.

I'm hoping someone has come up with a simple, easy way to enter these. I need to do them correctly for our books, and in a way that does not take an employee extra time that we just don't have.

Thank you in advance,
Karen

Sorry to add this, but I typed incorrectly. We CAN track the job costs by entering the AMEX cost to a specific job - in the JC moduele.

One method to handle the one-of vendors is to create a vendor in Payables called, for example, MISC. Credit cards can be set up as 'Banks', where each credit card is represented by a 'Bank'. Paying these vendors using credit cards is as simple as paying by check. The check number would be the authorization number for the credit card transaction. It makes it even easier when using BankRec, as payments made to the credit cards can be made through BankRec as a 'transfer' from your operating account to the Credit card account. I have used this method in a variety of cases.

Karen
I think Brian Stief has the answer for you, and I let him know about your inquiry.

I'm anxious to hear Brian's suggestions.
Thank you!

Hi Karen,
This may be your lucky day.

We, in our new company Link2 Systems, have recently developed and released a new product called Link2 Points, that is now operational in many sites.

Link2 Points(tm) was developed to meet the needs of Buying Group(s) processing, and hugely simplify the processing of paying vendor invoices with credit cards. Ultimately, to then maximize the loyalty points programs benefits and points by paying more and more vendors by credit cards. We see paying trade vendors by credit card as a definite growing trend.

We consider VISA, AMEX, MasterCard as a buying group where you use them as payment vendors, to pay other (source invoice (as many as you want) vendors, on a consolidated cheque, using the existing Adagio manual cheques or system cheques as a routine process.

Link2 Points maintains complete audit trail for processing the originating invoice as you would normally enter (and post to payables and/or Job Costing) but uses the configuration of the Link2 Points solution to select within Adagio Payables and transfer the invoices from the source vendor(s) to the payment vendor, and process the payment for say AMEX as a normal vendor payment, where all of the invoices being paid by credit card (say AMEX) are listed on the payment stub, for easy reconciliation.

If you are using Adagio BankRec, and making credit card payments on-line, you can also connect back to the Credit Card vendor in Adagio Payables, to pay the selected invoices that match up to amount being paid on-line.

Terms on the originating invoices, transfer to payment vendor so if discounts would normally apply, then they will also be taken as well with the subsequent credit card vendor payment.

Please call us, and we can connect and drop in a demo version that you can test out or use on your live data (assuming you are version AP 8.0 and higher). You can purchase from your Adagio dealer for $1500 including, 15 months software upgrade maintenance. Installation and training is less than an hour.

Best,
Brian

Brian,

I'm sure your new product is great, but we're not in a position to purchase additional modules at this time. I'm trying to work within the numerous ones we already own.

Thank you though, and I'm certain there will be others who will be in a better position to utilize Link2Points.

Karen

Lars' suggestion is viable. For example, you can use AP and set up each credit card as an individual bank. If actual vendors might be paid using more than one type of credit card, you wouldn't want to have the 'Include bank with control account set' option turned on in the Company Profile. All credit card transactions would use the appropriate credit card bank.

Those vendors that you don't want to have set up, can be paid using Cash Invoices in Manual Check batches. You don't have to use a Vendor code and you can enter the particular miscellaneous vendor name with the transaction.

You can use AP Check Reconciliation or BankRec bank reconciliation to reconcile the amounts of the actual payments made for each credit card statement and could print the report to use as your audit trail. If BankRec is in use, you can use the Transfer function to transfer the amount being paid from the regular bank to pay the credit card bank.

It may be best to work through the exact set up details with your Adagio consultant though. There may be other considerations for your particular site and they would be most familiar with them.