AP or AR Accruals

This is a little trick that we've found useful to:

1. shorten AP check stubs that were many pages long
2. allow pre-processing of AR checks that settle against many invoices

AR
We had the situation where we were receiving advance notice of a payment coming from a customer (this could be useful for EDI, etc).  For us, the checks settle against lots of invoices - often in the thousands - and we wanted to do the work of settling the payment against the proper invoices ahead of time so that when the check actually arrived, it was quick to process.

We did this by creating Payment Journal 'accrual' transaction where there is a debit and credit canceled each other out. The offset account is arbitrary because the transaction just goes in and out.  In the example below, you can see two anticipated checks represented.  Note that the journal balance is 0 - no net effect.

Use the Function, Settlement button to settle one side of the transactions against the open invoices that will be paid.  This leaves a single open transaction to settle against when the check actually arrives.  (Alternatively, you can use the open transaction editing screen to do the settlement against the invoices)

AP
On the AP side, we've used this method to handle the situation where a check is paying for many AP invoices.  In this case the problem was that the check stubs were very long and caused many checks to be voided so that all the invoice lines could be printed.  We solved this by entering an 'accrual' Invoice Journal transaction and settling it against the many invoices.  Then the other side of the transaction is settle against by the Payment Journal and only one line shows on the check stub.