Registering a prepaid expense
A prepaid expense comes from a document that was posted to a prepaid account, or you enter it manually. Save it as a draft, check it, and activate it to start the monthly charge.
Open Prepaid Expenses›Prepaid Register and click New Prepaid Expense. The code (PP-00001, PP-00002, …) is filled in for you.
From a posted document
Use this when the payment is already in the books on a prepaid account: a bill, an expense or a journal voucher.
- Under Paid By, keep A posted document.
- Choose the Document type, type its Number and click Find.
- Fiscal lists the document's debits on prepaid accounts, with what is Posted, already Registered as prepaid expenses, and still Available. Click the line you want.
- The branch, vendor, date, prepaid account and amount come from the line. A matching category is picked for you.
- Give it a Name, check the Amount, the Starts On date, the Months and the First Month rule, and the Expense Account.
One line can be split into several prepaid expenses (for example one payment covering rent for two shops), as long as they don't add up to more than the line. Nothing is posted when you activate it, because the document already debited the prepaid account.
For a bill, the line's item must post to the prepaid account: use a service item whose expense account is the prepaid account, for example "Annual insurance".
Entered manually
Choose Enter manually for a prepaid expense that is not on a document in Fiscal.
- Pick the category, branch and vendor, and enter the amount, the Paid On and Starts On dates and the months.
- If part of it was already used before you started with Fiscal, turn on Partly used before using FiscalApp (opening balance) and enter the Used to Date and the month end it is up to.
- If the payment isn't in the books yet, turn on Post the payment when activated (not yet in the books) and choose where it was paid from (bank, cash, the vendor, or opening balance equity). Activating then posts Dr Prepaid / Cr that account. Leave it off when the amount is already on the prepaid account, for example through opening balances.
Save and activate
Save as Draft keeps it editable. Save & Activate creates the monthly schedule and the status becomes Running. After that the amount, dates and accounts can't be edited; use Change Value or Add Value instead (see Changing, extending or ending a prepaid expense). A draft can be deleted.
The start date may be before the payment date, for example when a policy that started in January is paid in February.
The schedule
The Schedule card lists every month with its expense, the amount used so far and what remains, and whether it is posted. On a posted month, the journal icon shows the entry: by default only this prepaid expense's share of the run, with Show all to see the whole run's journal.
When the source document changes
A bill, expense or journal voucher that prepaid expenses were registered from must keep posting at least their amount to the prepaid account. If an edit or a cancellation would leave less, Fiscal refuses it and names the prepaid expenses. Change or end those first.