Notes tagged
accounts
19 notes on accounts. All notes.
The paper trail a query demands
Years later somebody asks you to substantiate a decision. What survives is a dated record, a named author, an unedited document and proof it was sent.
One builder, many companies, one set of records
A developer runs several legal entities for sound reasons. The cost is operational, and it lands on staff time, shared material and money between accounts.
Cost heads that survive a project
A cost structure is designed for the budget and filled by the invoices. Why heads at the wrong grain fail, and what makes a coding structure last three years.
Getting paid on time, from the contractor's side
A correct bill can still sit unpaid for weeks. There are only four places it stops, and knowing which one you are in changes what you should ask.
Month-end at a builder's accounts desk
The last four days of a month at a developer's accounts department, what must be true before the books close, and why it is always a scramble.
When your ledger and theirs disagree
Balance confirmations never agree the first time. Reconcile events rather than totals, classify every difference by cause, and the argument becomes arithmetic.
Three-way matching, and the case it always misses
Order, receipt, invoice. Hold the three against each other before you pay. The method is simple; the failures are all in the cases nobody enumerated.
The unit of measure is where the money leaks
A rate agreed per tonne and invoiced per quintal is a factor of ten, and it looks like an ordinary line. Units are the quietest expensive error in purchasing.
Physical stock against book stock
Stock reconciliation is a comparison between what your records claim and what is actually on the ground. The variance is not the finding. The pattern is.
Retention money is a balance, not a memory
Retention is money you have earned, been billed for, and not been paid. It is held against defects and released later, and most people track it in their heads.
Running account bills, and what "running" means
An RA bill is cumulative. Each one restates the whole job to date and subtracts what was already certified, which is why the arithmetic confuses everyone.
A mobilisation advance is not an advance payment
One is a loan against future work, recovered from every bill. The other is a payment made early. Booking them the same way is how advances get paid twice.
Set-off, and what it costs you to use it
Netting what you owe against what you are owed is quick and tempting. It also collapses two records into one and removes the evidence for both.
Reconciling a vendor bill against what actually arrived
A vendor's invoice is a claim, not a fact. Checking it is a five-step comparison, and four of the five steps fail for reasons that are not the vendor's fault.
TDS on construction payments, explained as a mechanism
Tax deducted at source moves a slice of a payment from the payer to the government on the payee's behalf. Understanding the mechanism prevents most of the errors.
Input tax credit, and why your vendor's filing is your problem
GST credit lets you offset tax paid on purchases against tax you collect. The conditions attached to it are what make vendor discipline a finance function.
Matching a bank line to the thing it paid for
A bank statement gives a date, an amount and a scrap of text. Turning that into "this paid that invoice" is a guess, and the rules around the guess matter.
Writing off money that is never coming
A write-off is a decision, not a correction. The amount matters less than the reason, and the reason is the first thing most systems throw away.
Append-only: why a correction should never overwrite
A record that can be edited answers only today's question. Adding a correcting entry instead costs one row and keeps the history that makes the number defensible.