Counting the Euros
Friday, March 14, 2008 @ 10:30 PM
Keeping track of the comings and goings is an absolute nightmare. I have spent the entire day doing accounts; my brain is now so fried you will be lucky to get any sense out of me!! I used to use an excel spreadsheet to keep all my customer accounts up to date, I also had to have another system for all the rental clients so towards the end of last year we decided to invest in a Sage accounting system. We bought the basic Instant Accounts Package, the front cover of the user manual states “bookkeeping made easy” yes if you have a degree in accounting. Double entry journaling, nominal codes, supplier lists and bank reconciliation – it’s like another language – in fact I find Spanish easier!
Our petty cash doesn’t add up so I have to go through all the invoices and find out why – probably misplaced one of the facturas from Carrefour which always seem to hide at the bottom of my bag. You have to be so careful to account for everything you spend and it can easily run away with you if you don’t keep on top of it. Light bulbs, bin bags, welcome pack supplies all need to be put in the system.
The complication arises because we are technically dealing with two lots of customers; you have the rental client and then the owner of the apartment. Both are customers but one has a direct bearing on the other. We have to hold the rental income, deduct services and then pay the owners. Try putting that into Sage! Worst thing is you can’t delete anything once it has gone into the system, so at the moment it looks as though we are dealing with thousands and thousands of euros but that was just us crediting and invoicing the same thing until we managed to suss out where it had to go!
At least all my customer accounts are saying the right thing! We ran a “statement run” today as all the owners need to be kept up to date with their accounts however, I have not been very good at keeping this up, I tend to try and avoid it for as long as possible and then have to spend a full week bringing them all up to date. Needless to say my owners have had statements somewhat erratically in the past. I now have a lady who comes in 3 times a week to input all the invoices/credits in the system, I am hoping once we have all the amounts in the right places that I can forget about this and concentrate on the things I enjoy – like getting the rentals in / marketing and web design.
So the next stage is to check all the statements are right before we email them off, then fingers crossed this will become a monthly event. The only downside is that for some reason the description on the credit line of the statement does not show. It lists all the invoice items but not what the credit is for. This is a mystery to me and also to some others who have posted this on the Sage forum. To date no-one has come forward with an explanation. This means I have to run a rental list alongside so the owners can see which rental weeks have been credited. Have I confused you enough yet!
Well, off to find that missing factura – this is a Spanish invoice which you particularly have to ask for, can’t put any normal receipt in the accounts – no, that would make things far too easy!