Troubleshooting NEOSYS Agency System
Resolving unexpected entries in the Financial Ledger Accounts
Basic accounting theory says that if you have a query about an entry in an account, you look at the voucher that caused the entry since this will show you the other side of the entry.
All accounting vouchers generated by NEOSYS Agency System have corresponding entries in the List of Invoices report and Audit Invoices report so there is no doubt about what caused specific entries.
Until you have tracked the ledger account entry all the way back to the List of Invoices report then you do not have sufficient information to troubleshoot entries.
Resolving discrepancies between the standard Billing Analysis Reports and P&L Revenue A/cs
The billing analysis reports of NEOSYS are designed to analyse the income and costs in many ways (by client, supplier, market, type, sales executive etc. and in any combination) whereas the financial chart of accounts can only analyse the P&L in one fixed way - usually by type of income eg Press, TV etc for media and much more varied for non-media jobs.
Quick Reconciliation
The quickest way to reconcile any differences is to get the standard Billing Analysis report "BY ACCOUNT NUMBER" because this shows a break-down of the total in a comparable way.
Run the following commands in maintenance mode to get an idea of what is present in the analysis file:
FIND ANALYSIS XYZ LIST ANALYSIS
where XYZ is the media/job type code. This will generate a document containing all the analysis codes associated with that particular media/job type code, and corresponding Billings and Costs.
Additional or Missing Accounts
This is the commonest reason for discrepancy and is more an explanation rather than a problem that has to be solved.
Authorised finance users can insert additional income or cost related accounts in the P&L section. Therefore the *total* of the P&L section may not agree with the *total* of the billing analysis reports. By "additional income or cost related accounts" we mean accounts that are not linked to the NEOSYS billing modules ... and therefore do not have the analysis code on any postings to them ... and therefore are not included in the standard NEOSYS billing analysis reports.
Alternatively, some of the accounts that are related to NEOSYS billing module could be positioned or moved outside the income and cost section of the P&L. Therefore these accounts would be missing from total of the Bill/Cost section of the P&L whereas they would not be missed in the standard billing analysis report total.
Reconciling other reasons
Apart from additional or missing accounts discussed above, the standard NEOSYS billing analysis report totals should exactly match the turnover according to the NEOSYS P&L statement because of the following two facts imposed in NEOSYS.
- The reports are based *exactly and only* on posted journal lines which have billing analysis code entered.
- NEOSYS requires that analysis code is *always and only* entered on postings to the specific P&L accounts that are linked to billing types in the NEOSYS billing modules.
As already mentioned, to reconcile and track down the cause of any perceived discrepancies you need to run the Billing Analysis By A/c report because this report shows the billing analysis one for one with the P&L accounts.
You should run the comparison for individual months because any discrepancy is usually only in specific months.
Adding/Removing/Changing Billing Account Configuration
Mismatch between billing analysis and P&L can be caused by changing Media/Job Type File account number after billings have been made and posted.
After postings have been made (with analysis codes) the account number could be removed from the billing module (Media/Job Type File).
An account number that already has postings (without analysis code) could be added to the billing module configuration (Media/Job Type File).
Checking if this is the case:
To verify if this is the case run CHK.VOUCHERS procedure in maintenance mode. It checks the following:
- all postings to billing analysis accounts have analysis codes and therefore appear in billing analysis.
- all postings to none-billing analysis accounts DO NOT have analysis codes and therefore
Fixing this case:
Any vouchers which are discovered by CHK.VOUCHERS to be missing analysis codes (or to have analysis codes but should not) can have analysis codes added or removed in Voucher File on Finance menu.
Software Error
This always possible but unlikely and rarely observed so best to check the above first rigorously.
Resolving discrepancies between custom Billing Analysis (based on invoices) and P&L Revenue A/cs
Custom NEOSYS billing analysis based on media/job invoices raised may NOT match the turnover according to the NEOSYS P&L statement for the following reasons:
- You make any manual postings into the P&L Income or Cost accounts
- You modify, or delete, or simply don't post the invoice journals generated by NEOSYS
- Incorrect configuration of income and cost accounts on the Media/Job Types File.
- Error in the NEOSYS software
To track down the cause of any discrepancies you need to:
- Take the NEOSYS List of Invoices report and verify that its totals agree with your custom Billing Analysis report based on invoices raised. If they do not, see the section "Resolving discrepancies between Billing Reports and List of Invoices Reports".
- Reconcile the NEOSYS entries in the List of Invoices with the detailed ledger accounts one by one with the entries in the P&L income and costs accounts. Using "Account Analysis" in Financial Reports menu to analyse (subtotal) the income and cost accounts "By contra A/c" (i.e. client account) may help to narrow the reconciliation task to individual clients.
Why doesn’t the billing analysis for a particular client agree with the billings shown in the client’s ledger account?
The billing analysis (actual billings) is entirely and only based on the entries in the income and costs accounts. This ensures that the billing analysis is always in agreement with the Profit and Loss Statement.
Although in most cases the entries in the income and cost accounts are one to one with entries in the client and supplier accounts it is possible to post income or costs journals or other entries which have no corresponding entry in the client/supplier accounts. Therefore the billing analysis (and, by extension, the profit and loss) may not always be in precise agreement with the total billings/costs recorded in the client/supplier accounts. In other words it is to be expected.
The way to check the billing analysis report for a particular client is not to check the client accounts but to check the income accounts as follows:
Take a detailed ledger account for all the income accounts for the period in question and then total up all the entries which refer to the client in question by looking at the analysis columns which show on the right hand side of all accounts for income and cost accounts. The total of the entries for the client will definitely agree with the billing analysis if NEOSYS is correctly configured and you have not skipped any income accounts.
Resolving descrepancies between Billing Reports and List of Invoices Reports
The standard NEOSYS Billing Analysis Reports will not always agree with the List of Invoices reports because since lately it picks up the figures from the vouchers and not the invoices.
If you need to run a Billing Analysis as per the invoices as in the Media/Job then the period in the Media/Job Configuration File > Billing Analysis should be a future one - so you need to enter a future period here to allow this to match and change it back to the current one later. Hopefully there will be a way to select either By Invoice or/and By Voucher specifically so that you can have a billing analysis with both the figures and compare any discrepancies.
At a minimum compare the following reports:
- List of Invoices: "By Client" option
- Billing Analysis: Billings By Client. Select either "Media Only" or "Non-Media Only" depending on which List of Invoices you are comparing.
- Billing Analysis: Margin by Client (ditto)
Notes:
- You will have to do this for Media and Non-Media separately as there is no combined List of Invoice option.
- Use the standard NEOSYS built-in billing analysis reports. Do not use custom reports.
- Compare the total for all client for a whole year initially and only examine particular months and clients to further locate any discrepancies.
- Errors in custom billing analysis reports should be assumed to be errors in their design unless the standard billing analysis reports also show wrong figures.
After locating and fixing the original problem, CREATEANALYSIS will regenerate the ANALYSIS file (on which the Billing Reports are generated) from the invoices and other files.
Generally there is no need to rerun CREATEANALYSIS more than once unless some time has passed since you last ran it and/or you fear server crashes have occurred since it was last run. You can always redo it as a last resort but it is unlikely to fix things if it didnt fix them recently. Running CREATEANALYSIS will rarely but sometimes fix software errors which can occur anytime of course.
F5 CREATEANALYSIS Enter year (upto 3 years back or depends on the clients need) Enter ALL
Can users compare totals of financial reports with totals of List of invoices?
Financials are not based on invoices they are based on vouchers posted. If they want to verify the list of invoices they can match them one by one with vouchers posted. There is no other way since each invoice makes complex postings.
NEOSYS staff can suggest other reports like billing anlaysis report.
