Down Payment Accounts

Question

Hi everybody,
following up to my thread "G/L Account Determination - meaning of accounts" I precise my question regarding the down payment accounts in this separate thread.
I've made several simulations of Down Payment Processes on a demo database (using Down Payment Requests as well as Down Payment Invoices). In order to understand the automatic journal entries created by this two operations together with the posting of incoming payments I recognized that the system only used the Down Payment Clearing Account and the Down Payment Interim Account (taken from the customer's master data) but never used the Down Payment Receivables. My question is under which circumstances the system needs the Down Payment Receivables.
My second question concerning this is:
Down Payment Tax Offset Account (Is it a separate tax account for Down Payments - If so It can be theoretically the same account that will be used for output taxes on conventional A/R invoices?)
Thank you for your help and best regards
Greg
Edited by: gregAT on Feb 16, 2012 6:52 PM

Answer 1

Hi Greg,
In USA localization, they don't have this account (Gordon already point this out).
In Indonesia here, we always use Australia / NZ localization and regarding this down payment receivable, we also have this option in Australia / NZ localization. I also have database with Singapore localization, and they have this option also.
Now, as far as I know, no document posted that will automatically result in journal entry posting to this account. If you're wondering then why this option exist at first place, the answer is this : based on my experience, not every setting in SAP B1 had an impact pertaining to automatic journal. Some of the account setting only serve as a field to contain information, not necessarily related to automatic journal.
That being said, personally I think this field existed to stored the information if you want to maintain control account for down payment invoice based on this particular customer
Let me give you an example:
You have customer = C001 - ABC Company
You set the Account Receivable (in tab Accounting) = 113001 - Trade Receivables
You set the Control Account - Down Payment Receivable (also in tab Accounting) = 113009 - Receivables Down Payment
You set the Down Payment Clearing Account = 253001 - Advance Sales
If you create an A/R Invoice, the following journal should created:
Dr. 113001 - Trade Receivables
Cr. 241001 - Tax Payable
Cr. 411001 - Revenue
As you can see, above action will result in posting to 113001, as your setting of Account Receivable.
Now, if you create an A/R Down Payment Invoice, the following journal should created:
Dr. 113001 - Trade Receivables
Cr. 241001 - Tax Payable
Cr. 253001 - Advance Sales
As you can see, SAP still post the A/R to 113001. However, if you want to separate the receivable created from A/R Invoice from A/R Down Payment Invoice for particular customer, you could change the account from "Accounting" tab in A/R Down Payment Invoice document, "Control Account" field. There you can amend the control account to 113009 for instance.
Therefore, your journal posting of the down payment invoice should be like this:
Dr. 113009 - Receivables Down Payment
Cr. 241001 - Tax Payable
Cr. 253001 - Advance Sales
Don't ask me why we still need to amend this manually if we already set the control account in business partner master data
Maybe in future version we could post to this control account if we already set it in customer master data. But, for this moment, it only contain the account information with no impact of automatic posting.
Best Regards,
Hendry Wijaya