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Wayan Tin Maung Win
Level 1

Is it Okay showing A/R, Wages, Operation Expens Payable Accounts in Negative Balances?

Hi Everyone!

Greetings from Share Mercy, Non-profit in Myanmar.  I am Wayan, Secretary General of the agency.

We purchased QB since 2017 and there is no one qualified to delegat to access and apply to it.  So, we stopped for some years and recently I re-vitalized our QB database from the beginning.  I am also QB, Learning-by-doing user.

I have some questions.

The guy named 'Jack' owed us Ks. 1,150,000 for his commitment to make revolving fund and he was not able to implement it.  I put this amount in Accounts Receivable and it shows as the Negative Balance (1,150,000), is it no problem or not?

Besides that A/R account, there are other four accounts also appeared to be the Negative Balances

They are: _

1) our organization owed some staff, saving money, as we were not able to pay due to pandemic _ and the amount is still in our hand, when I recorded as 'Wages & Payroll Taxes', it also shows as Negative Balance. 

2) Some staffs took loans Ks. 45,880,000 from us and after we recorded them, it appeared in Negative Balance, too.

3) Thirdly, we have to transport some office stuff and have to pay Ks. 25,000, when I recorded as 'Operation Expense Payable', it also shows in Negative Balance and it has not yet paid out to the transport service.

4) Under Equity, 'Transfer to Unrestricted A/C' also shows as in Negative Balance, -24,677,720.

Are they okay?

Can someone explain to me, please?

Regards,

William a.c. Wayan 

1 Comment 1
BigRedConsulting
Community Champion

Is it Okay showing A/R, Wages, Operation Expens Payable Accounts in Negative Balances?

No one here can really answer the question "is it OK"?  Certainly, QuickBooks doesn't care. This isn't a sign of a corrupted file, for example.  Any account type can have a positive or negative balance.

 

The balances are simply a sum of the data recorded in the accounts.  It is unusual to have negative balances for AR and AP, since that means for AP that you've paid out more than you've been billed, and for AR that you've received more money than you have billed others.

 

Data entry errors can result in such balances.  For example, if the bookkeeper records customer Payments for money received, but there are no invoices in AR to apply the payments to, eventually the AR account balance will become negative. If the customers weren't invoiced in the first place, and so the money received isn't a result of being billed, then recording money coming in as Payment type transactions is very-probably a mistake.

 

All this noted, only you can really know if your books are correct or not - if they reflect your business operations accurately.

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