WIP Value report not matching WIP account on Balance Sheet


Initial steps:


  1. Close all Jobs that will have no further transactions against them. This should be an on-going process as you complete Jobs.
  2. Post ALL transactions under (GL > Batch Posting) immediately prior to making the comparison. If you don't post ALL transactions then your Balance Sheet numbers cannot be considered reliable/valid.
  3. Run Balance Sheet for today's date (which it should automatically default to). Comparisons should always occur at today's date.


Comparison:


After following the above steps (precisely), if you're still seeing a discrepancy then it's possible there were setup/manual mistakes made. As far as we've seen, the two reports in question should match as long as you've followed the above steps.


Reasons:


Again, these reports should match after following the initial steps above. If not, it's possible that one of the following reasons caused the discrepancy.


  1. Journal Entries may have been entered to affect this GL account. Aside from the possible initial opening balance Journal Entry (that may have been entered during system implementation), no Journal Entries should ever be entered to affect this account.
  2. The initial opening balance Journal Entry may have been incorrect.
  3. The Account Assignments screen could have had this account mis-classified at some point, causing transactions that should not have gone into this account to end up in it, or causing transactions which should have gone into this account to end up somewhere else.


Resolution:


If you have a discrepancy, you should know in advance that it's very difficult to track down precisely what caused the problem. The above list are potential reasons but backtracking to find out exactly when the problem started (or where it came from) is very tough. For this reason, we usually recommend correcting the comparison *as of today's date*. Then, just proceed forward understanding the above reasons so that the mistake doesn't occur again. Here are some steps for resolution.


  1. Make sure your Account Assignments are entirely correct. These are absolutely worth reviewing. Your company accountant should be the one to review these, while verifying them against the Help (F1) definitions of each Account Assignment option. The DBA Sample Company has examples of how we've set ours up. Just be aware that yours may differ slightly. Also, make sure access to this screen is restricted to only users who should really be in it (which should be rare).
  2. Follow the initial steps above (again, precisely). Make a note of the difference amount.
  3. Your company accountant should enter an appropriate (and final) Journal Entry to the WIP GL account to adjust it so that it matches the WIP Value report. The accountant may choose to post the offsetting debit/credit (whichever is applicable to your discrepancy) to the WIP Variance GL account.