How to handle advance payments?


In daily life, there are often situations where we advance payments, such as when arranging company trips or business travels. In these cases, individuals usually pay first and then request reimbursement from the company. When seeking reimbursement, it’s necessary to categorize expenses like transportation, accommodation, and receipts.

If these advances and personal expenses are combined in accounting, it may lead to overestimating expenditures, impacting future budget planning. Additionally, until the advances are repaid, it can result in an underestimation of assets, creating a mismatch between expenses and actual circumstances.

While some accounting software offers multiple ledgers to handle advances separately, it still generates discrepancies between expenses, assets, and the actual situation. Moreover, the complexity arises when transferring funds between different ledgers during repayment.

Handling advances in Vision Money is done as follows:

Create an account for advances – “Company Advances,” and set up different advance accounts for various advance recipients.

When there’s an advance, select Transaction -> Transfer” choose the source account, enter the advance amount, and transfer it to the advance account. In the label, directly input the category for this advance.

Reduce the advance in the asset account by transferring it out, and increase the advance in the advance account. Overall assets remain unchanged.

To report the advance, choose “Transfer.” In the transfer options, select the transfer type as “Transfer In,” choose the account as “Advance Payment” and select the label as “All.” The transfer report will aggregate all transactions transferred to the company advances during the specified period, categorized by labels.

When repaying the advance, select “Transaction” -> “Transfer,” choose to transfer out from the “Advance Payment” account to the “Saving Account” account. In the asset account, the company’s advance decreases by the repayment amount, and the repayment account increases by the same amount, with no overall change in assets.