NESFA^® Treasury Procedures: Doing Post-Con Accounting

For the purposes of this procedure, the word convention includes other off-site events such as the Boston Book Festival and on-site events such as Somerville Open Studios.

The post-con accounting process for closing at-con NESFA Sales is done in two steps:

1. Gather all of the receipts for the convention into a big pot.
2. Subtract all of the sales at the convention.

Ideally, when you're done, the result is zero.

1. Use of the the sales suspense accounts LI-Sales n.  There are such accounts already set up for the conventions and other events we commonly sell at.  Choose the appropriate one and make sure it starts with a balance of zero.
2. Accumulate all of the receipts from the convention in the sales suspense account, then
   1. Record the seed cash as a debit to the suspense account.
   2. Deposit any checks received at NESFA Sales (with the exception of Accounts Receivable, see below) recording their total value into the sales suspense account.  It's easiest if all of the convention checks are done in deposits which are separate from other checks.  The deposits are entered as a credit to the suspense account.
   3. Deposit and record the charges likewise.
   4. Record any advance account transactions into the sales suspense account.
   5. Record any cash left over (which includes the cash seed) as a credit. 
3. Do a single receipt for all sales at the convention.
   1. Use the Tasks > Receipts dialog.  Set the date and enter a reference number.
   2. Enter the quantity and total selling price for each book (or other item) on a line in the receipts form.  Do this by filling in quantity and the amount received.  (When using the cash register, this should be trivially easy.)  (An average price per item will be computed, but may be ignored.)  Previously, all Advent books formed a single SKU, but that has been changed, and each book title is now accounted for separately, except for hurt books, which are aggregated together into a different single SKU.
   3. Subtract the amount of subtotal discounts from the cash register report.  These discounts are reported just after * TRANS. * and just before NET1, and appear as (—) and Discount.  Charge these amounts to account SI-Discounts.  (Item discounts and minus-key (—) discounts, which appear just under NET2, should NOT be subtracted — the cash register has already subtracted those from the individual item sales.) 
      N.B.:  Note that SI-Discounts is an income account, although it is NEGATIVE income.  It should have a debit balance, as opposed to normal income, which has a credit balance.
   4. Adjust the tax total to the amount indicated by the cash register sales report.
   5. If all is well, the total on this receipt form will match the total received at the table. 
4. Complete the process by writing off any small balance (it's very difficult to get things exactly balanced, given the chaos at a convention) and by investigating and correcting any larger errors.

Sales to our regular discount resellers at convention sales tables

These sales are handled like normal sales, using the cash register to apply the discount, but there will be no record of such sales in the customer's Peachtree history because the sale becomes part of the one big transaction generated by the cash register item sales report.

Accounts Receivable at convention sales tables

We have, at times, delivered merchandise at the sales table, which is to be invoiced later.  If such an order is taken, it should not be entered into the cash register, and it must be recorded on paper.  That paper, then, must make its way to the order entry clerk's incoming folder on the Sales desk at the clubhouse.  Because it is so easy to lose track of the fact that we have to bill the customer, this kind of order is deprecated. 

Prepaid orders for later delivery at convention sales tables

We have also, at times, accepted payment at the sales table for merchandise to be delivered later with free shipping.  This has generally required Business Meeting approval, and should not be done without advance approval.  Note especially that if such sales are done, it will probably not be possible to look up that order by customer after the fact, because it becomes part of the one big transaction generated by the cash register item sales report.

This page is maintained by Treasurer at NESFA dot org.