3.2 Purchase to Payment Process: Supply & Finance Links.

Finance User Manual ENG -> 3. Payments -> 3.2 Purchase to Payment Process: Supply&Finance Links.

LUFI-30201 Purchase Order: Step One in the Purchase Process

LUFI-30202 Commitment Vouchers: Step Two in the Purchase Process

LUFI-30203 Confirmation of Goods: Step Three in the Purchase Process

LUFI-30204 Supplier Invoices: Step Four in the Purchase Process

LUFI-30205 Supplier Invoices Manually Created by Finance

LUFI-30206 Supplier Invoices and VAT

LUFI-30207 Supplier Invoice Payment: Step Five in the Purchase Process

INTRODUCTION TO PURCHASE TO PAYMENT PROCESS: SUPPLY & FINANCE LINKS

Purchase to Payment Process: Supply & Finance Links.

UniField integrates the ordering/procurement/supply/warehouse processes managed by the Logistics department with the budgeting/payment/financial management processes performed by the Finance department. This all-in-one program provides better transparency between the two departments and views the ordering to cash process as one.

The below figure summarizes the workflow between Supply and Finance in UniField at the time of placing a regular order to an external partner.

A regular type of Purchase Order with external partner and its impact on Finance

The purchase process may contain additional steps prior to the Purchase Order creation. As they do not impact Finance, we will detail the Order to cash process in UniField starting from the Purchase Order:

  1. SUPPLY: Purchase order is created and validated in the Purchase Module after assigning an accounting code (automatic with the product selection) and an analytical distribution. For further information: LUFI-30201 Purchase Order: Step One in the Purchase Process.
  2. FINANCE: Commitment Voucher is automatically created in the Accounting module. Finance to validate. For further information: LUFI-30202 Commitment Vouchers: Step Two in the Purchase Process.
  3. SUPPLY: Arrival of Goods confirmed in the warehouse module. For further information:   LUFI-30203 Confirmation of Goods: Step Three in the Purchase Process.
  4. FINANCE: Supplier Invoice is automatically created by UniField. Supplier Invoice confirmed and validated by Finance. It sets the related Commitment Voucher to done and books the expenses and the debt in the journals. For further information: LUFI-30204 Supplier Invoices: Step Four in the Purchase Process.
  5. FINANCE: Payment done by importing the Supplier invoice into the register by Finance. For further information: LUFI-30205 Supplier Invoices manually created by Finance

3.1 CHAPTER OVERVIEW: PAYMENTS.

Finance User Manual ENG -> 3. Payments -> 3.1 CHAPTER OVERVIEW: Payments

3.1 CHAPTER OVERVIEW

UniField operates under the basic principles of double-entry bookkeeping system moving MSF closer to international accounting standards. For example, when a supplier invoice is sent to MSF after the goods have been ordered and finally received in stock, the expense is booked with its counterpart set as a MSF debt to the external supplier and before any money actually leaves a MSF cash, cheque or bank account.

The following example shows what happens in the journals when the supply team creates a purchase order for Paper in account “61220 – Supplies, stationery and other consumables”. After the supply team confirms the goods have arrived in the warehouse module, UniField automatically creates a supplier invoice.

When the finance team validates this supplier invoice, UniField automatically creates two entries in the journals:

  • Debit to the expense account “61220 – Supplies, stationery and other consumables”
  • Credit to the “30020 – Trade Payables” to show a debt owed to the supplier

Journal Entries once a supplier invoice is validated

When Finance makes the payment, they import the supplier invoice into a register. In the journals UniField automatically:

  • Debits the account “30020 Trade Payables” to cancel the debt owed to the supplier because MSF no longer owes anything to this supplier. This entry is automatically reconciled with the original 30020 entry.
  • Credits the “10100 – Cash at Hand, 10200 – Cash at Bank, or 10210 – Outstanding Cheques” depending on which payment means was used. This entry automatically reduces the balance of the register.

Journal Entries once a supplier invoice is paid in cash. The register line is hardposted

In the Register, only one line is created for the one payment made to the Supplier

The purchase process and link with payment as well as the link between registers and journals will be explained in greater details in this chapter.

We will also see how to manage the register entries according to their state and finally address how to handle different kinds of payments such as direct entries, internal transfer, operational advances, and payments between missions and sections.

After completing the reading of this chapter you will be able to:

  1. Understand the link between finance and supply and documents generated in the purchase process
  2. Manage supplier invoices
  3. Manage direct entries and direct invoices in the registers
  4. Post entries in the journals
  5. Manage specific payments such as advances to suppliers and employees, as well as intermission and intersection payments

LUFI-20102 Accounting Period Opening

LUFI-20102 Accounting Period Opening

LU Introduction

After the Headquarters instance has synched the fiscal year downwards, coordinations and projects can change the periods from {Draft} to {Open}.

It is possible to open a period when the previous period is {Draft} or {Open}. This allows you to enter financial transactions for the new period while the closing of the previous period may still be in process.

However you will not be able to close a period if the previous one is {Open} or {Draft}. For instance, if you start using UniField in May, you will open the May period and leave the previous period {Draft}. When you will close May, you will have to open the previous periods and close them before closing May.

How to Open an Accounting Period

Go to Accounting/Configuration/Financial Accounting/Periods/Periods

Click on the green arrow to open the relevant accounting period. In the below example, we want to open January 2017.


Green Arrow to select to open January 2017

Form view of the period January 2017 display the state {Open}

LUFI-40105 J-L: How to Reconcile and Settle National Staff Salaries Advance

LUFI-40105_J-L:

J. How to Reconcile and Settle National Staff Salaries Advance

(Reconciliation is explained in greater details in Chapter 5 – LU50302)

At the end of each month you must reconcile the staff salary advance with the end of month salary payment and the total amount imported via the Homere file. In order to reconcile the account, the advance entry must be hard posted.

Go to Accounting/Journal Entries/Journal Items

  1. To find your entries in the {Account} field, enter the account {13210} and {Search}.
  2. Once the entries are retrieved, check the checkboxes of the entries on account {13210} and select {Reconcile Entries} in the Actions menu.

Selected unreconciled entries to reconcile using the Reconcile Entries Action

 

If you have created one salary advance entry per employee, then the reconciliation on the salary advance for national staff account is performed on more than two (2) entries.

A manual reconciliation is required for salary advances. An automatic reconciliation takes place for the end of month salary payments when the pending payments button has been used.

Entries created via the Homere import are in the HR journals.

Reconciled entries for 13210 Advances on salaries of national staff – all employees

K. Payroll for Missions Not Using Homere

For those missions not using Homere there are various options to record payroll. One option includes:

  1. Manually encoding the global salary booking directly in Journal entries on the debit side. There should be no link to a third party.
  2. The counterpart entries (social security, taxes, pensions, salary advances, Salary to pay…) can also be manually encoded in the Journal Entries each month on the credit side.
  3. The booking of the payment is done in the appropriate register. After hard posting the register entries, the credit and debit can be manually reconciled in the journals.

J. Employees’ Payment Methods

How to create payment methods:

  • From HQ only: Human resources / Configuration / Human resources / Payment methods / {New}

  • Currently 3 payment methods in all OCs : CHQ, ESP (Cash) and VIR ( by bank transfer).

 

  • Sync from HQ to all instances.
  • The payment method is filled in Homere for each employee and UniField retrieve it in the Per-mois staff.csv file. It updates the employee form with the following information: Payment Method, Bank Name and Bank Account Number.

How to generate the “Payment Orders” report:

  • In Accounting/Payroll/Payroll entries in the windows action menu.

  • Wizard: choose the payment method and the period.

  • The report is actually kind of Employee Balance report. The pdf report show the Employee name, Employee ID, Bank name, Bank Account Number, Net to Pay and Currency. The Net to Pay amount is calculated by employee for the payable and receivable accounts that are used in system for HR entries and where the third party is an employee. Note: the amounts are taken from all unreconciled entries on these accounts, no matter if they originate from HR journal or not.

LUFI-40105 I: How to Import Salary Payments into a Register

LUFI-40105_I: How to Import Salary Payments into a Register

The validation of payroll entries recognizes expenses and payable amounts. Mid month salary advances have already been paid via the registers. The end of month net to pay salary amount is still to pay and has not physically impacted your cash or bank balance until you record the payment directly in your registers.

If you made any mid-month salary advance payments, you should have recognized money that was paid from your liquidity account by manually creating an entry in the register (1 register entry could consolidate the payment of salary advances for several employees). Regarding the payable entries remaining to pay at the time of importing the payroll (e.g.: net to pay salary dispersed at the end of the month, social contributions, taxes, etc.), UniField allows you to import these expenses into your registers.

Go to Accounting/Registers

    1. Open the register the payments were made from.
    2. Select the {Pending Payments} button.

Pending Payments button to import A/P entries

    1. In the {Import invoice} window, select and in the {Search Account Entry Line}, select the relevant A/P (only the entries you will pay at this time). Depending on your payroll import file, you will see:

  • 30200 – Social Security Entries. Depending on your Homere settings this could be split into employer contribution and employee contributions entries.
  • 30310 – Income Tax entries.
  • Any other contribution as required by your mission and set in Homere.
  • 30100 – Remuneration (net salary) payable. There should be one entry for the amount of the end of month salary payment.
  • 13210 – Salary Advance for national staff. If your mission entered salary advance in Homere, there will be an additional salary entry from the Homere import. If you followed the instructions above and made a manual entry for mid-month salary advance AND reconciled the entry in journals, the amount will no longer appear here. If the mid-month salary amount is still in the pending payment screen you should NOT import it or your cash/bank balance will be decreased twice for the same expense.

A/P selected to import

    1. Back to the import invoice window, input a payment {Posting date} and select {Single import} if you want the entries to remain separate payments. Select {Import group by partner} if you would like to make one payment for different entries for the same partner.

For example, if you make one employee contribution payment and one employer contribution payment to the social contribution office then you should select {Single import}.

If you combine the employer and employee contribution into one payment then select {Import group by partner}.

Importing A/P

    1. Then click at the bottom of the screen.

Importing A/P

At this point you can use the pencil to edit lines as needed. For example, if you paid some of the salary via a bank register and some via the cash register you can edit the amount so that you import only the appropriate amount. If you don’t pay all of the taxes at one time you can edit the amounts.

    1. The import has created register lines.

Register lines created in Temp posted state

Once the imported entries are hard posted they will automatically be reconciled with the entries from the Homere import.

If you pay salaries, taxes and contributions at different times in the month, it is possible to select them individually. The expenses you do not pay will remain in the journal as {Unreconciled} until you make the payment entry in your register. As you manually entered the mid-month salary advance it will need to be manually reconciled.

LUFI-40105 H: How to Validate National Staff Payroll Entries.

LUFI-40105_H: How to Validate National Staff Payroll Entries.

Once the payroll entries have been reviewed, you can validate them. The expense lines are validated first, and then a new window is displayed to validate payroll B/S lines. Depending on the account settings, some B/S lines will need to be assigned a Third party if it is not yet automatically filled in by Homere. You can only validate all payroll entry lines at once, because all the lines will for one Journal Entry that needs to be balanced in debit and credit.

Avant d’importer le fichier PAYE SAGA, assurez-vous que toutes les lignes de paie précédemment importées sont validées et ne sont pas en brouillon, car les lignes en brouillon bloqueront l’importation d’autres fichiers PAYE SAGA avec un message d’avertissement :

“Vous ne pouvez pas importer les écritures de paie car il y a XX lignes de dépenses en brouillon et YYY lignes de bilan en brouillon. Veuillez valider les écritures en brouillon ou cliquez sur ‘Supprimer les écritures en brouillon’ pour continuer.”

Go to Accounting/Payroll/Payroll entries

A list of payroll entries booked on expense accounts displays

Go to Actions menu on your right hand side and select {Validate Payroll Expenses and move to Payroll B/S Lines } button. All expense lines are automatically included in the selection.

{Validate draft entries} window displays

{Validate Payroll Expenses and move to Payroll B/S Lines} button

A new window with all the B/S lines opens. The lines without a Third Party are automatically shown first.

Payroll B/S lines to validate and to allocate third Party

Allocate Third Party to missing B/S lines.

B/S line edited to add Third Party

Click on {Validate draft entries} button in the Action Menu

{Validate draft entries} button

{Payroll Validation Confirmation} window displays

Payroll validation wizard

Click on {Validate} and wait for the payroll entries to be posted.

Confirming the validation of payroll entries

The validate payroll entries are now displayed in the {HR} journal.

Posted payroll entries in the HR Journal

From an accounting perspective, the entries booked in journal on the debit side are composed of:

  • A breakdown of total cost for MSF by employee, to be booked on a regular national staff expense account {66001, 66002 etc.}. The employee name is displayed in the {Third party} field and the employee function in the {Reference} field.

On the credit side, the entries booked in journal are composed of:

  • Consolidated or split by employee net salary booked on account {Remuneration (net salary) payable}.
  • Consolidated or split by employee salary advances for national staff {Salary Advance for national staff}. Advances were entered mid-month in Homere and recorded manually in UniField at time of payment. Salary advances are included in the export. They are therefore not included in the net salary and matched manually at salary payment at the end of the month.
  • Consolidated or split by employee Social security employee / employer recorded under a dedicated payable account {Social security}.
  • Consolidated or split by employee income taxes recorded under a dedicated payable account {Payroll taxes / PAYE Payable}.
  • Any other tax or contribution recorded in the Homere payroll plan.

The validation of payroll entries recognizes expenses and payable amounts. Mid-month salary advances have already been paid via the registers. The end of month net to pay salary amount is still to pay and has not physically impacted your cash or bank balance until you record the payment directly in your registers.

  • Just to mention that whether when importing register lines, Journal entries or Homere payee saga, the Analytic distribution information will be taken from the file imported and not from Employee master data.
  • Before importing of payee saga make sure that all previously imported payroll lines are validated and not in draft state, as draft lines will block importing other payee saga files with a warning message >>”You cannot import payroll entries because there are XX draft expense lines and YYY draft balance sheet lines. Please validate the draft entries or click on ‘Delete draft entries’ to proceed.

LUFI-40105 E-G: How to Change AD on Payroll Entries

LUFI-40105_E: How to Change the Analytical Distribution on Payroll Entries

If you would like to change the analytical information permanently, you can use the employee update sub-module. However, there may be special situations when staff members need update only for one payroll period.

 

Go to Accounting/Payroll/Payroll entries

    • A list of draft payroll entries booked on expense accounts displays

{Payroll List} Search view displayed in {Payroll entries} sub-module

  1. Click on the pencil of the entry you want to change the distribution.

  1. Change the destination, cost center and/or funding pool.
  2. Save the entry. When the payroll entry displays in blue, the allocation is valid.

 

Valid analytical allocation on payroll entry

LUFI-40105_F: How to Change the Analytical Distribution on Multiple Payroll Entries

If you would like to change the analytical information permanently, you can use the employee update sub-module. However, there may be special situations when staff members need updating for only one payroll. Keep in mind you can change simultaneously only entries that have all the same analytical information.

 

 

Go to Accounting/Payroll/Payroll entries

A list of draft payroll entries booked on expense accounts displays

  1. Check the entries which need distribution changes.

Payroll entries to be reallocated

  1. Go to Actions and {Select Payroll Analytical Reallocation}.

A wizard {Payroll Analytic reallocation} displays

{Payroll Analytic reallocation} wizard

  1. Change the destination, cost center or funding pool to make the entries valid.
  2. Click on {Validate} button.

The payroll entries will be allocated to a new analytical dimension

Valid payroll entries

LUFI-40105_G: How to Delete Draft National Staff Payroll Entries

 

If wrong import files are accidentally used for payroll, the entries can be deleted as long as the entries are still in {Draft} status.

By selecting the action {Delete draft entries} on the right hand side of the screen, you can cancel the whole payroll entry import. Remember that you cannot cancel individual entries to ensure the balance of the payroll entries booked on the credit side matches the balance of entries booked on the debit side.

Go to Accounting/Payroll/Payroll entries

A list of payroll entries booked on expense accounts displays

  1. Tick the checkboxes of all entries.
  2. Go to Actions and select {Delete Draft Entries}.

A {Delete draft entries} window displays

 

Delete draft entries window

  1. Select {Validate} and the payroll entries will be deleted by cancelling the whole payroll import.

To ensure the balance of payroll entries booked on the credit side matches with the balance of entries booked on the debit side, you cannot delete individual payroll lines.

LUFI-40105: National Staff Payroll Management

LUFI-40105 National Staff Payroll Management

  1. LU Introduction

Once employee data has been updated in UniField, payroll entries can be exported from Homere and imported into UniField.

If one of the payroll entry lines cannot be imported, UniField will reject the whole import. UniField provides a list of entry lines with errors with details of why these entries cannot be imported. If there is no error message, the import was successful.

When national staff payroll entries are imported, they remain in {Draft} state until an authorized user validates them. Once they have been validated, they are booked in the journals.

List of valid payroll entries in Draft displayed in the sub-module {Import Payroll}

Before validation, you will need to check if the analytical allocation is correct. Payroll lines in red represent an error and will require a new allocation. This task is performed in the {Payroll entries} sub-module.

Some payroll lines appear in red: you must reallocate them to a valid analytical dimension.

Once the payroll expense entries have been reviewed, they can be validated. You must validate all payroll entries at one time.

After validating the expense entries, you will be directed to a new window to validate the balance sheet (B/S) entry lines. The B/S lines can be either a total amount for all employees or divided by employees (one line per employee). The B/S accounts may require a third party to be set, depending on the account settings. If the third party is correctly set in Homere, it will be automatically taken to UniField in the respective B/S line. The third party for each payroll B/S line is by default taken from the {Third} field in Payee_SAGA file. If the {Third} field is empty, the third party is derived from the {Secondary Description} field. If both of the fields are empty or incorrect, the user has to manually set the {Third party} for each respective B/S lines.

If Homere has rounded up employee salaries according to coins and notes locally available vs. exact payroll calculation, UniField will automatically create a cash difference entry for an amount that does not exceed 1.00 EUR (or equivalent in CHF).

When payroll entries are validated, they become {Posted} and are displayed in the {HR} Journals.

Once the physical payment has taken place, you may import the payment into the register by using the {Pending Payments} function. Keep in mind that you only import the amount of money which is paid at that time.

If some employees are paid in cash and others by bank transfer, you import the corresponding amount in the cash register and the remaining amount in the bank register. The reconciliation in the journals of all the entries on the account {30100} is automatically performed when using the function “Pending Payments”.

As mentioned earlier, the total salary advance amount was already booked as payment entries in the registers. All payroll entries must be manually reconciled on the {Advances on salaries of national staff}.

Below you can find the accounting moves when salaries are paid:

LUFI-40104: Activate/Deactivate Staff

LUFI-40104 Activate/Deactivate Staff

Activation/Deactivation of staff in Human Resources

You can deactivate/activate a group of employees in mass (for both expats and national staff). You just need to select all the employees you want => Click on Activate/Deactivate Employees in the right-side menu:

If the purpose was to activate the selected list of employees, then you tick the box of (Set selected employees as active). If the purpose was to deactivate the selected list of employees, then you un-tick this box.