Overview
Zuora provides a standard Accounts Receivable by Accounting Code report that allows you to quickly and easily create summarized journal entries in order to enter your Zuora activity into your General Ledger (GL) accounting system. This article will focus on creating summarized GL entries. Please note that transferring individual transactions to QuickBooks will not be addressed in this article.
Solution
Zuora activity encompasses a number of transactions that need to be journalized. These activities include:
- Posted Invoices
- Payments
- Refunds
- Adjustments
- Credit Balance Transfers
Note: Your business may not include all of these transactions within any given accounting period.
Step 1: Generate an AR by Accounting Code Report for the Appropriate Accounting Period
Go to Z-Billing > Reports > Accounts Receivable, and set the following values for the report Time Frame:
- The Start Date should be the first day of the reporting period (for example: 3/01/2012).
- The End Date should be the last day of the reporting period (for example: 3/31/2012).
This report results will provide a summarized view of each Zuora transaction broken down by accounting code and currency.
See Accounts Receivable Report for more information about the fields that you can configure.
Step 2: Create Summarized Journal Entries
Each column of the AR by Accounting Code Report corresponds to a specific transaction type as detailed in the following table:
| Report Column | Transactions |
|---|---|
| Invoice | Posted invoices. |
| Payment | Payments received for outstanding invoices. |
| Refund | All refunds for non-credit balance transactions. |
| Invoice Adjustment [Credit] | All invoice adjustments and invoice item adjustments that decrease the outstanding balance on an invoice. |
| Invoice Adjustment [Charge] | All invoice adjustments and invoice item adjustments that increase the outstanding balance on an invoice. |
| Credit Balance Increase [Payment] | All payments not applied to an invoice and all overpayments. Also referred to as a Credit Balance payment. |
| Credit Balance Decrease [Refund] | All refunds of overpayments and payments not applied to an invoice. Also referred to as a Credit Balance Refund and is the reversal of a Credit Balance Payment. |
| Credit Balance Increase [Invoice] | Transfers of negative invoice balances to credit balance. Also referred to as a Credit Balance Adjustment (Increase) because this operation would increase the credit balance amount on a customer account. |
| Credit Balance Decrease [Invoice] | Credit balance transfers to reduce the outstanding balance on an invoice. Also referred to as Credit Balance Adjustment (Decrease) because this operation would decrease the credit balance amount on a customer account. |
Each row corresponds to a specific accounting code.
Since each column represents a specific transaction, a single journal entry can be used to represent each column.
For example, consider the following table:
| Accounting Code | Invoice | Payment |
|---|---|---|
| (blank accounting code) | 41,447.61 | |
| Set Up Fees | 700,000.00 | |
| Services | 1,000,000.00 | |
| Bank-B2C | 1,004,804.50 | |
| Bank-B2B | 500,020.28 | |
| Totals | 1,741,447.61 | 1,504,824.78 |
This can be represented by the following two journal entries:
| Debit Account | Credit Account | Debit Amount | Credit Amount | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A/R | 1,741,447.61 | |||
| Unclassified Revenue | 41,447.61 | |||
| Set Up Fees | 700,000.00 | |||
| Services | 1,000,000.00 | |||
| To record all posted invoices for the period | ||||
| Bank-B2C | 1,004,804.50 | |||
| Bank-B2B | 500,020.28 | |||
| A/R | 1,504,824.78 | |||
| To record all payments made against outstanding invoices | ||||
The above journal entries are examples of how to record these transactions. Your own journal entries will vary based on your company's Chart of Accounts and accounting practices.
For specific instructions regarding creating journal entries in your accounting system, please refer to the documentation provided by your accounting software vendor.
Step 3 (Optional): Generate Supporting Reports
If your company's business practices require that supporting documentation be provided for each entry, see How do I validate that the Zuora standard A/R Report is accurate?
Considerations
There are several circumstances which should be considerated when summarizing transactions:
- In most cases, the date range of the AR by Accounting Code report should reflect only the current period; previous periods should not be included. Additionally, the Zuora accounting period should be closed prior to or immediately following the generation of the required transactions reports. This is necessary to prevent additional transactions from being created in the summarized date range after the GL entries are created.
- Do not cancel invoices that have already been entered into your accounting system. If it is necessary to adjust these invoices, an invoice adjustment or invoice item adjustment with a date inside an open accounting period should be used
- Whenever possible, it is recommended that Invoice Item Adjustments be used to modify an invoice instead of Iinvoice Adjustments.
Related
- Accounting Codes
- The Accounting Code in the product rate plan should map to an item in your accounting system.
- Accounts Receivable Report
- Export the accounts receivable data (ARSummary CSV) to see your accounts receivables for a defined period of time. You can use this report when closing your books. The AR summary data shows the start and end dates for a period of time, the currency, accounting codes, invoicing, payments, adjustments and balance.
- Z-Finance
- Accounting System Integration
- With Z-Finance, you can use Zuora as your subledger that integrates with the accounting systems that you're already using.
- Transferred to Accounting
- You can easily track the status of each transaction with respect to the integration with your accounting system using the Transferred to Accounting (TTA) field.
- Map accounting codes (Intermediate)
- Run a trial balance (Intermediate)
- How do I configure Accounting Codes?
- How do I create Journal Entries using Zuora data?
- How do I determine if it's better to bring over summary level data or line item accounting data?
- How do I pull the detail reports that correspond to the AR by Accounting Code report?
- How do I use accounting codes?
- How should I think through a transactional accounting integration?
Contributors
- jeff.feldstein (10 edits)
- michael.walker (6 edits)
- melanie.dolgachev (6 edits)
- jim.foley (1 edits)
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