The Distribution Center is Paying Me for Purchases

I have a positive $40.00 balance in my Budget:Distribution Center Charges subcategory. As far as I can tell, there were a pair of $20.00 distribution center charges that got voided and recharged for some reason. I went through and carefully changed the category of each expense to the subcategory of the auxiliary paying for the purchase. After I was done, I had a balance of $40.00.

1. How did I end up with a positive balance in that subcategory (all of the purchased materials have been received)?
2. Is this a common thing?
3. Do I do anything about it or will it magically correct itself (it's been two and three months)?

When the DC canceled the order, they didn't just delete the charge. Instead, it provided the ward with an offsrting credit. So when you assigned the charges, the credit remained.

nutterb wrote:I have a positive $40.00 balance in my Budget:Distribution Center Charges subcategory. As far as I can tell, there were a pair of $20.00 distribution center charges that got voided and recharged for some reason. I went through and carefully changed the category of each expense to the subcategory of the auxiliary paying for the purchase. After I was done, I had a balance of $40.00.

1. How did I end up with a positive balance in that subcategory (all of the purchased materials have been received)?
2. Is this a common thing?
3. Do I do anything about it or will it magically correct itself (it's been two and three months)?

I have the same problem. Not sure why it is doing it yet. But it definitely occurs after changing the budget category to a different subcategory.

nutterb wrote:I have a positive $40.00 balance in my Budget:Distribution Center Charges subcategory. As far as I can tell, there were a pair of $20.00 distribution center charges that got voided and recharged for some reason. I went through and carefully changed the category of each expense to the subcategory of the auxiliary paying for the purchase. After I was done, I had a balance of $40.00.

LakeyTW wrote:I have the same problem. Not sure why it is doing it yet. But it definitely occurs after changing the budget category to a different subcategory.

As allenjpl mentioned, this is happening because you're not changing the category of all the relevant transactions -- you're just changing the expense side. A voiding of a transaction doesn't remove the original transaction, but creates an additional transfer in the opposite direction in the same category.

Let's just look at one of the charges. In MLS you would have originally had something like this:

1. $-20 expense in DC category for original purchase
2. $+20 transfer in DC category for void
3. $-20 expense in DC category for re-charge

Then it sounds like you went through and changed the category of items 1 and 3 to YW for example. Then you would now have:

1. $-20 expense in YW category for original purchase
2. $+20 transfer in DC category for void
3. $-20 expense in YW category for re-charge

The result is that you have double charged the YW (they have $-40 for this one $20 item) and the transfer remains in the DC category. That's why you have a $+20 balance in the DC category for that item (and similarly for the other item).

What you probably should have done is just leave #1 in the DC category. After all, that item was not delivered to the YW. Only #3 was actually delivered. So you should edit the first expense to be back in the DC category, and then you will have in MLS:

1. $-20 expense in DC category for original purchase
2. $+20 transfer in DC category for void
3. $-20 expense in YW category for re-charge

The result is a net of $0 in the DC category (exactly what you want), and $-20 in the YW category (exactly what you want). Do the same for the other item, and life will be good again.

Note that MLS won't let you change the category on a transfer. All you can do is create another transfer that subtracts $20 from DC and adds $20 to YW. So trying to change the corresponding transfer to be in the YW category would just make this all a bit more complicated. That's why I recommend changing expense #1 back to DC.

Oddly, in each case, I only changed the category on one of the transactions. Looking at the detail, the transactions look kind of like this

1. $-20 expense in DC category for original purchase
2. $+20 transfer in DC category for void -- second line $-20 expense in DC category (yes, there are two lines on the expense detail)
3. $+20 transfer in DC category

So now that I really think it through, I think I transferred #1 into an auxiliary category, but left #'s 2 and 3 in DC. I'm still a little confuzzled, however, because the transactions shown total to $0, not $-20. Does that sound at all familiar?

Let's see if this helps.

I've attached screenshots of where I'm getting confused. In this part of the expense detail report, I have four lines for the distribution order. On the surface, it looks like everything should balance properly. But when I click on that first item (blue reference number), I see this. Would deleting the charge to Budget:Administration fix the accounting problem, or would it get me into more trouble?

Any ideas what I did wrong to get myself into this mess? I have this same problem for every single distribution order I've placed this year. But at least I'm consistent!

nutterb wrote:I've attached screenshots of where I'm getting confused. In this part of the expense detail report, I have four lines for the distribution order. On the surface, it looks like everything should balance properly.

It does look like the net is that your budget has only been charged $74.25, so indeed the overall balance should be correct. But it doesn't look like the subcategory balances are correct. It's not obvious what the "(multiple)" transaction is, but from the other information, it appears that it is a $74.25 credit to DC and a $74.25 debit to Administration. That, in conjunction with the other explicit entries, yields:
-74.25 DC
(multiple) = +74.25 DC and -74.25 Admin
-74.25 Admin
+74.25 DC

That is a total of +74.25 DC and -148.50 Admin. That's what is shown on the expense detail screen (the signs are opposite of what I have written above, since on the expense screen a positive expense is a debit to the account).

So you've somehow done a double correction, which yields a net result of a double charge to admin and a single remaining credit to DC.

nutterb wrote:Would deleting the charge to Budget:Administration fix the accounting problem, or would it get me into more trouble?

You can't delete charges. You can only set them to 0. That action by itself would get you into more trouble. The simplest fix would be to create a single transfer, on the left side would be DC and on the right side Admin (since you need to transfer out your current net credit in DC and also cut your net charge to Admin in half).

nutterb wrote:Any ideas what I did wrong to get myself into this mess? I have this same problem for every single distribution order I've placed this year. But at least I'm consistent!

I'm not sure what you've done to get in this situation. A simple change of category (which is what I do for DC charges) results in a single transfer of net 0, which shows up like "(multiple)". I don't know how those other transactions appeared.

Thanks Alan. Next time I adjust an expense, I'll take careful notes of what I do and see if we can track down what I'm doing.

Per a conversation I had today with local unit support, this is a known bug which should be fixed later this month in version 3.4. Until then I wont be making any other changes to charges from distribution services.