Entry Types and Reasons

Items are individual receivables that make up a customer's balance. Organizations may refer to items in a variety of ways, such as invoices, obligations, open items, receivables, and documents.

PeopleSoft Receivables distinguishes between items (the receivables that comprise a customer's balance) and pending items (information in the system but not yet updated in the customer's balance). During the Receivable Update process, the system uses pending items to update customer balances, either by creating new items or by adding item activity lines to existing items.

An entry type categorizes the pending items that create or update posted items within the system. The Receivable Update process uses the pending items to create or update items and to maintain customer balances. Examples of entry types are invoices, debit memos, credit memos, payments, prepayments, on account payments, deductions, adjustments, and write-offs.

When a pending item enters the system, the Entry Type field defines the type of pending item that it is. An entry type can be qualified by an entry reason, which is a method of further categorizing pending items.

Some pending items, such as invoices and credit memos, enter the system from a billing system. You create others (for example, on-account payments and deductions) behind the scenes as the result of commands performed during online processing. When you apply a payment, for example, the system generates several different kinds of pending items each with its own entry type.

Some organizations can manage their receivables adequately with simple entry types and entry reasons; other companies require a more elaborate coding structure. The complexity of setup depends on how you run your business and the level of detail with which you track items.

In addition to the required entry types and entry reasons, you may need additional ones for:

  • More detailed reporting.

  • Further qualification of your aging.

  • Accounting entry templates for distribution to the general ledger.

  • Special customer history capabilities.

  • Exclusion capabilities for customer statements, dunning letters, overdue charges, direct debits, and drafts.

Use of Entry Types and Entry Reasons for Reporting

Any report that summarizes the status of open items or that lists all activity from the system includes the entry type and associated entry reason. To distinguish between credit memos that correct billing errors and credit memos that are issued because of shipping damages, for example, you can qualify the credit memo entry types with appropriate entry reasons.

Carefully analyze the types of reports that you use to see what sorts of categorization you use in your existing system. When you implement the new system, you may want to refine the reporting by making it more detailed. Conversely, you may decide to streamline your reporting by using fewer entry types and entry reasons.

Use of Entry Types to Qualify Aging

In traditional aging reports, each column normally represents a time period, such as 0 to 30 days or 31 to 60 days. Some organizations include certain entries in the same column.

You may want to age everything by time periods except credit memos, for example, and have the system display credit memos in one column. To accomplish this, set up an entry type that describes the items that the system moves to a specific column.

Definition of Accounts Receivable Templates With Entry Types and Entry Reasons

When you enter a pending item into the system, you predetermine its accounting distribution: what it is going to debit and credit in the general ledger. You create an accounting entry template so that, when you create the accounting entries online (or when the system creates them during background processing), the system populates the accounting information. The details that are included in the template varies by entry type and entry reason.

Use of Entry Types and Entry Reasons to Track Customer History

PeopleSoft Receivables includes a customer history feature that calculates activity totals on a calendar basis. The entry type directs the system to accumulate a total. You might decide, for example, to track sales by month for each customer. You then specify which entry types and entry reasons to include in that category.

You might decided to track deductions by month, according to a certain entry reason. The Receivables Update process uses the entry type and entry reason combination to determine which categories to update.