Bookkeeping Models

← Setting Up Bookkeeping Management

Businesses must do bookkeeping. It mirrors an organization's economic activities – providing a comprehensive and structured recording of all business transactions, expressed in figures. This information is made available to the management and investors, making it the foundation for purposefully controlling the company, and to authorities to comply with legal requirements.

JustOn Billing & Invoice Management continuously produces invoices for the products or services you sell and can, if set up accordingly, register and allocate corresponding payments. In that sense, the software also acts as a sales journal or debtors ledger that directly supports your bookkeeping processes. You determine the extend and detail you leverage, depending on your environment and business requirements.

Depending on your business, the nature of your products and the governing tax laws, you may have to set up a dedicated strategy for producing bookkeeping data for invoices and payment balances. JustOn provides a number of discrete settings whose combinations allow you to model your dedicated use case.

Options

Info

For businesses in Europe (Germany, in particular), the type of product or service you invoice determines the timing of the tax origin and hence, which options to apply. Contact your tax consultant to define the appropriate way for your business.

Revenue Recognition Rules

Revenue recognition rules control the way invoice line items are transformed into booking details:

• One to one – Default
• Multiple revenue bookings per invoice line item, distributed to future booking periods, allowing for revenue deferral – Booking Month
• Multiple revenue bookings per invoice line item, distributed to future service period months, allowing for revenue deferral – Service Month
• One to one, aligned to a (future) booking period, allowing for revenue deferral – Service Period
• Multiple revenue bookings per invoice line item, split along shortfall amounts – Shortfall
• Multiple revenue bookings per invoice line item, split along margins – Margin Scheme

For details, see Applying Revenue Recognition, Handling Deferred Revenue, Handling Shortfall Amounts and Margin Scheme-Based Bookings.

Tax Recognition Rules

Tax recognition rules control the booking detail creation for tax amounts:

• One per invoice line item – Default
• Multiple tax bookings per invoice line item, synced with split revenue bookings (using the Service Month revenue recognition rule) – Sync With Revenue

For details, see Applying Tax Recognition.

Taxation Rules

Taxation rules decide how to process invoice line items that span multiple time-based tax rules:

• Splitting invoice line items along tax rule validity periods, resulting in multiple revenue and tax bookings per original invoice line item – Service Period (default)
• Keeping unsplit invoice line items, applying the tax rate of the date of the revenue booking – Booking Date
• Keeping unsplit invoice line items, applying the tax rate that is valid at the end of the service period – End of Service Period
• Keeping unsplit invoice line items, applying the tax rate that is valid at the end of each month of the service period – End of Monthly Service Period

For details, see Managing Taxation Rules.

Additional Options

In order to generally enable the creation of bookkeeping data, activate the global setting Create Bookkeeping Data.

Additional options that control the booking detail creation include:

• Moving tax booking details to the payment date – global setting Move Tax Booking Details to Payment Date
• Using gross values when creating booking details (for example, when using automatic accounts (Automatikkonten) in DATEV) – global setting Enable Accounting in Gross Values
• Combining gross value booking with revenue deferral – global settings Enable Accounting in Gross Values and Accounting Gross Taxes on First Month
• Generating bookkeeping data for deposit invoices – global setting Create Bookkeeping Data for Deposit
• Moving the booking date to the last day of the calendar month – global setting Use End of Month as Booking Date
• Creating separate booking details for contra accounts – global setting Separate Contra Account Booking Details
• Applying individual debtor account for deferred revenue instead of a collective account – global setting Use Debtor No for Deferred Revenue

Use Cases

For more detailed descriptions of various bookkeeping scenarios, see Best Practice: Generating Bookkeeping Data.

Use Case	Revenue Recognition Rule	Tax Recognition Rule	Taxation Rule	Notes
Standard	Default	Default	Service Period	Produces 1 revenue booking and 1 tax booking per invoice line item, splits invoice line item (and resulting bookings) along tax rule validity
Standard for automatic accounts (gross value booking)	Default	Default	Service Period	Requires global setting Enable Accounting in Gross Values Produces 1 combined booking (including revenue and tax) per invoice line item, splits invoice line item (and the resulting booking) along tax rule validity
Rental or leasing contract (large service period, multiple payments at the end of every service period month, no revenue deferral)	Service Month	Sync with Revenue	End of Monthly Service Period	Involves a staged payment plan using monthly installments Produces multiple revenue bookings and synced tax bookings per invoice line item (distributed by service period months), tax origin and tax due date at the end of each service period month Covers permanent invoice ("Dauerrechnung")
SaaS contract considered as "other service" (large service period, one advance payment, with revenue deferral)	Booking Month	Default	End of Service Period	Produces multiple revenue bookings (distributed by calendar months) and 1 tax booking per invoice line item, tax origin at the service period end but payable on expected payment receipt at the service period start Covers deferred revenue ("passive Rechnungsabgrenzung")
Service contract considered as "delivery" (large service period, one advance payment, with revenue deferral)	Service Month	Default	Booking Date	Produces multiple revenue bookings (distributed by service period months) and 1 tax booking per invoice line item, tax origin and tax due date on expected payment receipt at the service period start Covers deferred revenue ("passive Rechnungsabgrenzung")
Service contract (one payment w/o fixed payment date, with revenue deferral)	Booking Month	Default	Service Period	Requires global setting Move Tax Booking Details to Payment Date, see payment date-based tax booking Produces multiple revenue bookings (distributed by calendar months) and 1 tax booking per invoice line item, tax origin at the service period end but payable on effective payment receipt Covers deferred revenue ("passive Rechnungsabgrenzung")
Service contract considered as "other service" (large service period – if applicable, split along tax rule validity, one advance payment, with revenue deferral)	Service Month	Default	Service Period	Produces multiple revenue bookings (distributed by service period months) and 1 tax booking per invoice line item, tax origin at the service period end (by default – if applicable, split along tax rule validity) but payable on expected payment receipt at the service period start Covers deferred revenue ("passive Rechnungsabgrenzung")