Chronos' Smart Accounting logic will help save you time by choosing the appropriate accounting method for your usage and payment transactions on the fly. Optimizing accounting transactions can help increase your productivity by eliminating time wasted when creating and reconciling invoice transactions.
Two accounting methods are employed when converting Chronos usage and payments transactions to Quickbooks accounting transactions:
1. Sales Receipts
2. Invoices + Payments
Accounting transactions are held in Chronos until the client makes a payment on their account. At that time, Chronos may be configured to automatically export accounting documents over to Quickbooks Online.
Smart Accounting
When to Use Sales Receipts
Sales receipts are used when goods are delivered at the same time payment is received. For example, a sales receipt would be appropriate when a customer rents an aircraft, and pays for the rental when they return from their flight.
Sales receipts are very easy to reconcile in Quickbooks because they contain the itemized products and services delivered along with the payment data. The sum balance of a sales receipt is always zero, i.e. the payment is equal to the cost of the services purchased.
Chronos will export Sales receipts when payments are detected that bring a customer account to a zero balance.
TIP: The use of Sales Receipts in Quickbooks Online will minimize the Payment-to-Invoice reconciliation requirement. Encourage your customers to pay as they go to maximize the use of sales receipt accounting transactions.
When to Use Invoices and Payments
Invoices and payments are required when the timing or amounts between sales and payments are different. Invoices are required in these cases:
1. Client pre pays, leaving funds on account.
2. Client under pays, leaving a balance due on account.
Chronos will attempt to optimize the creation of Sales Receipts and Invoices depending upon the match up of payments with the sales transactions.
TIP: Discourage the creation of Invoices and Payments. When invoices and payments are created separately, an extra reconciliation step is required in Quickbooks Online because each payment must be manually assigned to the appropriate invoice.
Reducing Accounting Overhead
Many aircraft rental operators and flight schools encourage customers to purchase blocks of flight time. When customers leave funds on account, the Invoice and Payments method of accounting is required, which increases the time required to reconcile payments and invoice transactions in Quickbooks Online.
Rather than incentivize block purchases, use Chronos' pilot rating system or client specific discount system to give discounts to your more active customers. The discounts will automatically be applied to the client account and any sales receipts that are exported to Quickbooks. Put your accounting on auto pilot and spend more time growing your business!
Read more about Pilot Rating Discounts
Read more about Client Specific Discounts and Markups
Maximize Your Use of Sales Receipts
The timing of payments and usage transactions is important to maximizing your use of sales receipts.
If you allow customers to accrue a balance due before payment, you should export a sales receipt when their account balance is paid in full to zero (to create a sales receipt.) If you export transactions before their payment is recorded in Chronos, an invoice will be created in Quickbooks, requiring you to reconcile their payment to the invoice manually within Quickbooks.
If you allow customers to purchase block time, or leave cash on account, their payment will be recorded separately from their invoices, requiring you to reconcile their payments to invoices manually within Quickbooks.
The optimim timing for exporting transactions from Chronos to Quickbooks is when the client balance is zero. A sales receipt will be created which will bundle the payment and usage transactions together, eliminating the need to apply payments to invoices within Quickbooks Online.