Accounting

Introduction

Pelcro accounting reports are a great way to stay up to date with your financial information and manage your books. With our simple and intuitive dashboard, you can easily keep track of all your financial transactions, subscriptions, profits and losses, ledgers and more – all in one place and up-to-date! This helps you make informed decisions about your business, and provides you with insights into trends and patterns, so that you can identify areas for improvement or opportunities for growth.

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Important

Accounting dashboard is only available for Professional and Enterprise plans. Please check out our pricing page or contact your Pelcro account manager for more information.


Dashboard

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Balance sheet Ledger

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The balance sheet section includes summaries the monthly totals of your accounts and transactions, broken down by currency into the following ledger accounts:

  • Offline cash: used to record all offline payment transactions (Cash, Check, Wire, Transfer, and External).
  • Online cash: used to record all online payment transactions (Payment cards).
  • Customer balance: used to record all customer account balance debit & credit transactions.
  • Accounts receivable: used to record outstanding balance owed for goods/services provided to customers but not yet paid for.
  • Deferred revenue: used to record total upfront invoice revenue for good or services which have not yet been provided to customers.
  • Taxes: used to record applicable tax transactions relating to goods/services provided.

Profit & Loss Ledger

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The profit and loss section contains all the totals for transactions contributing to your profit & loss statement, broken down by currency into the following ledger accounts:

  • Recognized revenue: used to record total revenue recognition for goods or services which have been provided to customers, depending on your offering revenue models.

Transaction Categories

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The dashboard also breaks down ledger account totals into the following system transactions:

  • Subscriptions revenue: total revenue resulting from subscription transactions.
  • Recognized revenue: to-date revenue recognized for subscriptions resulting from provided services corresponding to your recognition model (e.g. passage of time/shipments fulfilled).
  • Payments: incoming invoice payment transactions and prepayments to customer account balance.
  • Applied balance: incoming invoice payment transactions withdrawn from customer account balance.
  • Refunds: refund transactions for payments returned to customers.
  • Credit notes: invoice adjustment transactions, typically resulting from refundable subscription cancellations.
  • Uncollectible invoices: invoice receivables for bad debt or invoices that customers will not pay, resulting from marking invoices as uncollectible.
  • Voided invoices: invoice receivables for write-offs or erroneous invoices, resulting from voiding invoices.
  • Agency commissions: used to record applicable revenue commissions provided for agencies supporting you in providing goods/services.

Opening & Closing Balances

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  • The opening balance represents specific ledger account totals which are brought forward from the old accounting period to the new accounting period, whereas the closing balance represents specific ledger account totals available at the end of the accounting period. These entries are applicable to your accounts receivable & deferred revenue ledgers.

  • The opening balance for each of the aforementioned ledger accounts at a given month will typically be equal to the closing balance for the previous month.

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  • The closing balance for each of the aforementioned ledger accounts will typically be the sum of the opening balance and the transaction totals for the given month.
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Net Agency

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The Net Agency represents specific ledger account totals with agency commissions subtracted. These entries are applicable to your deferred & recognized revenue ledgers.


Ledger Accounts Breakdown

In the upcoming sections, we're going to break down how each ledger account is broken down, along with relevant information, applicable formulas and use cases which are useful to help you navigate through how your financial transactions reflect on the accounting dashboard entries.

Cash - Offline Payments

Offline cash ledger account is an asset account used to record all incoming and outgoing offline transactions on your system.

Offline Cash = Total offline payments received - Total offline refunds made

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Offline cash is split into the following transaction categories for better granularity:

  • Offline payments received will debit the offline cash ledger account. These transactions include:

    • Offline payment amounts used to pay for open/past due invoices.
    • Offline payment amounts added to the customer account balance of category (Cash/Check/Wire/Transfer/External).
  • Offline refunds made will credit the offline cash ledger account. These transactions include:

    • Full/Prorated offline refund amounts of payments made against invoices resulting from subscription cancellation or direct refunds.
    • Full/Partial offline refund amounts resulting from customer account balance adjustments.

Caveats

  • Pending offline refunds will not reflect under offline cash until the refund has been processed.

Cash - Online Payments

Online cash ledger account is an asset account used to record all incoming and outgoing online transactions on your system.

Online Cash = Total online payments received - Total online refunds made

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Online cash is split into the following transaction categories for better granularity:

  • Online payments received will debit the online cash ledger account. These transactions include:

    • Card payment amounts used to pay for open/past due invoices.
    • Card payment amounts used to pay for eCommerce orders.
    • Card payment amounts added to the customer account balance (when charge upon renewal setting is enabled on your account).
  • Online refunds made will credit the online cash ledger account. These transactions include:

    • Full/Prorated card refund amounts of payments made against invoices resulting from subscription cancellation or direct refunds.

Customer Balance

Customer balance ledger account is a liability account used to record all incoming and outgoing customer balance transactions on your system.

Customer balance = Total applied balance + Total refunds made - Total payments received - Total credit notes

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Customer balance is split into the following transaction categories for better granularity:

  • Total applied balance will debit the customer balance ledger account. These transactions include:

    • Total customer balance transaction amounts used to pay for open/past due invoices.
  • Total refunds made will debit the customer balance ledger account. These transactions include:

    • Full/Prorated refund amounts of payments made against invoices resulting from subscription cancellation or direct refunds.
    • Full/Partial refund amounts resulting from customer account balance adjustments.
  • Total payments received will credit the customer balance ledger account. These transactions include:

    • Total online/offline payment amounts added to the customer account balance.
    • Online payment amounts made for eCommerce orders
  • Total credit notes will credit the customer balance ledger account. These transactions include:

    • Full/Prorated credit note amounts issued against paid invoices resulting from subscription cancellation or direct refunds.

Accounts Receivable

Accounts receivable ledger account is an asset account used to record all outstanding invoice amounts that customers owe to your business as a result of purchasing subscriptions for your product/plan offerings.

Accounts receivable = Total subscriptions revenue - Total payments received - Total applied balance - Total uncollectible invoices - Total voided invoices

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Accounts receivable is split into the following transaction categories for better granularity:

  • Subscriptions revenue will debit the accounts receivable ledger account. These transactions include:

    • Total invoice amounts subscriptions which have been created or renewed on your product/plan offerings.
  • Total payments received will credit the accounts receivable ledger account. These transactions include:

    • Total open/past due invoice amounts which customers have paid for through online/offline payments.
  • Total applied balance will credit the accounts receivable ledger account. These transactions include:

    • Total open/past due invoice amounts which customers have paid for through customer balance transactions.
  • Uncollectible invoices & Voided invoices will credit the accounts receivable ledger account. These transactions include:

    • Total invoice amounts for invoices which have been marked as uncollectible (bad debt) or void (write-off).

Accounting Use-cases

Subscription revenue

This row summarizes all invoices related to subscriptions that were either created or renewed during the selected month, including subscriptions managed by agencies.

As a new invoice is created for a new or renewed subscription, it's total (tax in) is added to the Account Receivable cell, it's subtotal (tax out) is added to the Deferred Revenue cell and any tax rate applied to the invoice are summed up and added to the Taxes cell.

Regular subscription

Let’s consider a scenario where an invoice was created for a regular subscription having a plan value of 50$, for which a 10% tax rate was applied, the entry for this specific case will result in this:

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Agency subscription

Consider our previous example, but let’s say that this subscription is managed by an agency on a plan having a 60% remit rate.

This means your share of the subscription value is 30$ (50$ * 60%), while the agency's share is 20$. The agency's share is added to Agency commission row which will then be subtracted to out of the Total row to result in Net Agency.

Recognized revenue

Revenue can now either be recognized based on time or shipments. This can be configured while creating and configuring a plan. Subscriptions revenue will stop being recognized as soon as they are cancelled or expired.

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$0 subscriptions

Please note that subscriptions which have an invoice total of $0 (for example, as a result of a 100% off coupon) will not contribute to recognized revenue, and therefore will not be listed on the recognized revenue reports.

Time based

When recognized revenue is time-based, it is calculated from the number of seconds elapsed since the start of a subscription’s billing cycle, in relation to its total period length. In other words, the total dollar value of the subscription is divided by the number of seconds in the subscription’s term and recognized as time passes.

To represent this, let's consider that our 50 $ subscription lasts 50,000 seconds, which means that with every second that passes, we will be recognizing 0.001 $ (50$/50,000 seconds). The Agency recognized commission is recognizing the commission in the same way. After 1000 seconds the entry in the report would look like this:

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After another 4,000 seconds, which amounts to 5000 seconds (or a tenth of the subscription) the report entry will be as followed:

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Shipments based

When recognized revenue is based on shipments, it is calculated based on the shipments created during this month in relation to the shipments per interval configuration in the related plan. Note that a plan is set to recognize revenue based on shipments, the shipments remaining configuration will not be editable from the plan configuration in order not to impact the accounting calculation. For example, if a customer subscribes to a $120 plan with 12 shipments. If a shipment is created and fulfilled every month, $10 would be recognized every month. The shipment is recognized based on the approved_at timestamp which is the date & time the fulfillment associated with the shipment is approved.

Note: Learn more about the implication of gift subscriptions on accounting here.

Payments received

As customers pay their invoices, amounts will be debited to the appropriate payment column and the amount will credit either the customer balance or the accounts receivable. This is dependent on whether the payment was applied to an invoice or if it was applied to the customer's balance. You can learn more about Customer Balance transactions here.

If a client pays with their credit card:

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If a client pays an open or past due invoice by cheque:

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In the event that a customer pays an amount in advance, normally through an offline payment, the value of that amount will be added to the customer’s balance. This typically occurs for customers renewing a subscription in advance.

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This applies to all payments not directly applied to an invoice.

Applied Balance

Applied balance summarizes all the customer balance transactions that were applied to an invoice. You can read more about Customer Balance Transactions here.

When a customer balance is applied to an invoice, the amount is transferred from the balance to the account receivable column as shown below.

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Refunds

Refunds are an independent billing object to keep track of how much is refunded back to the customer. A refund is always linked to the associated payment for reference.

When a refund is made, if the refund is made directly unto the credit card, the refund will appear as shown below:

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If the refund was added to the customer balance, it will appear as shown below:

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If a refund is made to the customer’s balance, it will remain in the customer’s balance to be used to pay for an invoice at a later time.

Uncollectible invoices

Invoices get marked as uncollectible past a certain period. This is configured from the platform settings. When an invoice gets marked as uncollectible, it will get a time stamp on when this occurred. This timestamp is used to clearly identify uncollectible invoices based on the date they occurred. Uncollectible invoices can be thought of as bad debt.

Voided invoices

Invoices can get marked as voided. This is an action an administrator can take from the platform. Once an invoice is marked as voided, it will get a time stamp on when this occurred called voided_at.

Credit notes

Credit notes are a billing object used to correct invoices. You can learn more about Credit Notes here.

Agency commission

The agency commission is a summary of the commission that an agency will receive from the invoices created in the platform.

Agency recognized commission

The agency recognized commission is the portion of the agency commission that is recognized every month.


Dashboard Actions

Accessing Dashboard

On your Dashboard, hover over your left navigation menu. Select "Accounting".

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Selecting Reporting Period

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The period selector allows you to select the month for which you would like to view financial information.

Selecting Reporting Currency

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If your product/plan offerings are provided in multiple currencies, the accounting dashboard will automatically break down your financial information by currency. You can use the currency selector to view financial information relating to each of your offerings.

Exporting Transaction Category Details

Details for the transaction categories totals are available to export. The detailed export will help show you a granular breakdown of individual transactions contributing to its corresponding transaction category total, along with useful data points for each transaction. These exports are useful for your financial operations reporting, and can even be imported into any accounting or bookkeeping software which you may be using for your business (e.g. Xero, Quickbooks, etc.)

Transaction CategoryDetailed Export
Subscription RevenueView sample file
Recognized RevenueView sample file
Payments ReceivedView sample file
Applied BalanceView sample file
Refunds MadeView sample file
Uncollectible/Voided InvoicesView sample file
Credit NotesView sample file
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To generate a detailed export, click on the download icon next to the transaction category of your choice. Once you do that, an email will be sent to you with a downloadable link through which you can download the report.

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Tip

Depending on the volume of your business transactions, please allow for a few minutes before the export is sent to your email. If the email is not received typically within 15 minutes, please contact our support team and we'll be able to assist you further.


Accounting Reports Beta

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Important

Accounting reports are only available for Enterprise plans. Please check out our pricing page or contact your Pelcro account manager for more information.

Export Accounts Receivable:
You can now export your accounts receivable balance per customer so that you can meet any auditory or regulatory requirements. This allows you to track funds that customers owe you for offerings that have been invoiced.

The way we calculate the accounts receivable in this export is as follows:
Invoice.total - Taxes - Credit Notes
where:

  • 'Invoice.total' is the total amount of the invoice
  • 'Taxes' is the amount paid for taxes from the invoice
  • 'Credit Notes' is the total credits notes amount
  • Note: only invoices with status 'open' are included in these calculations.

Export Deferred Revenue:
You can now export your deferred revenue balance per customer so that you can meet any auditory or regulatory requirements. This export will cater to both time-based and shipment-based revenue recognition, allows you to have visibility over consumption and will provide you a breakdown of the balance available on your accounting dashboard.

The way we calculate the total deferred revenue in this export is as follows:
(Invoice.total - Refund - Credit Notes) * % remaining
where:

  • 'Invoice.total' is the total amount of the invoice excluding tax
  • 'Refund' is the total refunds amount
  • 'Credit Notes' is the total credits notes amount
  • '% remaining' is calculated in two different ways, one for time-based subscriptions and the other for shipments-based subscriptions:
    • % remaining for time-based subscriptions = (Subscription end - present) / (Subscription end - Subscription start)
    • % remaining for shipments-based subscriptions = 1 - (( fulfilled shipments between subscription start and last day of the selected month) / plan shipments per interval )
  • Note: invoices with status 'void' and 'uncollectible' are excluded from these calculations.

FAQs

I need financial reports which are different in layout and structure, Are there available custom accounting reports?

Absolutely, Pelcro offers professional report customization services to help businesses make informed financial decisions. These reports are tailored to the specific needs of each business, and provide detailed insights into their financial performance. For more details, please contact your dedicated Pelcro account manager.