Hi Russell,

As a systems professional who has worked with accounting systems for over 25 years, I thought I would chime in here.

First, I like to stay away from saying that there is a right way or wrong way of doing something. I prefer to use the efficient vs inefficient argument. By doing this, both sides can most of the times come to an agreement, otherwise you end up arguing on style which will never come to resolution.

In order to achieve this in your situation, I would have to ask what does the approach of the client do that makes this process inefficient? Does it break underlying rules of the system because the system does not have a way of handling negative invoices? If this is true, then you have a cold hard argument that supports moving to the other approach. If it doesn't then it is just a matter of style and the new way provides no benefits. This is like trying to convince someone that blue is a better color than red when red is their favorite color.

In the end, I never try to force something on a client. I try my best to give them compelling reasons as to why they would need to change their methods so that in the end, they decide to make the move because they have been convinced of the better (or more efficient) way. It doesn't always happen that way, but it happens many more times than not.

As far as your particular situation, it appears to me to be a six of one/half a dozen of the other. In other words, it appears to be an issue of style, not substance. Unless you tell me that you have to re-design software to handle doing this their way (cost and time now come into play), in which case you have a compelling reason to do it your way.

Good luck!

Bob
>While converting a system for a client, I'm running into problems with the way they approach things. One is simply the age-old "we've always done it that way" problem. Something more specific is their desire to have an overpayment on an invoice make the invoice balance go negative, effectively making it an open credit that can later be applied against another invoice. So you have a situation where it's an invoice one day, a credit the next. One day you're getting a payment against it and the next you're using it as a payment to pay something else. To me, this is the wrong way to go about it. I have the system never letting a balance fall below zero and generating a credit invoice for the overpayment amount. Then the credit invoice can be used later to apply against another invoice. This causes some issues for them, though I'm going to address them. Anyone have any thoughts on these two appoaches?
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>Russell Campbell