Scenario
The most common reason why we find discrepancies between the A/P Aging or A/R Aging Reports against the amounts reflecting for Accounts Payables or Accounts Receivables in the Balance Sheet and Trial Balance Reports could be caused by the transaction date - posting period mismatch.
Discrepancies between the Report amounts may be due to the Report by Period preference when the company allows entering transactions outside the Posting Period.
The Report by Period is a User Preference found by going into Home > Set Preferences > Analytics tab > Reporting portlet. This preference defines when a transaction will appear on a report. We can set this to All Reports, Financials Only and Never.
Balance Sheet Report and Trial Balance are considered Financial Reports while A/P Aging and A/R Aging are not tagged as Financial Reports in NetSuite.
Furthermore, the behaviour that allows a User to enter a transaction where the Date and the Posting Period are different is controlled by the Accounting Preference called Allow Transaction Date Outside Posting Period. This can be found by going to Setup > Accounting > Accounting Preferences > General tab > General Ledger portlet > Allow Transaction Date Outside Posting Period field.
Solution
• For example, an Invoice with the following data:
--- Transaction Date = 1/19/2019
--- Posting Period = Feb 2019
• If Report by Period = Financials Only, then the Balance Sheet report captures transactions based on posting period whereas the Aging reports capture from transaction dates
For the above sample Invoice:
--- A/R Aging as of 1/31/2019 will include the Invoice
--- Balance Sheet:
------ As of Jan 2019 will not include the Invoice
------ As of Feb 2019 will include the Invoice
When set to Financials Only, the Aging Reports will use the actual Transaction Dates (i.e. Jan-1-2019 to Jan-31-2019. While, Balance Sheet and Trial Balance will look at the month set on Posting Period (i.e. Jan 2019 to Jan 2019).
• To resolve this, we may either:
1. Edit the record and match the transaction date to the posting period (or vice versa):
i) Transaction Date = 1/19/2019 + Posting Period = Jan 2019
2. Change the preference on how to run reports:
i) Navigate to Home > Set Preferences > Analytics tab > Reporting portlet
ii) Set Report by Period to either:
iii) Never = so both financial and non-financial reports will use transaction date reporting
OR
iiii) All Reports = so both financial and non-financial reports will use posting period reporting.