▶︎ Does Scribe accommodate Income & Expenditure?

Does Scribe accommodate Income & Expenditure?

Scribe works as a Receipts & Payments system with the conversion done to Income & Expenditure at the Year End. This is based on JPAG Guidance:

2.4. An authority’s statement of accounts needs to be in the form set out in Section 2 of the
Annual Governance and Accountability Return. The figures entered in the relevant
cells are the authority’s receipts and payments for the year, or its income and
expenditure, as appropriate. This guide assumes that most authorities maintain current
records on a receipts and payments basis and convert these to income and
expenditure at the year end, if necessary. 

This means that throughout the year transactions are added using the R&P approach (entered at the date which they were paid or received). Then at the Year End necessary adjustments are identified, such as outstanding creditors or debtors. These must be entered on to Scribe manually as adjustments using the net amounts. Only the VAT adjustment (debtor or creditor as relevant) is calculated automatically on Scribe. Once entered the annual return will be updated for these values therefore producing the accounts in I&E.

In the new financial year Scribe will automatically reverse the creditor and debtor adjustments for the following Year End calculations. This does mean however that because it is predominantly a R&P system the actual transactions relating to the adjustments need to be entered on to Scribe when actually paid. E.g. the creditor adjustment entries on Scribe in 2023/24 must also be entered as payment transactions in 2024/25 dated the date of payment.

In terms of reporting, the R&P reports (e.g. the Summary Report) will show the actual transactions paid and received in the year itself and do not take into account the adjustments as they are not I&E reports. There is a a YE Summary Report within the Year End (I&E) menu which does include adjustments and this will show you the full picture for the year.

Many users working in I&E will have a cost centre set up called 'Year End Adjustments' or similar with cost codes beneath named 'Year End Debtors', 'Year End Creditors' etc. Then when a payment is made relating to a creditor adjustment from the prior year it is coded to the year end code so as not to affect the budget in the year. The Summary Report can then be filtered to only show certain cost centres, e.g. excluding 'Year End Adjustments' which will then provide a true picture of the actual I&E spend against the budget in the year