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Cannot specify date & location of Directors meeting in Dividend Vouchers
(a problem report with a suggestion!)
When a bank entry is categorised as a "Dividend" or (with the early Aug '09 release of FAC, many thanks guys!) by creating a pair of Journal entries showing the movement of funds from the "Dividend" Account to a Dir Loan Account, a Dividend voucher is created.
As well as the dividend amount and tax credit, the voucher shows entries for a number of items - location of meeting, date, directors present, signature etc, but there is no means of populating these fields with the relevant data (unless I'm missing something!).
While this auto-creation of dividend vouchers is great, perhaps a better way about things would be to have a new page, say in the Accounting menu, in which a user (with Director or Accountant Role & associated privileges) could "Declare" a dividend, and supply the data which is shown on the voucher; including uploading (or reusing a previously uploaded) a signature GIF/JPEG image.
This would provide the opportunity of warning the user declaring the dividend if the total divs declared for that financial year would exceed the current profit after tax for example.
Finally there would be a system of checkboxes (or similar) for each registered shareholder (those users with non-zero balances in "Capital" Accounts(?)) to specify if the voucher should be emailed to them, and if they would like the dividend paid as cash or to their Dir Loan Ac (if they are entitled to one). Also useful would be a box specifying the date in which the div was actually paid (auto filled by the FAC)
If the Dir Loan Ac is specified, then the requisite journal entries would be made there and then, showing the div(s) being paid to the respective Dir Loan Ac(s)
If the cash option is selected, then when the next bank statement is uploaded, entries can be explained as dividends from a pick list (with user, date & amount variables), similar to the way invoice receipts are explained.
It also allows users to specify whether or not dividend vouchers should be created at all or not (they may be provided by another source), which would satisfy Charles Verrier's issue in http://getsatisfaction.com/freeagentc...
Finally the page would also support an upload of the actual minutes of the meeting that took place, rather than just a vague nod that a meeting took place (time & place unspecified!) which is what we have at the moment.
When a bank entry is categorised as a "Dividend" or (with the early Aug '09 release of FAC, many thanks guys!) by creating a pair of Journal entries showing the movement of funds from the "Dividend" Account to a Dir Loan Account, a Dividend voucher is created.
As well as the dividend amount and tax credit, the voucher shows entries for a number of items - location of meeting, date, directors present, signature etc, but there is no means of populating these fields with the relevant data (unless I'm missing something!).
While this auto-creation of dividend vouchers is great, perhaps a better way about things would be to have a new page, say in the Accounting menu, in which a user (with Director or Accountant Role & associated privileges) could "Declare" a dividend, and supply the data which is shown on the voucher; including uploading (or reusing a previously uploaded) a signature GIF/JPEG image.
This would provide the opportunity of warning the user declaring the dividend if the total divs declared for that financial year would exceed the current profit after tax for example.
Finally there would be a system of checkboxes (or similar) for each registered shareholder (those users with non-zero balances in "Capital" Accounts(?)) to specify if the voucher should be emailed to them, and if they would like the dividend paid as cash or to their Dir Loan Ac (if they are entitled to one). Also useful would be a box specifying the date in which the div was actually paid (auto filled by the FAC)
If the Dir Loan Ac is specified, then the requisite journal entries would be made there and then, showing the div(s) being paid to the respective Dir Loan Ac(s)
If the cash option is selected, then when the next bank statement is uploaded, entries can be explained as dividends from a pick list (with user, date & amount variables), similar to the way invoice receipts are explained.
It also allows users to specify whether or not dividend vouchers should be created at all or not (they may be provided by another source), which would satisfy Charles Verrier's issue in http://getsatisfaction.com/freeagentc...
Finally the page would also support an upload of the actual minutes of the meeting that took place, rather than just a vague nod that a meeting took place (time & place unspecified!) which is what we have at the moment.
I’m happy about the auto-creation of dividend vouchers, but the way in which they are issued needs to be relooked at
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Inappropriate?This is a great improvement but I think you'll have to be careful with interim and final dividends as different dates are applied to the dividend. ( In simple terms, interim when paid and final when voted on by shareholders).
You may also need to include an option to adjust for waived dividends.
I’m not being pedantic. Promise!
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Inappropriate?Olly - just sweeping up suggestions from the last few weeks - thanks for your input.
We now have an accounting-specific to-do list which includes enhancements to this dividend management process. I'm not sure whether we'll end up handling uploaded signatures, or emailing out vouchers, but there are quite a few improvements we could make. -
Inappropriate?Great idea Olly and I'd still like to know how best to populate the meeting date, location, director's present fields in the dividend voucher without having to take it all into acrobat and edit the pdfs.
I’m confused
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Inappropriate?Can you not print them out and write them on? That's what I do; it might seem like a long-winded way of doing it but you should be keeping a hard copy of the vouchers along with your payslips and other personal tax documents anyway as they are proof of income.1 Comment
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This is one of the best points
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A handwritten date/location etc but printed dividend amounts would cast doubt on the authenticity of vouchers should HMRC or anyone else want to check. Not great news for paperless offices either.
And it still doesn't answer the point that the date of a meeting to decide a dividend distribution (be it full or interim) should be input to FAC, rather than inferred from when payments categorised as dividends are made. -
Inappropriate?"A handwritten date/location etc but printed dividend amounts would cast doubt on the authenticity of vouchers should HMRC or anyone else want to check"
No offense, but that sounds like complete nonsense. What are you basing that on? All that matters is that you have a voucher, its signed and dated and there was enough profit to declare a dividend.
Anyway, lets be honest here - we're mostly one-man companies. Who actually has a meeting for their dividend payments? Do you sit there on your own with a cup of tea and a biscuit when you have this "meeting"? As far as I'm concerned, date of payment = date of "meeting". The vouchers are a piece of necessary bureaucracy, nothing more. -
Inappropriate?I wouldn't be concerned about the handwritten date/location. In my opinion they make the document "more" valid. HMRC will not have a problem with any document which is (correctly) signed and dated.
I’m happy.
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