Accounts Payable and Multicompany

When you use the Multicompany feature, vendors are set up at the enterprise level, but individual companies still manage their own vendor accounting information.

Because multiple companies in a single enterprise often use the same vendors, all non-accounting vendor information, including vendor names and addresses, is established at the enterprise level and shared by all companies.

However, before an individual company posts transactions for a vendor, and includes that vendor in its accounts payable subledger, the company establishes its own accounting-related settings for the vendor. For example, each company can generate its own 1099 for a vendor that multiple companies use. You use the Accounting tab of the Vendor Info Center to specify these settings.

Each vendor invoice belongs to the company that was the active company when the invoice was entered and posted. However, a given vendor invoice might include line items expensed to projects belonging to other companies (for example, to account for a shipping bill that includes mailing expenses for multiple companies' projects).

Vendors Available to a Company

The vendors available to a company are determined by settings on the vendor's Accounting tab in the Vendor Info Center:

• The Approved for use in processing for Company xx option must be selected and the fields must be filled out.
• The vendor type must be available to the company. Each vendor type has accounts associated with it. Depending on which accounts are assigned to a company, only the vendor types associated with those accounts are available to a company. The drop-down list in the Type field on the vendor's Accounting tab lists only those vendor types available to the company.

Bank Codes Available to a Company

Accounts payable uses bank codes to identify the banks on which payments may be drawn. If a company is also using Multicurrency, the bank code also defines the currency in which payments must be drawn on that bank.

Liability Codes Available to a Company

Accounts payable vouchers use liability codes to define the implicit posting of the voucher amount to an account number and to a company. Accounts are assigned to a company.

Maintain Separate Balance Sheets

When you enable the Multicompany feature, Vision automatically selects the Maintain separate balance sheets by Organization option in Configuration > Organization > General.

Require Entry of Voucher Numbers

You can select the Require entry of voucher numbers option on the Accounts Payable Tab of Configuration > Accounting > System AP option to control the assignment of voucher numbers.

• If this option is not selected, the voucher number field does not appear in the voucher data entry header. Instead, at the time of posting, Vision automatically assigns a number to the voucher.
• If this option is selected, and the Multicompany feature is enabled, the Start Voucher and End Voucher fields display on the Accounts Payable tab of Configuration > Accounting > Company AP. You must enter start and end numbers in these fields to define a range of voucher numbers for the company.