Intercompany Billing

When you use the Multicompany feature, Intercompany Billing is the process of redistributing general ledger financial information between companies that share labor or expense resources on the same project.

The Intercompany Billing process allows each company to match costs with revenue and assess profitability. This automated process also creates intercompany accounts receivable and intercompany accounts payable entries on the general ledger, keeping each company's Balance Sheets in balance.

You can share employee resources among companies while maintaining accounting for both labor and expense charges associated with shared work efforts. For example:

  • Labor Charges — An employee from one company can charge time to another company's project, phase, or task on his or her timesheet.

  • Expense Charges — An employee from one company can charge travel, meals, and other expenses to another company's project on his or her expense report.

Generate Intercompany Invoices and Accounts Payable Vouchers

You can generate invoices and accounts payable vouchers related to intercompany transactions. These intercompany invoices and accounts payable vouchers do not affect the general ledger. They are designed to help you track intercompany transactions on accounts receivable reports and track intercompany accounts payable vouchers on vendor (accounts payable) reports.

Note that using detailed subledgers requires additional setup steps.

Intercompany Suspense Account

When a transaction involves another company, some time will pass between the transaction posting date and the date that you run the Intercompany Billing process. To support the need to balance accounts during this time, you must create an intercompany suspense account as part of configuration.

Intercompany Organization

You must also specify an intercompany organization, so that Vision knows how to handle implicit postings for intercompany transactions.

Process Intercompany Billing

Click Accounting > Intercompany Billing to display the Intercompany Billing form. This form displays only those posting logs that contain intercompany labor or expense entries. Use this form to complete the Intercompany Billing process.

Alternative to Intercompany Billing

Instead of using Intercompany Billing, you can use the work breakdown structure to divide a project into phases and tasks, then assign different pieces of the project to different companies. If you do this, employees enter charges to the project, phase, or task component that has been assigned to their company through the organization structure.

This approach holds each company tightly accountable for its portion of the contract. The project’s compensation can be explicitly divided among the companies and each company can establish a separate budget for their work.

However, there is significant administration required to set up and monitor the additional phases or tasks needed for this approach. The contract amounts need to be negotiated between the companies. As described in "Info Center Access in a Multicompany Environment," each company controls which project components can receive intercompany charges from employees.

Related Topics:

  • Approaches to Intercompany Billing
    There are three basic approaches to Intercompany Billing that significantly affect the way your company Income Statement reflects your operations. The approach you use depends upon the focus of your companies.
  • Income Statement Results: Labor
    Compare the effect on Income Statement labor results if you use an employee-centered approach to intercompany billing versus a project-centered approach.
  • Income Statement Results: Expenses
    Compare the effect on Income Statement expense results if you use an employee-centered approach to intercompany billing versus a project-centered approach.
  • Balance Sheet Results Labor
    Compare the effect on Balance Sheet labor results if you use an employee-centered approach to intercompany billing versus a project-centered approach.
  • Balance Sheet Results Expenses
    Compare the effect on Balance Sheet expense results if you use an employee-centered approach to intercompany billing versus a project-centered approach.
  • Agreeing on an Internal Transfer Price
    Whether you are transferring revenue or overhead between companies, you must establish a transfer price. For revenue-producing projects, the transfer price determines how the profit is split between the companies. For overhead, the transfer price determines how the costs are split between the companies.
  • When to Process Intercompany Billing
    In general, you process Intercompany Billing whenever you want to assess the Income Statements of your companies.
Parent Topic: Multicompany Overview