AP Trial Balance Shows Negative Amount On Paid Invoices

Problem:

Accounts Payable Trial Balance Report shows negative "Remaining Amount".

Invoices have been imported or entered manually, have been posted, paid,
and payments have posted.

There were no errors during any of these processes.

Solution:

If your Payables Trial Balance Report is showing a negative amount in the REMAINING column, it may be due to your importing invoices with  the POSTED_FLAG, ACCRUAL_POSTED_FLAG, CASH_POSTED_FLAG in  AP_INVOICE_DISTRIBUTIONS table set to 'Y'.


While this is not unheard of, it interrupts the logical flow of  Payables Transfer to General Ledger and, more importantly, the subsequent update to the AP_TRIAL_BALANCE table. Distributions do not transfer to General Ledger if the above named  columns have a value of 'Y' because this value tells the post process  that the item has already posted.

When an invoice is transferred to General Ledger, the AP_TRIAL_BALANCE table is updated using the  invoice_id and invoice amount information from the invoices.


When a payment is transferred to General Ledger, the payment information (as it relates to the invoice) is also inserted into the ap_trial_balance table, (again using the invoice_id). Basically reversing the entry made by the invoice.

So, when you populate the posted flags at the time you import invoices, you are removing their ability to naturally update the  trial balance table.  Consequently, when the payment is made normally  using Oracle Payables, these payments DO naturally update the trial balance table. However, because there was no initial entry to this table from the invoice, the payment entry becomes one-sided.

This  leaves the "Amount Remaining" column of the AP Trial Balance Report  with a negative value.