Financial Statements: Customer Ledger vs. Balance Sheet discrepancy

SUGGESTED

We have numerous companies.  This particular transaction affects two of them.  It occurs in May 2018.  The transaction for Company A is kind of complex:  the tenant didn't really pay us the money...we applied their deposit to their past due invoice (past due invoice was originally through Company B).  The money has not actually been transferred from Company A to Company B.  However, Company B has invoiced Company A for that money owed.  I am looking at the Financial Statements for May.  On our Balance Sheet for Company A, we have five A/R balance amounts that show, in addition to the three other Company A/Rs.  I have found that months prior to May, adding four of those A/R amounts plus the three other company amounts equals my Customer Ledger balance amount for Company A.  However, May's Customer Ledger amount is higher than the Balance Sheet by the $161.35 for this transaction.  I am wondering if there needs to be an adjustment in GL #'s or transaction types to get these numbers to balance properly?

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    SUGGESTED

    If the customer ledger is higher than the BS, I would suggest it is because there is a transaction in the sales or deposits that debits and credits the A/R GL account.  For example is you start off with a balance in the customer ledger and the general ledger of $100.00. In the next month you create a transaction to the customer for $50.00 but you choose the same A/R account rather than a sale account, the customer ledger would show $150.00, but the BS would only show $100.00.  To find that transaction you need to run the Sales Journal Report for the dates in question. Under the account ID column look for an entry that goes to the same A/R account.  If you can't find it in the Sales Journal Report, try the Cash Receipts Journal Report.

    It is possible that a general ledger journal entry was made to the A/R account directly affecting the general ledger which does not post back to the customer ledger. You can run a general ledger report for the A/R account for that month, look at the column JRNL to see if there are entries with GEN (a general ledger journal entry) and investigate why they were made.

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    SUGGESTED

    Set up a due to xyz company (Liability) in one company and a due from abc (Asset) in the other.  Use those accounts to balance the two. 

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    Thank you for the responses!  We finally got it figured out!  Turns out that we originally had a Credit Memo, but no Invoice to offset said Credit Memo.  We were on the right track, but didn't get it all the way through.