An invoice arrives in December and pays for next year's membership. Another arrives in January for work done in December. In both cases the document's date and the year the cost belongs to are not the same year, and only one of them is negotiable.
The Cut-off tab on an invoice moves the cost or income to the year it belongs to. It does nothing until you ask it to: every invoice is booked on its own date until you open that tab and change it.
Where it is
Open an expense or an invoice and go to the Cut-off tab. The invoice has to be approved first — a cut-off moves the cost or income of a journal entry, so there has to be one.
The three options
As dated. The default, and where every invoice starts. The cost or income is booked in the financial year the invoice is dated in, and nothing extra is written.
Move to another financial year. The whole amount is recognised on a date you pick. Leave the date blank and it goes to the first day of the next financial year, which is the common case: a December invoice for next year's subscription.
It works backwards too. Set a date in the previous year and the cost is recognised there instead — the January invoice for December's work.
Spread over the service period. The amount is recognised month by month across the period printed on the invoice, weighted by days. A twelve-month membership starting in November puts two months in this year and ten in the next, each in its own month.
This option is only available when the invoice states a service period. Financica reads that off Peppol/UBL, Factur-X and Stripe invoices automatically; an invoice that does not state one has nothing to spread across.
Pick one, press Save, and the entries appear underneath.
What it writes
Two entries, or more if you are spreading:
- a cut-off entry dated at the end of your financial year, which takes the amount off your result for that year, and
- a recognition entry in the target year, which puts it back.
The balance waits in between on one of the standard accruals accounts (490, 491, 492 or 493 in the Belgian chart), which is exactly where an accountant expects to find it. Each year's result is right on its own, and the two entries net to zero across the pair.
The Entries section below the options is read from your ledger, not from a setting. What you see there is what is actually booked.
What it never touches
VAT. The VAT on the invoice stays on the invoice's date, because VAT is due when the invoice is issued, not when the service is delivered. A cut-off cannot change a VAT return you have already filed, and it cannot change one you are about to file.
What you owe or are owed. The supplier is still owed the money on the invoice date, and the customer still owes it on the invoice date. Only the cost or income moves.
The entries are locked
Open one of the generated entries from Transactions and it says where it came from, with a link back to the invoice, and it cannot be edited or deleted there. They are rewritten from the invoice every time the cut-off changes, so the Cut-off tab is the only place that decides what they say.
Changing your mind
Pick a different option and save — the previous entries are removed and replaced, never added to. Switch back to As dated and they are removed entirely.
If you edit the invoice's amounts afterwards, the cut-off follows: it always defers what the invoice currently says, not what it said when you set it up. Unapproving or voiding the invoice removes the cut-off along with the posting.
Limits
A closed period is refused. If the financial year you are moving out of, or the one you are moving into, is closed, Financica will tell you which date is blocked rather than write into a locked period. Reopen it in Settings > Accounting periods if the change is one you mean to make.
Invoices in a foreign currency are not supported yet. A cut-off pair would translate at two different exchange rates and manufacture an exchange difference split across two years, which would be wrong in a way that is hard to see. Rather than invent a number, Financica refuses.