Collecting online — the accounting-side checklist
Before the first dirham comes in, seven accounting decisions save months of catch-up. The list, to walk through with your accountant.
The technical integration of a payment collection system always gets planned. Its accounting integration, almost never — and that is what costs late evenings at year-end. These seven points are settled in one meeting with your accountant, before launch.
1. Decide where the entries live
The provider's portal is not your books: it is a source. Decide from the start what is authoritative — your accounting software — and at what rhythm payments enter it: continuously, daily, weekly. The right rhythm is the one someone will actually keep.
2. Create the accounts before the first payment
Taking payments online brings several accounts to life: the suspense account for money collected but not yet paid out, the fees account, the refunds account. Creating them afterwards means reclassifying history. Creating them before takes ten minutes.
3. Separate gross, fee and net
The temptation is to book the net amount that lands in the bank. Resist it: revenue is the gross amount the customer paid, the fee is an expense. Booking the net distorts revenue, VAT on fees and every comparison with your sales. The export must show all three columns — otherwise, change the export.
4. Choose the date that is authoritative
A payment has several dates: creation, collection, bank payout. Your accountant must decide once and for all which one carries the sales entry — usually the collection date — and which one carries the cash movement. A one-sentence written convention avoids month-end differences that cancel out without ever being explained.
5. Treat refunds as movements, not cancellations
A refund does not erase a sale: it follows it. Two distinct entries, each dated, linked by the original transaction reference. That is what lets you answer in one query the question "why did March's total change in April?".
6. Keep the provider's reference everywhere
The transaction identifier must live on the invoice, on the entry, in your database. Monthly reconciliation then becomes a join instead of detective work by amount and date. If your accounting software has a free field per entry, that is where it goes.
7. Prepare the audit file
A tax audit will ask for: the list of payments collected, the fee documentation, the match with bank statements. All of that exports in a few clicks if the previous points are in place. Do the exercise once as a drill: export a full month, reconcile it, time it. If it takes an hour, your organisation is ready; if it takes a day, better to find out now.
The meeting to hold
One hour with your accountant, this list in hand, before launch. Every point is decided quickly; none is caught up quickly. And if your accountant asks a question the provider cannot answer — which date is authoritative? where is the fee in the export? — you have just learned something important about the provider.
Written by ChariPay Team.