deleting old customer invoices

[Louise Weed]

I have several old (outdated) invoices that accidentally transferred onto the Peachtree 6.0 from the old 4.0 I was using previously. My current Peachtree Accounting Period is Jan. 1, 2001 to Dec. 31, 2002. (That is what I have access to when I click “Change Accounting Period”.
Some of the invoices I want to get rid of in this current 6.0 version of Peachtree, were never paid, or were paid and somehow never received.
I want to get rid of these invoices. Right now, when I run an accounts receivable report, the invoices show up on the report and in my totals. That makes the totals incorrect.
How can I eliminate the invoices?
I have at least 3 invoices were the payment is less than what was invoiced, leaving a balance of a few cents or a few dollars still open. Would I handle these the same way as I do an entire invoice?
Please note! I do not use Peachtree for tax reporting. We have an accountant that handles all the accounting for us. I enter customer invoices, receive payments, enter vendor bills, pay bills and use Peachtree to write employee checks. Then our accountant takes the weekly totals and does the rest of the bookkeeping for us. I just don’t want to do anything that will cause a problem when I try to close the books at the year end.
Can you help?

[dringstrom]

Keep in mind that version 6.0 is no longer supported by Peachtree Software. Their current policy is that they support the 3 most recent versions, currently 7.0, 8.0, and 9.0/2002. Later this year, if they stick to their historical pattern, version 10.0/2003(?) will render 7.0 obsolete, and therefore unsupported.

Regardless, there have been major improvements to the software since version 6, so you may want to consider upgrading.

With regard to your question, if you go to the Tasks, Receipts screen, you can change the Cash Account to a different account, such as one of your sales accounts. Bring up each invoice that you want to eliminate, and click them off to be paid. This will post a negative amount to your sales account, and remove the invoices from your A/R aging. Be sure to change your cash account back to the normal account when you complete this task, otherwise you'll be posting checks to your Sales account, which can make a hash of your banking situation when your balance no longer has integrity.

[Deborah Bean]

The only problem with handling this in the Receipts function is that it will affect your current year's income or expense accounts. If the value of the Accounts Receivable account is not used, for instance, if you use Cash accounting method, you might not want the numbers to affect the current year. Many companies are more interested in the income and expenses, rather than the balance sheet accounts.

In this case, go into the Customer Beginning Balances and create a credit memo for the amount of the outstanding invoices. Then apply the credit to the outstanding invoices and write off the old invoices.

Whichever method you choose, get together with your CPA to discuss the ramifications of any action you take.