When you use the Synergist revenue management feature you typically either defer income on sales invoices, or recognise income on transactions called revenue recognitions (RRs). Both types of transaction carry a deferred amount, which is defined as the difference between billed amount and recognised amount:
Deferred = Billed - Recognised
This deferred amount is then normally included on a revenue journal that you prepare from Synergist as part of the month end routine. However, just knowing the total deferred amount on a job is not the whole story - if you are deferring income on a sales invoice this needs to be journalled to a liability account in your balance sheet. If you are recognising income on a RR before a sales invoice is raised this needs to be journalled to an asset account. Synergist takes care of this by specifying a deferred balance type on sales invoices and RRs - Deferred or Accrued:
This determines how the difference between billed and recognised on the sales invoice or RR is reported by Synergist. The Deferred and Accrued balance on a job is shown on the WIP Retro export, which is normally used as the basis for a monthly revenue journal. The Period Profit export also shows these values, based on sales transactions dated in the period specified.
In most simple scenarios you will never need to change the default value on new transactions, Synergist will set it correctly.
If the first transaction on a job is a sales invoice, as in the above screenshot, the revenue balance type will default to Deferred. From this point on subsequent sales transactions, be they invoices or RRs will also default to the same revenue balance type of deferred.
If the first transaction on a job is a RR the revenue balance type will default to Accrued. From this point on all subsequent sales transactions will use this revenue balance type of accrued.
The objective in both cases is to bring the balance to zero, whether it be a Deferred balance or an Accrued balance. Clearly, in order to do so transactions after the first need to affect the same balance, until such time as that balance is zero and the job can be closed.
You should never have a Deferred and an Accrued balance on the same job. If that were to happen you could have the same value in both balances, which would cancel one another out in Synergist terms, allowing the job to be closed. However, your account journal would still show the two balances.
The more complex scenario, where a sales invoice is raised (and deferred) on one job - the "billing job", and then work is done on new jobs, and recognised separately on these "work jobs" DOES require the revenue balance type to be adjusted.
In this situation your billing job will be correctly set to have a revenue balance type of Deferred. However the work jobs will want to use a default revenue balance type of Accrued, because they are being started with a RR. This is incorrect - you are not accruing new income, you are reducing the deferred balance on the revenue job, so you must set the revenue balance type on the first RR on any work job to Deferred. This will set the default for this work job and subsequent RRs on the job will default to Deferred.
The objective here is to recognise the deferred invoiced amount from the billing job on the work job or jobs. Once this is done the deferred balance across the group of jobs will be zero and they can all be closed at once with a final RR or write off as normal, by moving billed amounts away from the billing job onto the work job or jobs.
Special note for clients upgrading from versions prior to Synergist 12.3
Earlier versions of Synergist displayed a single value for revenue, labelled as deferred. In these versions it was necessary for whoever prepared the revenue journal from Synergist to know if the balance on any given job was a deferral or an accrual, and code it accordingly.
Transactions on an open job at the point of upgrading to Synergist 12.3 are given a revenue balance type of Deferred. New transactions after the upgrade will continue to default to Deferred. If the balance on such a job is in fact a revenue accrual, then it will be necessary to continue to make an adjustment on the revenue journal to reflect that.
Alternatively, the balance could be zeroed with a RR using Deferred revenue balance type, then re-created as an accrual with a second RR using Accrued revenue balance type. New transactions after this will then default to revenue balance type Accrued.