What is the write-off?
Summary
Definition
Individual Value Adjustment vs. Write-Off
Write-Off in billwerk
Individual contracts vs Multiple contracts
Use case for Individual contract
Creating new customer
Adding a contract
Adding a payment
Create an Invoice manually
Write-Off
Impact
Definition
The term write-off is known in a financial world. It is defined as an accounting process that decreases or removes the value of an uncollected accounts receivable recorded on the general ledger.
Note
Note: A tax write-off is simply a recorded reduction in assets that is allowed to be taken as a deduction on a tax return. Another example could be a company's building being destroyed by natural causes. It will be written-off to remove the building from the books because the asset is no longer valid.Write-Off also applies to uncollected receivables, which are managed in billwerk.
Individual Value Adjustment vs. Write-Off
There are several ways how you, as a merchant, can react to customers that do not pay open receivables for a long time. In accounting, two different methods can be applied.
Individual Value Adjustment - used only when there is still a chance the debt is going to be paid by the debtor.
Tax accounts are not touched during this process. The value of the receivable is adjusted based on the remaining probability of payment, but it is not counted as an uncollected debt.
Write-Off - performed as a final step when there is no realistic chance that the customer will pay the debt. It is used to have your accounts balanced in the end. This way allows you to have a better visibility of still open receivables.
Note
Note: Please be aware that these receivables have not been paid for, so they are still visible as unpaid receivables in the open items report.
Tax account is affected by the write-off process. Taxes that have been paid for a receivable by you, are being reimbursed.
Note
In billwerk, we only support Write-Off, not Individual Value Adjustment.Our subscription management system allows you to send payments reminders and dunnings to your customers, this is done with the assumption that eventually the customer will pay the open receivables. If that is not the case, billwerk provides a simple solution to write off the debt in just one final step. Receivables can only be written-off after a due process has been followed by you to ensure there is no realistic chance the customer will pay his dues.
Note
Note: From accounting point of view, the due process that needs to be followed before performing a final write-off, is required to be defined and agreed on independently of billwerk with your tax accountant, based on your business model.Note
Please, make sure that you use our write-off functionality after consulting with the tax accountant.The following image describes the creation of a receivable and writing it off from an accounting perspective:
Whenever a revenue account creates a receivable, a tax is added to it simultaneously. To avoid paying taxes for something that was never consumed, we write off the debt to correct it.
When we are sure that we are not going to get anything from the receivables account, we move revenues to the bad debt allowance account. Tax account is being corrected into the amount that has been written-off.
Write-Off in billwerk
Note
Once the preconditions for a write-off are fulfilled on your side, there are additional things to consider when you want to use billwerk to perform a write-off.billwerk sees write-off as a final action in contract, after you are sure, you will not get any more money for the open receivables issued to the customer. When writing off a contract, all open receivables are written-off at the same date.
Given the preconditions from an accounting point of view, for instance, it is not feasible to write off a contract while still creating new invoices. Therefore, we put the following preconditions in place that needs to be fulfilled in a contract, before the write-off can be performed:
Note
The contract has an end date and has been fully billed
The contract has open receivables
Write-Off's booking date is in current month or earlier
Booking date should not be in a closed accounting period
Latest invoice date must be on or before write-off booking date
When performing a write-off, you can choose a booking date when this should be executed in accounting. For example, if you want to write everything off at the end of a month, you can choose the date accordingly.
In the write-off process, the billwerk system finds all open invoices in the contract and writes them off. If there are any open non-invoice receivables, which result from rare data patterns in our system, we still try to make a write-off possible by finding fitting open invoices for the remaining amount and writing them off. This amount is limited to the total amount of open items in the contract.
After a contract has been written-off, the contract can't be re-activated in any way. You can not update it or undo the write-off in any way. If a customer wants to continue to use your service, after you have written-off his contract, the only way to grant him access once again is to create a new contract. If a customer pays for a written-off receivable, the write-off can be undone in your accounting or use the payment to start a new contract manually.
Individual contracts vs Multiple contracts
We implemented Write-Off on the contract-level. There are different ways to proceed with the Write-Off feature based on numbers of contracts that are going to be written-off:
Individual contract - merchants are able to write off one specific contract
via UI
via API
Multiple contracts - merchants are able to write off multiple contracts at once
via UI
Use case for Individual contract
Creating new customer
Adding a contract
Adding a payment
We can now see that the contract has been created in the Contract Ledger segment. Inside the inline-list there is one invoice as well. Let's simulate what happens next by adding a payment.
Go to Perform Action drop-down list located in the top-right corner and select Capture ext. Payment/Refund.
To simulate a payment, we need to insert data like Booking Date (set to 25/03/22) or Amount (89,25 EUR) to applicable textboxes. Press OK button.
Created Payment 1 is enlisted in the Contract Ledger segment with the balanced Invoice.
Create an Invoice manually
At this stage, we need to simulate the future to show what happens to the subscription by adding another invoice manually.
Write-Off
Impact
on reporting data
Written-Off receivables still count as revenue for billwerk.
Written-Off invoices are still contained in the open items reporting, so you know that there has once been a receivable to be paid by the customer.
We added a new column to most reports that includes open items or revenues, which indicated if/how much of the receivable has been written-off
on passive deferrals
All remaining passive deferrals in a contract are resolved at the booking date of the write-off, and they are combined in a single early resolved deferral, that is marked with “(Abschreibung)” at the end of the current booking text.
on payment escalation
Escalation status before the write-off is preserved to indicate that the customer did not pay for the written off receivables.