Sales Invoices - Ability to specify a % of invoice held on retention
We would like to indicate a specific percentage of retention money held by our client on our sales invoices to them. This retention is then payable to us after a specific amount of months.
We also need a way to keep track of the total amount of retention held by a client
Anthea de Bruyn
shared this idea
Hi community, in lieu of having a direct feature for this I wanted to highlight the option shared earlier on in this thread (Thanks Peter!) for those it may help.
As mentioned, currently you could enter a separate line on the invoice, with a negative amount for the retention value, and code this to a 'customer retentions' account in the Balance Sheet. You could also add a comment in the Description field, indicating the cumulative retention value.
The Account Transactions Report can then be used to manage the values being carried forward.
Being open, this isn't something we have planned for development at this time, however we'll continue to gather the interest here, and if there's any changes we'll let you know.
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Michelle Turner
commented
being able to keep track of retention is a critical part of accounting within our business and the fact that there is no plans in place to implement a solution is disheartening to say the least.
The solution posed by the admin team isn't a solution at all, when you need to include the retention portion in the invoice total, having it as a negative line item reduces the invoice total; you may as well not do anything. -
Linda Carrington
commented
It is incredible cumbersome having to use workarounds for our construction clients.
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Tania Filipas FMAAT AATQB
commented
It will be great to have the feature showing on Invoices with CIS LABOUR AND RETENTION FOR CONSTRUCTION COMPANIES
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Christo van der Merwe
commented
Peter Miles, thank you, I am using your method and found that by entering the correct data in the description field of the retention line on the invoice, makes reporting so much easier. I use the Account Transaction report which I then filter based on the data entered on the invoice. You have to be consistent in this.
I would however want to see the ability to handle retentions more effectively. Xero was supposed to make accounting easier, but I still have to use too many excel sheets to keep track of when certain amounts are due. -
Freya Pieroz
commented
My clients do use credit notes and a retentions receivable asset account or other similar workarounds. Unfortunately, this means creating a separate retentions receivable account for each of their customers and given that there's multiple projects and contracts for each of those customers and the retentions receivable can only be reconciled with the customer's statement on a per-project basis, it's still something that needs my clients to maintain a manual spreadsheet OR create a separate receivables account for each project (which gets very unwieldy very quickly).
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Admin Admin
commented
Hi, we have the same problem as all companies within the construction sector that use Xero. Some projects can run for over 2 years or even longer and every month we suffer retention money on sales invoices which we record under the Retention Held account, but... the main problem is that Xero can't calculate the lump sum amount for retention held under the specific project (if we have more jobs from one main contractor-client) for the whole period which would be due 12 months after practical job completion only, so we need to calculate every invoice manually for every job separately. Also, it could flag/notify that retention is due soon. Plus it's not taxed correctly if the job is continued for a few years. It's a critical overseen by the Xero team.
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SHS FENCING Limited
commented
The ability to record retention payments held back from construction works (UK) on invoices, this is a must feature for us to be able to record retention held back on invoices. I am pretty sure Quickbooks have this feature.
Come on Xero get with the times
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Peter Miles
commented
Hi Anthea,
Yiu can do this by using a separate line on your invoices, a negative for the retention value, and code this to a customer retentions account in the Balance Sheet. You can run a transaction report to manage the values being carried forward. We also add a comment in the narrative, indicating the cumulative retention value, hope this helps.