If the district has a purchase order that has a retainage requirement you can follow the following procedures. You will first create the Purchase order for the original contact amount. When you make payments, we recommend you process them as follows:
1. When the invoice / payment certification is received you should add the purchase order to your batch and create payment records. One (highlighted in red below) for the payment to the vendor and one (highlighted in purple) for the retainage. The retainage payment record MUST be marked as a “No Check Payment).
For this example, the total Contract is $1,000,000 and the retainage is 10%. The first payment application was in the amount of $100,000, so, $10,000 (or 10%) will be withheld for retainage.
2. When you Reserve the Check Numbers you will see that the system assigned a check for the $90,000 payment line and a No Check Payment for the retainage payment line
3. After you print the checks and mark the reserved checks paid, if you run a check register you will see the 2 payment lines that were posted to the purchase order.
4. And if you review the payments on the purchase order, you will see the 2 payments that were processed and charged (expensed) to the expense account line.
5. The next step is to enter a balance sheet adjustment (journal entry)
6. The last step would be to create a Retainage Payable purchase order. The purchase order MUST be charged to the same general ledger account that was credited in step #5. We recommend you use the same PO number that was used for the construction project and add text after the PO number to note this is a retainage PO.
The PO should be made to the same vendor as the original PO for the project.
7. For the remainder of the project, when you make periodic progress payments, you will follow steps #1 through #5. You do not have to create a separate purchase order for each retainage (but you can, if you want). You would go back into your retainage purchase order and increase the retainage PO by clicking on the Adjust Balance button. Fill in the information and click the adjust button
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8. When your project is complete, you can pay the retainage purchase order just like you would any other purchase order.
PLEASE NOTE: Construction projects usually span multiple budget years. When you are rolling over purchase orders, you can NOT roll over a purchase order charged to a balance sheet account. So, in the new year, you will need to create a new purchase order for the accumulated retainage. There are no journal entries required for this procedure.
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