Charging Interest on Accounts - Balance

A common Accounts Receivable task is to charge interest on one or more overdue accounts (i.e. accounts with a balance due).

To charge interest - on the running Balance:

Position on any table of accounts (blue).

This can be anywhere accounts appear as rows of a (blue) table, including reports.
Either position on the account you want to charge interest for or else mark a block of accounts.

If no block is marked then the current account is processed.

If you want to explicitly select a number of accounts to be charged then use the Block>Start and Block>End commands to mark the accounts in a block.

Note: total accounts and branch folders will be skipped.
Issue the Tools>Charge Interest>Balance command.

A charge interest balance settings window will appear such as that shown below.
Fill in the settings fields.

The meaning of each setting is described later in this section.
Click the <Continue> button or press <F5> to charge interest on the account's running balance.

When <Continue> is clicked, transactions are created to record the interest.

Charge Interest - Balance - Settings Field Summary

Line	Field	Values	Comments
1	Date of interest charge		Interest transactions created, if any, will have this date.
2	Begin interest date		Ledger items dated on or after this date (and on or before the end date) are processed.
3	End interest date		Ledger items dated on or before this date (and on or after the begin date) are processed.
4	Account Item View	ledger debit credit open closed
5	Journal		The journal used for interest charge transactions.
6	Use separate journal entries	yes no	`yes` will create a separate transaction for each account. `no` will create a single transaction with a distribution detail item for each account.
7	Interest account		The name of the account to balance the interest charge transaction (e.g. for Accounts Receivable an Interest revenue such as "Charged on Overdue Accounts").
8	Interest description		The value to put in the interest charge transaction description.
9	Interest rate		If the *Calculation type* is set to `sum`, then the interest amount is calculated by multiplying the sum by the rate entered. If the *Calculation type* is set to `daily`, then the interest amount is calculated by converting the annual rate entered to a daily rate and multiplying the ledger running balance by this daily rate. The total interest charged is the sum of all the daily rates.
10	Calculation type	sum daily	If the *Calculation type* is set to `sum`, then the interest amount calculated will be determined by multiplying the sum of items in the date range by the interest rate. If the *Calculation type* is set to `daily`, then the interest amount is the daily rate applied to the account balance for each date in the range.
11	Interest method	simple compound	Only applicable if the *Calculation type* is set to `sum`. `simple` will not include other interest charges in the sum. `compound` will include other interest charges in the sum.
12	Interest identifier		Only applicable if the *Calculation type* is set to `sum`. This is a keyword which is used to identify prior interest charges. If this keyword is found in a transaction's description (case insensitive), then the transaction is known to be a prior interest charge.
13	Skip negative items	yes no	Only applicable if the *Calculation type* is set to `sum`. `yes` will ignore negative items posted to the account.

Sample Interest Transaction

Above is a sample result showing a monthly interest charge.

NOTE: that a record of the calculation performed is put in the notes view of the interest transaction.