Under what circumstances would the invoice date and posting period be different? Can you provide examples please?

Date drive tax and period derive gl. If you want to claim vat in current period you’ll see date in this month and period can be next month of in GL it needs to hot next month.

I'm not getting your example, can you explain more? @sam1128

You receive an invoice dated 31/12/2023 today, because it got lost in the post, or the email address they had was wrong, or you just failed to code it. Almost certainly your December period is closed for AP, so you let it land in Jan 24 (or if you're really tight on closing AP, it would land in Feb 24) But best practice is still to enter the invoice with the correct date etc etc - you wouldn't change the document date to 1st Feb

Date drive tax and period derive gl. If you want to claim vat in current period you’ll see date in this month and period can be next month of in GL it needs to hot next month.

The Tax Period drives tax.

Ok, that makes sense, thank you all, a follow-up question, let's say we received a late invoice on Feb 1st for services rendered by the supplier in January and December, in that sense, shall we post the invoice on Feb 1st choose the posting period January and December?

no typically your accountants would have raised an accrual for the expense in December and January. You code the invoice into the February period, and reverse your accruals into the Feb period as well. If everything works perfectly, the net outcome is Dec: 1 month's expense Jan: 1 month's expense Feb: 0 (2 months expense from the vendor invoice, -2 months expense from the reversal of the previous accruals)

@Jon Kears Sounds great but it would only work if we knew beforehand exactly how much the invoice amount would be, in reality, it doesn't work most of the time, what would you do if you had done this and the invoice turned out to be different (higher/lower)?

same process, but you end up with a residual amount (the "catch up" in Feb). So if the original accrual was for $2000, but the invoice ended up being for $2100, you'd have Dec $1000 Jan $1000 Feb $100 ($2100 - $2000) Note depending on your processes, you might have an early or a late close of AP. If the invoice was emailed to you on the 1st Feb, you might be able to process it in Jan, in which case you'd have Dec $1000 Jan $1100 ($2100 - $1000)

Thank you so much @Jon Kears