Automatic Accruals and Deferrals

Summary

With automatic accruals and deferrals, KLARA correctly allocates expenses and revenue to the appropriate months—without any manual entries.

At a glance:

• What: Enter the service period for a transaction, and KLARA handles the allocation.
• When useful: When charging for a service over several months or fiscal years.
• Visible in the journal: under "Delimitation" (accounts 1301/2301).
• Where to enter it: see Service period in order management.

Accruals and deferrals—when are they relevant?

An accrual or deferral ensures that an expense or revenue appears in the month in which it actually occurs—regardless of when the invoice is issued or paid. 

This is important as soon as a payment affects several months or fiscal years, for example in the case of an annual subscription, insurance, or rent paid in advance.

By entering the service period (e.g., 09/01/2026–05/05/2027), such accruals and deferrals are recorded. KLARA automatically allocates the amount to the correct months/years. This keeps your reports comparable, and your accounting complies with the requirement for period-based accruals and deferrals.

Service period

When a period is entered in the optional "Service period" field for transactions, the expense/revenue is assigned to the selected period and distributed evenly across the months within that period. This is particularly necessary when a transaction affects multiple fiscal years. 

When the service period is entered, KLARA automatically creates the correct accruals and deferrals and distributes the amount evenly across the months. 

Journal—accrual and deferral entries

These entries are hidden by default in the accounting journal. When the "Accrued/Deferred" option is enabled, the entries are displayed. The automatically created entries are shown in the journal under the name "Delimitation." The tags for expenses and revenue are retained. For the automatic entries, KLARA uses accounts 1301 (active accruals and deferrals) and 2301 (passive accruals and deferrals).

If you do not want to create automatic accruals and deferrals when posting, the "Service period" field must be left blank. To remove existing automatic accruals and deferrals, you can remove the service period from all transaction lines in the original transactions. The accrual and deferral entries are then deleted automatically. 

Accrual and deferral report

The delimitation entry is created based on an original transaction. The link cannot be accessed through this view. However, there is an overview in the form of a report: Accounting > "Accrual and deferral report" tile

Examples

The following two examples show how the "Service period" field can be used. The examples show how automatic accruals and deferrals work technically. How amounts should be accrued, deferred, and allocated in accounting always depends on the specific situation. Your trustee or tax advisor can advise you on this.

Supplier invoices

In November, a newspaper subscription for one year is purchased. In this case, the service period is 11/14/2023–11/13/2024.

KLARA creates the following entries:

Customer invoice

An invoice for a service provided in December is not sent (and posted) until January. The service period is then 12/01/2023–12/31/2023

Customer invoices