What is the best date to use for reporting?

[fbromeiro]

In our company, we are currently using the ‘transaction date’, but I am not sure if this is the best field to base our general monthly reporting. I would like to know if you use a different date, such as payment date, approval date, sent for payment date, what is the best practice here?

We find challenging to use the transaction date because the reports are always fluctuating, since the employees can enter months old transactions. So, I am not sure if we are capturing the best picture by the end of the month.

I would appreciate if you can share how you handle the monthly reporting in your company.

[KevinD]

In my expericence, I have seen a lot of our customers use the Sent for Payment Date. This is the date the Processor gave the report final approval. This way they can easily build a report by Sent for Payment Date to see all reports approved in a month. 

[JessicaL]

We use Paid Date. 

[Jeremy]

We use the paid date so that it matches to the GL posting.  As you mentioned with the transaction date, the numbers change it each month as some employees are late in submitting.  It also does not tie back to the monthly GL reporting.

It is not a bad idea to include both dates on your report and then for a given time period you can compare transaction vs paid if needed.