Wedding Event Planner Books CleanupWhen a deposit was posted as the fee.
The bank shows one arrival. The books need three labels before that arrival means anything.
Bring that depositWhat the winter check usually is.
Picture a composite, not a client. A couple pays a deposit in the winter so a date will be held. Vendors are booked in the spring. The wedding is in early summer. The fee for planning is earned on that day, if the contract says so.
The winter check is easy to post as income because it is the first money the year sees. Publication 538 generally treats an advance for services as income when it is received, and it also describes the narrow deferral for a portion earned next year. Posting the whole check as this year's fee, with no split, skips both the publication and the contract.
We start by naming the check. Hold for the date. Payment of a vendor the planner will pass through. Or the fee itself. One check can be a mix. The mix is the reason the three amounts exist.
Vendor bills that are still open.
The florist, the room, and the band can all be committed and still unpaid on the morning of the date. Their invoices are not your fee. They are amounts still owed, or amounts the couple asked you to pay on their behalf.
If you pay a vendor from the deposit, the deposit goes down and the bill goes down. Income does not appear just because money moved. If the couple pays the vendor directly, that bill never belonged in your income at all. The close asks which of those two paths the file actually used.
A bill sitting in a drawer is still a bill. Leaving it off the books so the month looks quiet is how the fee gets overstated. We would rather see an open bill than a fee that was never earned.
The fee, on the day the contract names.
Some contracts earn the fee on the wedding day. Some earn a slice at booking and the rest at the rehearsal. The sentence in the contract is the sentence the books should follow, after the federal timing rule is applied.
A fee that waits is a liability or unearned amount until that day. Calling it revenue in the winter makes the winter too strong and the summer too thin. The return then follows a year that never happened.
A sample package price is not printed. Your fee is whatever the contract says. Our job is to keep that number in its own column until the date, and to say which year the publication puts it in.
