IMOS - Voyage Period Journals

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🔑  This is a Key Topic, with high value for all users.

Expenses are incurred during a voyage that needs to be allocated on a period basis. With Voyage Period Journals (VPJs), you can create Voyage Journal Entries for Vessel Daily Cost (Hire), Voyage Bunker Cost, Bareboat Daily Cost, TC In/TC Out Bunker Adjustments, and Victualling in a centralized way. You can create these Journals according to the Voyage Completion Date, or cumulatively according to a specific date.

With the Modify P&L Calculation Options Module Right selected under Financials Actions in Security, you can select or clear the P&L Calculation Options in the top right corner of this form. Without it, you can only use this form with the P&L Options as set by the configuration flags beginning with CFGDefaultPnlCalc.

Creating Voyage Period Journals

Typically, VPJs are run when a voyage is completed or at the end of the accounting period. For voyages that are in progress when the journals are run, journals will be overwritten the next time the journals are run.

1. Do one of the following:

   • On the Financials secondary menu (…), under Period Closing, click Voyage Period Journals. A blank form appears.

   • On the Voyage P&L, click Voyage Period Journals. The form appears with information filled in for the vessel and voyage.

   

2. Period Through: Please select one of the following below to specify the period through which the expenses will be classified.

   1. Voyage Completion:

      1. This is most commonly used as all of the bunkers and hire expenses are finalized once the voyage completes. So, the account only has to run VPJs for each voyage once to reclassify all of the actual hire and bunker expenses for the particular voyage from the B/S (Balance Sheet) account to the P&L account.

      2. Date: Some organizations run VPJs for all voyages at the end of each month. IMOS will calculate the bunker and hire expenses for the voyage by this date.

      3. Please note for ongoing voyages, the calculation will prorate to the percentage of voyage completion.

         1. Example: If you have a voyage that commences on March 25, 00:00h and ends on April 6, 00:00h, then the voyage is 50% complete by March 31, 00:00h. If you enter March 31 in the Date field, IMOS will only reclassify 50% of the voyage’s actual bunker and hire expense to the P&L. The actual bunker and hire expense is according to the Voyage P&L Actual column, which implies some of this expense is still projected and subject to change. However, once the voyage completes, that month's VPJs will make sure the total expenses that are reclassified to the Voyage P&L are all Actual.

3. Filters:

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      1. The filters can be used to specify the voyage for which you want to run VPJs. If you leave all filters empty, all the open voyages will be calculated.

4. Select the calculation Basis:

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      1. The default options for a normal VPJ calculation would be to have the Period Journals selected and set the Basis to Recalculation.

5. P&L Calculation Options:

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   2. Using the filters, you can create a list of journals that spans across multiple vessels/voyages. You can use multiple filters at the same time.

      1. To hide all the posted retrieved records and recalculate the result, select the Hide Posted check box.

6. Click .

Generating Voyage Period Journals

Types of Journals:

After clicking on the Calculate button, the line item(s) will appear for each vessel/voyage with different Journal Types. 

• Bunkers: Voyage bunker cost, including off-hire bunkers.

• Hire: Voyage hire cost, including all Time Charter (TC) Periodical cost like Hire commissions, off-hire commissions, CVEs, etc.

• Lease: This is for long-term TC lease accounting, which will not be covered in this course (not shown in the screenshot).

After right-clicking on each line item menu, you can select either of the following:

• Voyage Details to open the voyage in the Voyage Manager.

• Preview Journal to open the Bill Viewer form. The Bill Viewer includes the details of the Journal.

  

• Delete to delete all non-posted journal entries of a particular type that are linked to the voyage.

Then, to select the records you want to post, select their checkboxes in the S column at the right, or select the Select All checkbox > click Create Period Journals on the toolbar > A message will tell you that the journals have been generated and are ready to post.

To see a report with the details of all the Journal Entries to be generated in the calculation, on the toolbar, click Report.

Posting Voyage Period Journals

The Ready to Post Journals appear on the voyage Invoices panel, Post Invoices list, and the Transaction Summary list with Counterparty name XJOURNAL.

To post the journals, see Post Invoices.

Some period costs, like TC Hire and Bunker expenses, although incurred during one voyage, might not be totally consumed in that voyage. Such costs are allocated among voyages by using VPJs to match actual expenses and posted invoices from a financial perspective. For bunkers, this allocation is based on the quantity of bunkers consumed. For hire, this allocation is based on the number of days within a voyage.

This means that in the PnL Posted column, the above costs will only populate after their respective periods or the whole voyages period VPJ has been generated and posted. These items will not appear in the posted column simply when the invoices have been posted.