The short answer
Nothing has been spent yet, and that is correct.
Handing money over is a loan, not an expense
When you write a cheque to a clerk to go and buy cement, the school has not bought anything. It has moved money from one thing it owns (the bank) to another thing it owns (a debt the clerk now owes the school). The school is exactly as rich as it was a minute ago.
The entry recorded is:
| Account | Amount | |
|---|---|---|
| Debit | Staff Advances — the person's name | 10,000 |
| Credit | Bank / Cash | 10,000 |
Both of those are assets. Neither is an expense, so your Profit & Loss does not move.
The expense appears when the bill does
When the clerk returns with a bill for 9,600 of cement, that is the moment the school spent money, and that is what the Profit & Loss should show — under Building Repairs, or whatever the bill was actually for. The remaining 400 is still school money the clerk is holding, and it stays against their name until it is returned or spent.
Why this matters more than it sounds
If issuing money were treated as an expense straight away:
- Your monthly expenses would jump on the day a cheque was written, not the day anything was bought.
- Money still sitting in somebody's pocket would look like it had been spent.
- "What did we actually spend on repairs this month?" would have no answer.
- Nobody could list who is still holding school money — the figure would have been wiped out at the moment of issue.
Seeing who is holding what
The Issue Payment screen has a column, They already hold, showing what each person is carrying across every requisition — before you hand them any more. It is worked out from the ledger itself, so it cannot drift out of step with your books.
A setting you must get right
Issue Payment refuses to work until Staff Advances points at an account whose type is Asset. If it points at an expense account, the screen says so and stops. That is not a fault — it is EDUBase refusing to make the exact mistake this page is about.