Hello,

It depends upon your Tax Basis!!

If you are on Cash Basis Accounting....You technically do NOT record the invoice... you ONLY record the payment. Hence you would record the payment with a date of 12/31/202X (the year you want the expense) and you can notate in the memo the invoice #, etcetera.

If you are on Accrual Basis Accounting....Let's say the invoice is dated 01/19/2023, but you want the expense to be in 2022 (because the goods/services were in 2022)....

FIRST: You record a GJE dated 12/31/2022 for the exact amount of the invoice, notate in the memo line exactly what it is for (services, goods, and the invoice date and #) ...

DEBIT: "EXPENSE" account 

CREDIT ACCRUED EXPENSES (liability acct)

THEN... Record the Invoice with the date of the Invoice and all the details and for the ACCOUNT you will enter "ACCRUED EXPENSES" (which gets recorded as a Debit to that account lowering the balance)...

THEN PAY THE INVOICE AS YOU NORMALLY DO (through "Pay Bills")

If you receive an invoice that is SPLIT between fiscal years- for example an electric bill - some of it is for prior year and some is for current year.... follow the same instructions above...record the GJE for Accrued Expenses amount only for the amount that is to be in the previous year....then when recording the invoice, you put Accrued Expenses Account for the amount of the invoice that was for previous year(which matches the GJE) and notate the memo section and the next "Account" line will be the current year Expense Account Amount...then pay the invoice as you normally would through "Pay Bills"

Hope this helps!!

I've been doing bookkeeping since 1994

ETK