Short term debt

This parameter defines the period (in month) where the payment obligations of a company are as Short term. 
If this parameter is set up as 12 months:

• the debts with a due date lower to 12 months are as short term,
• the debts with a due date bigger to 12 months are as Long term.

Depending on the legislation, the accounting of the debt is different whether the debt is short or long term.

This is the case of the accounting of lease contracts in the Spanish legislation. The payment obligations due to a lease contract have to be posted taking into account this classification of the debt.

This parameter allows, in the generation of accounting entries of a lease contract, several main issues:

• in the creation of a lease contract: the total debt of the company is posted in two lines, 1 for the Short term debt and 1 for the Long term debt,
• reclassification of the debt: when the process is posting the payments of the lease contract, it checks if the date matches with a period indicated by this parameter. If the parameter is set to 'Yes', the process makes the new journal entry with the reclassification of the debt. With a value of 12 months, this journal entry is done in the month 12, 24, 36,...