Hi everyone,

I run a prepaid digital plan reseller business where I fund a vendor account upfront and draw it down as I make sales — essentially a float-based model, similar to a gift card or prepaid airtime reseller.

The correct accounting treatment requires that every sale credits a Prepaid Vendor Balance asset account (not an expense account), reducing the float as sales occur. On the balance sheet this looks and behaves exactly like inventory.

The problem: Zoho Books only allows expense-type accounts as the purchase/COGS account on service items. So while the invoice correctly debits COGS, it cannot credit my asset account — which breaks the balance sheet treatment.

What I actually need:

DR  COGS                      $18.80

    CR  Prepaid Vendor Balance        $18.80  ← asset account

What Zoho currently forces:

DR  COGS                      $18.80

    CR  [expense-type account only]   $18.80  ← incorrect for this model

My current workaround: I use a dedicated clearing expense account on the item, then manually reclassify to the asset via journal entry each week. It works but it's manual and doesn't scale well.

Feature request: Allow asset-type accounts to be assigned as the purchase account on service/non-inventory items, or introduce a prepaid credit drawdown mechanism for digital service resellers.

Question for the community: Has anyone automated this reclassification — perhaps via a custom function or Deluge script triggered on invoice approval? Would love to eliminate the manual step.

Thanks!