I am sure you have all seen most or all of this material before, but maybe something maybe new and perhaps helpful.

From Wikpedia:

Title:

Voucher

Text:

A voucher is a bond which is worth a certain monetary value and which may be spent only for specific reasons or on specific goods. Examples include (but are not limited to) housing, travel, and food vouchers.

The term voucher is also a synonym for receipt and is often used to refer to receipts used as evidence of, for example, the declaration that a service has been performed or that an expenditure has been made.

...

Accounts payable

A voucher is an accounting document representing an internal intent to make a payment to an external entity, such as a vendor or service provider. A voucher is produced usually after receiving a vendor invoice, after the invoice is successfully matched to a purchase order. A voucher will contain detailed information regarding the payee, the monetary amount of the payment, a description of the transaction, and more. In Accounts Payable systems, a process called a "payment run" is executed to generate payments corresponding to the unpaid vouchers. These payments can then be released or held at the discretion of an Accounts Payable supervisor or the company Controller.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voucher

---------------------------------

I guess 3 meanings:

1. voucher = bond

2. voucher = receipt

3. voucher = internal accounting document to produce a payment to an external entity

--------------------------

The Swedish word "verifikation" is definitely not, in general, 1 or 3.

Option 2 would work, perhaps, but that would just mean that "verifikation" = "voucher" = "receipt". Then at least FAR and Gullberg would make sense to me.

The problem is just that "voucher" has at least 2 distinct meanings within accounting (2 and 3), so it seems difficult to use it.

I guess one way of avoiding mixing up 2 and 3 would be to call:

3: payment voucher (I believe this is how it is used)

2: receipt

--------------------

Another problem with using voucher (meaning receipt) is that in the U.S. sometimes a separate voucher is made out, which is not necessarily a "source document", but for businesses in Sweden, a "verifikation" is a "source document".

I guess "verifikation" translated as "receipt" or "receipt voucher" would perhaps handle it in the small/medium business case, but may not be general enough.

--------------------------

From Swedish Wikipedia:

Verifikation

Verifikation är inom bokföring ett underlag för en post i bokföringen. Det kan till exempel vara en faktura som kommit in. När verifikationen kommit in till den som bokför så numreras den och minst två konton belastas (vid dubbel bokföring), minst en krediteras och en debiteras.

Link: http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verifikation

-------------------------

So now we can look up

underlag

in FAR:

supporting documents
supporting information
documentation
basis

Gullberg also supports "supporting documents".

--------------------------

If we now look at English usage and Paul's comments above (source document was mentioned twice), "source document" starts to look pretty good.

English reference:

The source document is the original record of a transaction. During an audit, source documents are used as evidence that a particular business transaction occurred.

Link: http://www.netmba.com/accounting/fin/process/source/

--------------------

This reference do mention many examples of "source documents" and they do potentially seem to be valid examples of "verikfikation" and "underlag".

-------------------------

The above definition of "source document" is exactly how "verifikationer" are used in Sweden (when presenting material to a "revisor" (auditor)).

I think

Swedish
verifikationer
English
source documents

is a good and more generally applicable translation than receipts or vouchers.

Great job, Paul!!

Thanks for the disussion, Paul and David.

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 5 hrs (2010-06-16 23:51:14 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

Just a little more extensive definition of verifikation:

Enligt bokföringslagen måste det för varje affärshändelse finnas ett bokföringsunderlag i form av en verifikation. Verifikationen är ett skriftligt bevis på att affärshändelsen har inträffat. Exempel på verifikationer är kvitton, fakturor, insättnings- och uttagsbekräftelser från bank-/postgiro, räntebesked, lönelistor osv.

Link: http://www.starta-eget.se/ordlista.php?ord=verifikation