Understanding & using your Accounts Receivable Ledger

The Accounts Receivable ledger is used to track customer balances, whether there is money owed or a credit given to a customer. From here you can adjust account and invoice balances as well as generating statements for billing!

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Account Balances

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How are negative balances are created?

  • If you invoice a client and press Add to A/R Tab on from Checkout, the balance of the invoice will show as a negative balance for the selected customer. This goes against their Balance Owed.
  • Transactions that are not finished will also be sent to the A/R. whether you had saved the invoice to come back to later or if the payment has been declined after pressing Accept Payment.
  • Lastly, if you accept only a Partial Payment, the remaining balance will also be counted against the Balance Owed.

To see more on how to bill your customers for their Balance Owed, see HERE.

How is the Balance Owed reduced?

  • Any time a successful transaction (cash, credit card, check etc.) is processed against an open or partially paid invoice, your customer’s account balance is reduced.
  • Applying Store Credit to a customer account will reduce the Balance Owed. It is recommended to then apply credit from the customer account to satisfy any open invoices.

What if I accepted a Check or eCheck that later bounces or I need to make an adjustment for another reason?

No problem, this can definitely happen. Either hover or the invoice in the ledger or open the actual invoice and then press Adjust Balance Owed.

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You will have the option to adjust from either the Sales Account or the Customer’s Store Credit. Use the Sales Account to adjust the actual amount of the invoice or Store Credit to satisfy the balance with the customer’s available balance.

What does Store Credit (Unapplied Balance) mean?

You will see this on the invoice level of the ledger. If you’ve taken money upfront without first generating an invoice for services or products rendered, a Store Credit will be added to your clients account. This can happen in a few ways:

  • Gift Cards that were sold. In this case, money was collected but services were not rendered.
  • You take a deposit for service.

How do I Apply Store Credit to an Invoice or Bill?

Whenever there is a store credit on file, the system will automatically ask you if you want to apply it to any new or unpaid invoice as you go through the checkout flow.

Simply create your invoice for goods or services provided, press Accept Payment and you will see a screen where you can apply all or some of your customer’s store credit to that invoice.

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Taking a Deposit

  • To take a deposit or apply a store credit simply click Accept Payment or Take Deposit from the customer profile. When you get to the tender selection page, choose the payment method, and enter a description titled: Deposit. See HERE for more detail.

Refunds

  • What Happens if I Refund an Invoice?
    • When you refund an invoice the full balance of the invoice will be refunded to the customer in the case of a card or ACH transaction and your records indicate that you have issued a refund for any other type of transaction.
    • On the “Transactions” screen, you will also see a corresponding record of the payment reversal. The table shows client name, the card used, the date of the transaction, and the action of the reversal with a negative amount reflecting the refund.
    • If you click the little icon to the far right, you will be able to see a full receipt detailing all of the specifics of the refunded transaction including the item/service(s) and reference to the invoice number that you had refunded.
    • Customer account balance is handled automatically to adjust for the refund amount. This is not true if you issue a refund on the transaction level.
  • What if I refund the Transaction but not the Invoice?
    • Refunding the transaction, but not the invoice, will yield different results. As mentioned earlier, the table on the “Payments” screen will show record of the refund. It will include client name, the card used, the date of the transaction, and the action of the reversal with a negative amount reflecting the refund.
    • The invoice will move into either an Unpaid or Partial payment status
    • The amount refunded will be now be shown as owed on the invoice. To balance the invoice, you will need to adjust the amount owed in needed.
  • What if I refund part of the transaction but not the whole transaction?
    • First off, you may be asking why would you ever refund PART of a transaction. One example of when you would do this would be if you incorrectly charged the customer a higher amount than intended. Also, if your customer returned part of the items you had sold them and are only looking to be refunded for that amount.
    • Refunding a part of the transaction can only be done on the payment level, not an invoice level. Refunding part of a transaction, unlike refunding a full transaction on the payment level, will link the invoice and the payment.
    • First, you will see the amount refunded show up on the “Transactions” screen, as it has in the past two examples.
    • Now, if you move onto the invoice level, you will see that the invoice will be marked with a yellow “Partial” banner. This means that the invoice is partially paid, which would make sense since you gave the customer back some of the money they used to satisfy that invoice.
    • The amount refunded will be now be shown as owed on the invoice. To balance the invoice, you will need to adjust the amount owed in needed.

Want to learn more? Make sure to check out our YouTube Channel, other helpful guides and more how-to guides!

Updated on January 19, 2021

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