Support Suite

When receiving money on an invoice, you may encounter a scenario where the customer sends you a payment that exceeds the invoice balance.  You can try applying the payment amount on multiple invoices, but you may still be left with an undisbursed amount.  There are a few things that you can do in this situation.  In the screenshot below, a payment amount of $416.80 was received and keyed in.  The customer has 3 open invoices, and all three have been checked to receive money on.  They add up to $316.80, so that leaves a $100 undisbursed amount.  This is the amount of the overpayment.

Once you are ready to deal with the overpayment, hit the Post button.  You will be presented with the following three options: credit the customer's account, refund the customer, & write off the amount.

Credit The Customer's Account

If you choose the option to credit the customer's account, a customer credit will be created.  In this case, the credit will be in the amount of $100.  The customer credit can be applied to another open invoice in the future.  This is especially useful for customers that do a lot of business with you.  Hit the Accept button to post the payment to the selected invoices and to create the customer credit with the remaining balance.  You will receive the posted successfully confirmation when the operation is complete.

You can check a customer's available credits in the Credit History tab of the Account Manager.  Here is the one that was just created.

Refund The Customer

You also have the option to refund the customer.  This is useful for customers that do not do a lot of business with you, or for overpayments with an excessive amount.  Choose this option and hit the Accept button.  You will be presented with the Write Checks screen, and the amount of the overpayment, along with the customer's information, will automatically be populated for you.  Hit Save & Close to print the check so that you can send it to the customer.  The payment will also get posted to the invoices you selected.

There is additional documentation available that covers the process of writing checks in greater detail.  It can be found here:

• Write & Print Checks

Write Off The Amount

Your final option is to write off the amount, and is a good choice if neither of the two other options are viable for you.  If you select this option, you are then able to select which ledger account to use for the writeoff.  The default is the Writeoff Income ledger account, which is of the revenue type.  You can also choose whichever ledger you want.

Once you hit the Accept button, the payment will get posted to the invoices you selected.  The appropriate ledger transactions will also be made for the writeoff.  If you go to the Ledger Account Transactions screen for the ledger account you choose, you will see the transaction.

That should cover the three options of what you can do when a customer sends you an overpayment for an invoice.