How Do I Make / Pay Client Invoice Payments?
When you receive a payment from a client in relation to an invoice this needs to be entered into BusinessMan using the ‘Make Payment’ option on the ‘Payments’ tab within the ‘Financial - Clients’ area. To get to this module, select:
- Menu
- Clients
- Financials button (Under Account Information tab)
See the buttons highlighted in red below:
When using this option a new window will appear listing all completed and outstanding invoices for the selected client. See the image below:
Before allocating payment you must enter some of the payment details highlighted in red.
- Select a ‘Payment Method’ from the dropdown list of options, which will appear when you click in the field.
- Enter a ‘Bank Reference’ (not required if integrating with QuickBooks*)
- Enter a ‘Cheque/Ref No.’
There are 3 options which can be used to allocate a payment amount against any outstanding invoices:
- By Selection
- By Fixed Amount
- Credit Note
Only one method can be used at any one time, changing the allocation method will cause any allocated payments to be cleared while this window is open.
By Selection
This option allows you to select the invoices to pay by clicking in the ‘Mark To Pay’ field alongside the related invoice. This will copy the outstanding invoice amount into the payment field and automatically enter the payments date. If you want to change the payment amount for the invoice you can enter a new value by typing in the new value into the ‘Payment’ field.
As you make payments you will notice that the total ‘Payment Amount’ value will automatically accumulate and show the total payments to be made therefore you do not need to enter a default ‘Payment Amount’ value.
By Fixed Amount
This option allows you to allocate a predefined ‘Payment Amount’ value to one or more of the outstanding invoices. The payment amount you allocate to each invoice will be deducted from the predefined payment amount and you will see the ‘Remaining’ value reduce. Once the ‘Remaining’ amount reaches 0 no more payments can be allocated to outstanding invoices. To allocate a payment to an outstanding invoice you will need to click the ‘Mark To Pay’ field which will copy the outstanding value to the payment field. If there are not enough funds to pay the total outstanding amount then a part payment will be made which will be the value that is remaining from the predefined payment amount.
Credit Note
This option will allow you to allocate any available credit notes against an outstanding invoice by way of payment. To use this option instead of using the ‘Mark To Pay’ field you need to use the ‘Credit Note’ button.
This button will search the system for available credit notes for the selected client which will then be showed in a dialog window for you to select. Selecting a credit note will allocate the credit amount to the outstanding invoice and also enters the credit note number. If the selected credit note has greater funds than the outstanding invoice then only the outstanding invoice amount is deducted from the credit note which will leave the credit note with a new value for its available credit amount.
Pay All Selected
The use of the ‘Pay All Selected’ option will automatically allocate payments to all the outstanding invoices, this option is not available if set the allocation method is set to ‘Credit Note’. If the allocation method is set to ‘By Fixed Amount’ then payment allocations will stop once the entire predefined amount has been used.
If you wish to clear a payment made against an outstanding invoice just click the ‘Delete’ icon (red ‘x’) alongside the invoice. If you do not intend making a payment against an invoice you can remove it from the list by clicking the ‘Omit’ button (Omit icon) for the invoice. Notes can also be added to the payment by using the ‘Note’ button (Pencil icon) alongside the invoice.
Save & Post
Once you have allocated payments to the required outstanding invoices you can then commit these payments and post them to the internal ledgers by clicking the ‘Save & Post’ button. After the payments have been successfully committed and posted the payments window will close.
NB. If you are using integration with QuickBooks then the payments will also be exported seamlessly to QuickBooks as part of the ‘Save & Post’ option. In order for these payments to be successfully exported to QuickBooks the client and the invoice against which payments are being made must have been previously entered into QuickBooks.