Overpayments
If an overpayment is received, a portion or the entire amount of the payment can be left unapplied and then associated with future charges.
If the overpayment is to be refunded, it must be applied to any existing charge (even if it creates a negative balance). Then a refund adjustment can be made. If no existing charge is available to apply the overpayment to, a Miscellaneous Charge should be created, where the refund adjustment can be applied to. The payment and refund adjustment should both be applied to this charge.
Unapplied Payments With No Open Charges to Apply to
Once you’ve Posted a Payment, you no longer can edit the total Amount deposited so any additional transactions would have to be handled thru a Charge or Adjustment. Payments were posted in full during the period of the initial recording (applied + unapplied amount= total deposit recorded). For example: you see the entire amount posted in April 2022.
I have applied and posted a payment leaving an Unapplied balance of $1000.00, but I do not have any open charges to apply this credit to and will not have any in the future.
Here are steps to show how you can move these types of Unapplied Payments to Applied:
- Create a Charge you can apply the credit balance to
- Apply the credit to that Charge. This will clear it from your “Payments: Unapplied” list.
- If needed, issue a Refund
- If refunded, enter an additional Adjustment to reduce the charge you created so no open balances are remaining.
Since I don’t want to alter (by entering Adjustment) any Days Care records, suggest adding a miscellaneous charge like “Starting Balance”.
(*You can piggyback on any current charge types you have set up in your system or create a unique one for these types of transactions. See how to add new Charge Types at the end of this document)
Think about if you want this charge to Post to your accounting software in the next close or not…the payment was already posted in a prior period. To exclude this charge from posting, just select “Do Not Post” on the Billing tab for the charge:
Now you have a charge to apply the remaining balance to:
Go back to that original payment and edit: Now there is a Starting Balance charge to apply the overpayment to, just select and Save.
If I need to issue a refund, now I have a charge and payment applied that I can apply the Adjustment for Refund to…
Select and Save: You will leave this to Post since you posted the initial deposit, you want to post the refund.
Now you will see the refund and the open charge. You can enter one more Adjustment to reduce the Fee on the charge you created so you do not have any outstanding balances. Since you selected do not post for the initial charge, you select do not post for this fee reduction entry.
The only item that will be in your Ready to Post is the actual refund:
*Note the refund does not appear as a (-), instead it Debits/Credits the accounts to reverse the original payment. In this example, the Cash Account is "10-97-900-990-2030-000" and the other is Receivable.
If you need to add a special Charge Type to your system like Starting Balance, that can be added under Administration>Organization Settings>Organization Preferences>Financials tab in the Accounts Receivable Setup Section (see example below)