Resolving Balance Issues

How to identify and correct payment errors in Class Manager

Payment errors can occur for a variety of reasons, such as unassigned payments, overpayments, or duplicate records. This guide will help you identify and resolve these issues, ensuring that your customers' accounts are accurate.

Running Payment Allocation Reports

To get a clearer picture of the payment assignments and ensure everything matches up, use the following reports:

Go to Reports > Billing.
Run either the Payment Allocation Report or Payment Allocation Detailed Report. These reports will help you identify whether payments are assigned to specific invoices and which payments may be unassigned.

After running the report and you see unassigned payments, this can cause a customer's account to show as "in credit," even when no credit should exist. To correct this:

Go to Billing > Payments. Locate and select the payment.
Navigate to the Assignments tab.
To assign a payment: Click the Add button and select the correct invoice to assign the payment to. This will adjust the customer's balance and ensure that the payment is properly allocated.
To unassign a payment: Click the Delete button. This will not delete the payment but will remove the payment association to that invoice. After removing the assignment, the invoice status will be changed to 'Awaiting Payment' or 'Part-Paid'.

Handling Unusual Credit Balances

If a customer’s account shows a credit balance but they shouldn’t have one, this could be due to unassigned payments or other errors. Here's how to resolve it:

Generate an Invoice: If the customer has made a payment but there is no invoice generated for that payment, create the invoice to which the payment can be applied. To learn how to generate invoices or create custom invoices, go here ➡️ Generating Invoices or Creating One-off Invoices
Check for Unassigned Payments: Review the payment records and assign any unallocated payments to the correct invoice as described above.
Check for Overpayment: Verify whether the customer may have overpaid. Compare the payments received with the invoices generated, and if you find an overpayment, you can either issue a refund or leave the credit balance for future use.
Resolve Duplicate Payments: Sometimes duplicate payments are entered in error especially if manually added. If a duplicate payment is identified, delete the duplicate to bring the balance back to normal.

Preventing Future Payment Errors

To avoid similar issues going forward:

Ensure that all payments are immediately assigned to their corresponding invoices.
Regularly review customer billing and payment reports.
Ensure everyone is trained on correctly processing payments and handling overpayments or instalment-related issues to minimize errors.

By following these steps, you'll be able to manage and correct payment errors efficiently, keeping customer accounts accurate and preventing potential confusion for both your team and your clients.