Entering Tentative Receipts to Invoices

Overview

As checks and other transactions are received as invoice payments, they need to be applied to the appropriate invoices so that unpaid amounts can be reduced accordingly.

Comprehensive Unpaid Invoice Report

The easiest way to start the process of applying receipts is to run a query that displays only unpaid invoices. Navigate to the Accounts Receivable homepage and click Comprehensive Unpaid Invoice Rpt.

By default, the report will list all unpaid AR invoices. If desired, apply selection criteria in the query design to limit the scope of the invoices returned. Read more about designing queries in Axiom.

Click directly on the invoice number itself to pull up the detail screen.

Receiving Tab

Click the Receiving tab of the invoice. Start the process by entering the “Check Number” and “Tentative Receipt Date.” The tentative receipt date is the date the money was received by the school, not the date written on the check and not the date deposited in the bank. Later in the process, when the receipts are posted, a posting date will be assigned to the receipts. The posting date should correspond to the date the money was deposited in the bank.

In the “Payment/Deposit Total” field, enter the amount of the check to be applied to the current invoice. If the amount of the check exceeds the unpaid amount of the invoice, only enter an amount that is less than or equal to the unpaid amount. The system will not allow overpayments to be made to invoices.

Finally, verify that the “Cash GL Account” automatically assigned by the system is correct. When your system is initially configured, a default AR cash account is established. If that account is inappropriate for a particular receipt application, simply update the field with the desired cash account.

When these fields have been entered for the invoice header, click Update . Toggle “Receipt In Full?” to “Yes” to apply payment/deposit total to items until exhausted, or check off RIF to denote Receipt in Full for an item.

Marking an AR Invoice for “Receipt in Full”

If you want to apply the “Payment/Deposit Total” specified to the invoice’s unpaid items automatically, toggle “Receipt in Full?” to “Yes” and then click Update AR Invoice Header. The system applies the amount to each unpaid AR item in order of their due dates, payment order (from associated catalog item), and dollar amount until the payment amount is exhausted.

Note that since the due dates in the example above are all the same, the negative amount is specified first and then additional items until the running total of the payment amount is equal to the amount entered in the “Payment/Deposit Total” field.

Marking an AR Item for “Receipt in Full”

If the remaining amount of the receipt (as noted by the “Pymt/Dep Mismatch” field) exceeds or is equal to the unpaid amount of an item, and if you want the unpaid amount of a specific item to be reduced to zero, you can simply click the “Received in Full?” field to “Yes.”  This field specifies that you want the item to be Received In Full.  When you click this field, the system will automatically update the “Gross Receipt” field to match the unpaid amount field. This field helps make the application of receipts to items much more efficient.

IMPORTANT NOTE: You must be careful with this feature, however, when the remaining amount of the receipt is less than the unpaid amount of the item. In these instances, if you toggle “Received in Full?” to “Yes,” the system will force the unpaid amount to be reduced to zero by assigning a “Gross Receipt” equal to the remaining amount of the receipt, and by assigning a “Tentative Discount” equal to the difference between the unpaid amount and the “Gross Receipt”. The net effect of this action will be that the unpaid amount will be reduced to zero and a discount will be posted in the general ledger for the amount of the underpayment. If it is not your desire or intention to offer such a discount, you should not use the “Received in Full?” field in these instances or you should be certain to override the “Tent Disc” by entering $0. If your intent is to offer such a discount, a discount GL account must be specified in your configuration.

Manually Specifying Item Receipt Amounts

To manually apply receipts to items, simply enter the desired amount in the “Gross Receipt” field of the appropriate item(s). If, on occasion, a discount is granted on an invoice, you can enter the amount of the discount in the “Tent Disc” field of one or more items. The “Net Receipt” will be automatically calculated as  the sum of the “Gross Receipt” and the “Tent Disc,” and the system will never allow the  net receipt  to exceed the unpaid amount of the invoice.

When manually applying receipts to items, a good rule of thumb is to start with the negative invoice items that are posted and due first.  This effectively increases the amount available to applying to other invoice items.  Then apply receipts to the positive items until the “Pymt/Dep Mismatch” field has a value of zero.

Eligibility for Posting Receipts

As noted above, when you enter receiving information for an invoice,  you must enter the gross amount to be applied to the invoice in the “Payment/Deposit Total” field.  This amount will be compared to the sum of the amounts applied to the individual invoice items to make sure that the gross receipt amount is completely applied.  If more or less is applied to the items than is indicated in the “Payment/Deposit Total” field, the difference will be noted in the “Pymt/Dep Mismatch” field.  Invoices with non-zero amounts in the mismatch match fields are not eligible for posting.  Be certain to verify that this mismatch amount is reduced to zero before you proceed to process additional receipts.

Undoing Tentative Receipts

In the process of entering the receipt information, it is possible to undo all tentative applications. Read more about undoing tentative applications.

Unposted AR Cash Receipts Report

After you have tentatively applied receipts to AR invoices, they should be verified to make sure that  the total amount received matches the total amount applied to AR invoices. In addition, ensure that discounts are appropriately granted (if at all), and that the “Payment/Dep Mistmatch” amounts are all zero.

If cash receipt batch numbers are required for posting cash receipts at your school, verify that each tentatively applied receipt has a non-zero batch number.

To verify the tentative receipts, run the “Unposted AR Cash Receipts” query located on the Accounts Receivable homepage. This will result is a listing of all unposted AR receipts. If necessary, modify the criteria to get a listing of the tentative receipts you wish to post. Read more about designing queries in Axiom.