I’m wondering how other people handle this scenario:
Client wants to pre-pay for some credit (because they get a better rate when they pre-pay), so I need to send them an invoice for their accounting folks to issue the check.
I get the check, enter it as a Credit and mark the Invoice as paid.
This seems to screw up my balances in Invoice Ninja by having a net positive in the amount of the credit (since it was paid as a credit and through an invoice).
I suppose I could delete the invoice, but then my client doesn’t have the history of the invoice they paid.
How are others handling this?
I understand your situation.
I have a similar issue in regards to the payments part.
I have clients who have had to pay me without there actually being a service/product provided and not even been ordered as yet.
What I did with one client is I created an invoice which just has a general code product for example Pre-pay and the description is Prepaid money towards future invoices.
Let’s say it is R500 (my currency is South African) then I send this through.
Then I mark this as paid when it is paid.
At this point still they have not yet decided. But on the books they have a paid invoice and I have a paid invoice on by system.
Let’s say 2 weeks down the line they decide they want a product.
I now create a credit note for that initial invoice. Now there account reflects a positive of R500 but no invoice.
At such time I can create an invoice and apply the credit to it.
Even if it is for R200. The R300 balance credit is still there for later use.
Let’s go a bit deeper.
Let’s say now they have R300 credit but want a product that is R500. They need to pay an additional R200 but in advance again.
So then I do the same. Create a pre pay invoice. Send it. They pay. I mark as paid. I credit it.
Now I have a credit of R500.
I just create a new invoice and then I apply the credit there.
Hope that makes sense and helps.
I am not sure if you can customize the template for quotation and instead of the title being quotation change the title to be ‘Proforma Invoice’ and change the title of quote number to be ‘Proforma Quote Number’
Accountants usually accept this for payments. And then you can just convert to an invoice.
In your scenario, your “paid” amount is now too much, isn’t it? The paid invoice and the credit would total R1000 (the R500 they paid for the invoice, and the R500 you gave them as a credit).
The credit part of this works fine, but having the extra invoice is what (I think) is screwing up my totals for income, and outstanding balances due.
No it isn’t.
For clarity a credit note is to cancel off an invoice.
If an invoice has no payment attached to it then the incoice will minus the invoice amount from the clients total outstanding.
If the invoice has a payment attached to it then Crediting the invoice will add the amount to a positive account a balance.
Perhaps you do not have credit notes enabled in Settings>Invoice Settings>credit notes=enable
Example.
Client outstanding balance is R0
Invoice 0001 is for R500
Payment 0001 is for R500
So client outstanding balance is now R0
Then a credit note C0001 for invoice 0001 for R500 is fine thus canceling invoice 0001 and adding +R500 to the clients account balance.
Client account balance is now +R500
Tinvoice 0002 is for R500
Credit C0001 is applied to invoice 0002 to balance everything out.
I confirmed that sending an invoice and then using that payment as a credit causes too much money having been paid.
If I look at a Client’s “Paid to Date”, it’s including payments made on the invoice (to pre-pay for the credit), as well as payments made by the credit.
Hello again
I apologize for late reply.
You are correct in what you are saying.
Credit seems to not be a credit note.
Credit seems to be a way for us to add credit to a person’s account. For example like a gift card sort of thing. Instead of a credit note which balances off an invoice.
My mistake. I hadn’t actually checked it out thoroughly.
What I suggest you do is that you goto your settings and templates and your quotation template.
And yiu change the word quotation to proforma invoice. This way you can email this through for payment and then you can convert it to an invoice and edit it and enter a payment when you get paid without affecting the client account.
I also request that the credit feature be changed so that it is a virtual negative and it subtracts from invoice values.
Also useful if I create an invoice and the user cancels the order or returns the item I would need to submit a credit note and new invoice.
Thanks
mikejandreau,
This might be a late reply, but I know the solution for your problem.
Before going there, let me say a couple of things:
- A client might be pre-paying, but they are paying for something, otherwise (in many parts of the world) you would be committing fraud; that means that your initial invoice should be a real invoice (for future services/products) and so should not generate a credit. When you later invoice the client for the actual services you could either deduct the previously paid value from the product/service price or (better in my opinion), include an additional item saying "Invoice X" with a negative value. I understand that client expectations are diverse so keep reading for the solution you actually asked for.
<li>Credit, invoices and credit notes are separate concepts in InvoiceNinja and it kind of makes sense they are (although it makes things less obvious to work with)</li>
<li>A credit is either just money that your client has given you for no services/products (as said, I think that in many parts of the world this has no legal reasoning and there is no document you should provide for it), a gift credit you are offering (which again, I don't think has a legal document for it) or, money you should have returned to your client when issuing a credit note but both agreed it would stay with you for future payments</li>
<li>A credit note is a document for revoking a previously invoiced item, either because it was wrong or product was returned (or in your case, it could also be because services weren't actually done) - this affects client balance. In InvoiceNinja a credit note is just an invoice with negative balance. For that reason it works very well with payments - meaning that it still needs to be paid: either paying back to the client or giving them a credit</li>
I have a complaint with InvoiceNinja here, that you can’t make a partial payment to client without creating a credit. But this last part is where your solution is:
- create the invoice for your pre-payment and enter the payment for it
- create a credit note with same (negative) amount and enter a payment of 0 for it: InvoiceNinja will tell you that payment is more than balance and a credit will be created for client, say OK and there you go: Paid to Date and Balance are 0 and Credit is of the amount you received
I hope this helps!