Overpayment/Mistake To Finance Charges
Background
When receiving a customer payment you have option to apply payment to both sales and to Finance Charges. Often users will attempt to record an overpayment to an invoice (ie: to create a credit for a customer) but will mistakenly apply the payment to Finance Charges instead. In most cases this can be resolved by deleting the payment from the Receipts Journal as well as the Finance Charge Sale.
Deleting Standard Finance Charge
As noted above, in most cases, finance charges and payment applied to invoices can be deleted in straightforward manner:
- Go to the Sales module
- Click on the Transaction Journal
- Click on Receipts tab
- Click on the arrow (double arrow) next to the payment
- Select Edit > Delete Payment from the top of the screen
- Click on the Sales tab of the Transaction Journal
- Click on the arrow (double arrow) next to the Finance Charge
- Select Edit > Delete Sale from the top of the screen
Handling Finance Charge Payment Deposits
If a payment was applied to a sale that was in Order Status and a Finance Charge at the same time, if that Order was then converted to an invoice you are no longer able to just delete the finance charge. This article has further information regarding how to handle this situation when not having to worry about the Finance Charge.
Non-Item Invoice
- Create a backup of your company file
- Open the Transaction Journal
- Find the Invoice that payment was applied to at the same time as the Finance Charge
- Delete all line items off of the invoice
- Add a line item onto the invoice using the Finance Charge income account and the amount of the finance charge as a negative (to create a credit)
- Click ok
This will create a credit for the full amount of the original payment (the amount applied to the invoice plus the amount applied to the Finance Charge). You can then recreate the original correct invoice and either apply the credit to this (which will still leave you with a partial outstanding credit) or you can pay the credit back to the customer (refund the payment) as necessary.
Item Invoice
- Create a backup of your company file
- Go to Inventory > Items List
- Create a new item called FinanceChargeReturn
- Set the item as "I Sell This Item" and choose the Finance Charge account as the income account
- Open the Transaction Journal
- Find the Invoice that payment was applied to at the same time as the Finance Charge
- Delete all line items off of the invoice
- Add a line item onto the invoice using the FinanceChargeReturn item. Choose to Ship -1 of it and put in the dollar value as the value of the Finance Charge.
- Click ok
This will create a credit for the full amount of the original payment (the amount applied to the invoice plus the amount applied to the Finance Charge). You can then recreate the original correct invoice and either apply the credit to this (which will still leave you with a partial outstanding credit) or you can pay the credit back to the customer (refund the payment) as necessary.