How do I ensure my invoice income isn't duplicated?
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How do I ensure my invoice income isn't duplicated?
If you have the same bank account linked to Wave in which your Payments by Wave deposits are made, then you may see duplicate transactions.
As soon as your customer makes a payment, the transactio...
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The bank transaction will always be slightly different than the invoice payment because of the Wave processing fee, so they can't be merged.
The huge issue here is when browsing via transactions and the UI correctly separates the bank deposits as 'Income' and the invoice payments as 'Invoice Payments'. However, the Income Report (which is what a CPA will use end of year for tax purposes) lists BOTH credits under 'Income', so if the person who carefully reviews the transaction record doesn't catch this on the final income statement, they end up massively over-reporting income. In case I'm not being obvious enough, I just noticed this happened to me!
I realize it's my responsibility to review the end of year statements 100%, but this is a glaring design issue which ensures over-paying taxes unless specific manual actions are taken by every user who 1) syncs with their bank and 2) accepts Wave invoice payments.
I am having this issue too. Have you figured out a fix?
Hey @AvarioDev and @dmoody,
In this case, you'll just need to delete the duplicate transaction which is being brought in by the bank connection import, and leave the transaction which was automatically made (including the expense transaction to account for processing fees) as-is. We know that this was something that needed to be addressed, so we've resolved and automated this in the newest version of Wave, which (I'm presuming you haven't been migrated to it yet) you'll automatically get upgraded to shortly. You can check out the updated workflow for this here if that helps!
@Ryan_W,
TL/DR: You need to email all customers who have automatic bank imports and accept Wave invoice payments to let them know about this possibly common error.
Long version:
Overall I've been verify happy with Wave, I migrated over after a decade of running a windows VM just so I can run Quicken. I've been happy with the switch and now use Wave for all my invoicing, providing more professional and streamlined payment options to clients.
But this is honestly slightly ridiculous, it has been occurring since I first started using Wave invoicing in July 2017. While I agree that it was 100% a lack of attention to detail on my part that caused me to file tax returns overstating my income, it was a series of questionable UI decisions which helped guide me there. As I said above, this affects 100% of customers who:
Since those two items are somewhat core to your product, I expect a large number of customers fall into that bucket.
At the minimum, you should have had a giant warning which proactively tells customers that need to take rather non-intuitive manual steps when using this features in order for reporting to be accurate. I'm very pleased to hear that in the updated version you corrects this behavior, but it's obvious you've recently been aware of it yet haven't done a mass email to customers to let them know about this.
This somewhat deeply buried (Help Center -> Accounting -> Key Concepts) FAQ article was posted in late 2018, it disappeared a few days ago and has recently been updated. I actually take this as good news, I think you all JUST realized this happened and are figuring out the best way to respond.
I realize you don't want to contact customers telling them that you may have messed up, but you need to do that here. You can even narrowly focus your email campaign: you have access to the data and can determine if customers
have both invoice payments AND bank deposits from Wave (minus Wave fee) showing up on their income report. If so, then they are part of the group who has incorrect reports due to not finding this FAQ and manually deleting transactions, and you need to let them know they should review their data and give them the time period + transactions to check.
Overall this has cost me a few hundred dollars in terms of amending my corporate and individual 2017 returns, and I'm just glad I caught this before I filed for 2018. Overall the impact wasn't too high, and I take ultimate responsibility as the person who should review all end of year statements, but you all can do more to minimize the impact to your customers from mistakes you made. And the timeline for that is NOW, as the end of the year is a few weeks away and there is little time to make any end of year corrections needed.
@AvarioDev thank you for sending over this feedback, especially for such a frustrating situation. I'm going to make sure this gets to the right teams!
@Samd what is the status of this being fixed? I am currently having the same issue as @AvarioDev had outlined. I have income being automatically categorized from past invoices as duplicate income because the date already exists in my imported bank transactions, and I can't delete it any of it. It seems like the only way I could get rid of it is to delete the past invoices entirely, but clearly I do not want to do that.
Hey @studiohopkins I just took a look, and you're using the version of Wave which automatically accounts for this duplication if your invoice is paid through our payment processing system. This article explains how it works.
That said, if you're manually marking your invoices as paid based on when you get paid with another method (like check payment or cash), please note that manually recording a payment on an invoice creates an income transaction; if your bank is also connected to Wave, then it's expected that you'll have a duplication. This is why we have a Merge tool; all you need to do is select each identical transaction in the Transactions page, and then click Merge to create a master transaction. Another option is to not record your invoice payments directly; instead, I recommend waiting for the bank connection to import this income transaction to Wave, and then categorize this transactions as Payment made for an invoice in Wave, which will allow you to assign the payment to the invoice without creating duplicates.
I've been dealing with this same problem as well. If there is a new version of Wave that fixes this, I'd like to be migrated to it asap.
I went through and began to delete the transactions wave created as to free up the invoice. Then I would take the bank transactions and apply the funds to applicable invoices. However, this still marks them as "Unpaid" on the Invoices side of Wave even though Accounting has recorded the payment. This makes no sense to me. This seems to be a truly basic fundamental concept that needs to be fixed. I have got to get my 2018 finances cleaned up for tax season so this is no trivial matter. Why I have to reconcile my books by deleting bank transactions doesn't make sense. And the merge tool works for 2 transactions, when I have 5 invoices paid in one check. ... How does that help?
My workaround to the check nightmare reconciliation...has been to run two "businesses" in wave one business handles all the invoicing the other business downloads the bank statements and I categorize everything...
The deposits from the merchant are different from the invoice amount. This is because more than one transaction is deposited into the amount. If we follow the suggestion below from @Ryan_W, then the amount on "Paid invoice by Wave" is different from the actual invoice! It is really annoying and it looks like I will now need to do my invoices on a another platform. HELP!
Hey @LeslieA, if you're processing payments directly through Wave, Wave will already be accounting for the merchant processing fees directly, so even though the deposit doesn't match what the customer paid, the transfer should still clear out the value of the Money in Transit account successfully. If you're manually recording the expense of the merchant fees, you'd just need to create an additional expense transaction for the value of the fee, so that your Money in Transit balance will match what is going to be deposited by your bank.
If you record payment for an invoice & the method of payment was via check (which will be deposited to your bank), how do you avoid transactions from bank feed showing the deposit as additional income?
hi @LTS, in that case you have a few options. You could wait until the check deposit shows up in your imported transactions and then apply that transaction as the invoice payment; you can mark the invoice as paid by check and then delete the deposit transaction when it imports from your bank connection; or you can follow the steps described in this article to record and track checks: https://support.waveapps.com/hc/en-us/articles/208622786
The last option will give you the most detail but all options will result in balanced books; it really depends how much time you want to spend. Let me know if that works!
I don't use payments through Wave. My Wave account is connected to my bank. so when I payment arrives at the bank, I make sure it's coded as consultant income. However, I can't get rid of the invoices. So it looks like I make twice as much money as I do. I can export every to excel for my accountant. However, why make this so hard. Are we trying to sell payments through Wave?
Hey there @EllenMadaline_413
In your transactions page, find the income received by a client brought in by your bank connection, and select the drop down 'choose a category' option. This should allow you to scroll down and link that income to an invoice by selecting "payment made to an invoice". Categorize it to the appropriate invoice and it will in turn show up as paid, not creating a duplicate
If you notice that it's been duplicated and there are two transactions, it's likely because you selected "mark invoice as paid" on the invoice level which creates a transaction, and then your bank import brings in the income transaction as well.. Delete the bank import one and moving forward I would recommend using the choose a category option. This will detect your invoice has been paid. In the drop down there is a 'more option' category, you might have to locate the invoice in there.
To be frank, naturally Wave makes a profit on Wave Payments, so to answer your question we are often promoting Wave payments to our users of course.
@Salty Hey there
Are you using our split deposit feature? If you split up your deposit you should be able to assign it to multiple invoices at once if you so wish! Check this out on the the transactions detail panel. See my image below!
Thank you so much. This worked!
I create invoices in Wave - I also upload transactions from the bank and reconcile. This page tells me that to avoid duplicate transactions, I should not record the payment manually. BUT this leaves the invoice unpaid in WAVE and will therefore appear as 'accounts receivable' in the balance sheet which will overstate the assets.
If I do manually record the payment against the invoice, it solves the balance sheet issue, but I cannot categorise the income so it does not appear as income in the P&L. It seems that the problem is that the categorisation given products and services does not flow through. I have items set up and linked to a category, but when an invoice for this product is created and then the invoice is recorded manually as paid, the amount received is not appearing as income in the category assigned to the product
Hey @CC_8, thanks for reaching out here. It sounds like the workflow with categorization that you'd mentioned should be the appropriate one, considering that the product should be assigned to the appropriate income account. Can you take some screenshots of that invoice, showing that income account, and then of your P&L, showing where you'd expect that income to be?
This was a one-time problem. I uploaded a CSV to fill in a month of (inexplicably) missing transansactions from last year. Instead, it added about 130 transactions that are all between $10K and $8 million. I am certain there are also a ton of legitimate transactions that are duplicates of those I previously imported. Is there a way to locate duplicate transactions? Since I reconciled all of 2019, I thought I might be able to look up unreconciled entries, but I can't find an option for that, and I would still be uncertain whether they were duplicates vs. manual entries.
@ConnorM I'm having the same issue as @CC_8 .
The income category label assigned to my "products" (in quotes because I don't sell goods, only services) on the invoices are not flowing through to that income category on reports. I have confirmed that my products on my invoices are assigned to my "Consulting Income" income category. I've tried editing the invoices to delete and re-add products then saving the invoice. This doesn't work.
The only options I'm left with are: 1) leaving invoices as unpaid on Wave and categorizing the ACH payment as "Consulting Income," 2) having duplicate income by marking invoices as paid in Wave and categorizing the ACH payment as "Consulting Income," or 3) merging the invoice payment and ACH payment transactions, which selects the invoice that was paid and not having this show up under my "Consulting Income" category".
None of these options is great. How do we get the items on our invoices to actually show up in reports under the income category we've assigned them to?
And what about simply having the option to mark an invoice as paid without generating a transaction?
Hey there @K8H
My apologies that you're experiencing this strange issue. I am curious if you wouldn't mind heading to Sales > Products and services > Select the pencil icon beside the product/service in question and send us a screenshot of what you're seeing here:
Also if you could send us a screenshot of the account in your report that is not showing up as a credit, that would be really helpful.
This could be a bug, in which case you may need to open up a ticket with our support staff to have them go into your account and figure out what the issue might be here.
Thanks so much!
Here are the screenshots. The first shows that the product is assigned to "Consulting Income." The second shows the ACH payment and the Invoice payment in Transactions. The third shows the general ledger for "Consulting Income" and that only the ACH payment on 5/29 is listed (but not the Invoice payment on 5/29). I've already tried merging the ACH and Invoice Payments, confirming that the product is assigned to "Consulting Income," and it does not show up on the general ledger report under Consulting Income. Only if I manually assign a transaction to "Consulting Income" does it appear in the reports under this category, and if I do that, the invoice will no longer be marked as paid. Thanks!
Product View:
Transactions View:
Report View:
Hey again @K8H
Which report are you looking under? Which account is this for? Also I'm thinking that the accounting that's happening here might not be correct. Are you keeping two income transactions for the same invoice? One for the invoice payment and one for the income transaction imported into your account?
In your transactions page, find the income received by a client brought in by your bank connection, and select the drop down 'choose a category' option. This should allow you to scroll down and link that income to an invoice by selecting "payment made to an invoice". Categorize it to the appropriate invoice and it will in turn show up as paid, not creating a duplicate
If you notice that it's been duplicated and there are two transactions, it's likely because you selected "mark invoice as paid", which creates a transaction, and then your bank import brings in the income transaction as well.. Delete the bank import one and moving forward I would recommend using the choose a category option. This will detect your invoice has been paid. In the drop down there is a 'more option' category, you might have to locate the invoice in there.
Regarding the reports not seeming to accurately reflect your income account, could you head to your Profit and loss as well as your account transactions (general ledger) report and let us know what you're seeing here when you filter that account?
Hey @BarsinA
Yes, I know there are duplicate income entries. That is exactly what I'm trying to get rid of BUT, WaveApps does not allow marking an invoice as paid AND categorizing a payment by my Consulting Income category within a single entry. As I mentioned, I've already tried to merge the two transactions, as discussed in a WaveApps support article, where it said that the product/service should show up under the income category it's attached to. I unmerged the transactions because of this, which is why you currently see duplicate transactions in my screenshots. As I mentioned above and showed in my screenshot, I have already categorized my product/service as Consulting Income. But after merging, the income does not show up under Consulting Income in reports. "The third [screenshot] shows the general ledger for "Consulting Income" and that only the ACH payment on 5/29 is listed (but not the Invoice payment on 5/29)." That screenshot is the one you ask for above for account transactions general ledger filtered by Consulting Income. Yes, the profit and loss is currently incorrect BECAUSE I'm waiting on an answer to this issue of not being able to appropriately categorize income AND mark an invoice as paid. I'm going to let it sit that way until I have an answer to this issue.
Hope that clarifies!
Hi @K8H , thanks for providing all this context here. To confirm, you're saying that when you mark an invoice as paid that it's not showing in reports under the Consulting Income category? If so, that indicates to me that the account might not be functioning properly. I would recommend submitting a ticket to our Support team, where they'll be able to investigate this more closely and take a look at your account directly, as it may need to involve our developer team as well. You can send them a link to this thread as well for their reference.
Hi @CallieP
Yep, that's the issue I'm experiencing. Okay, thanks for letting me know.
Bank Imports & Receipts
im experiencing these as duplicates. To resolve it is listed to merge. When i merge i notice my all accounts tab number go up as it seems its adding this or multiplying the merge as 2 instead of 1 total puchase. Why is it going up my all accounts number?
Hey there @JMJ
When you merge a receipt transaction to a bank imported one the amounts should not duplicate, but instead merge the amounts into one. Are you also creating a bill for these and marking them as paid? Would you mind sending us a screenshot of this error of two transactions being duplicated as this should definitely not be happening as long as you've merged the two transactions successfully.
I have 2 of the same transactions. One is from wave payments and one is from my imported bank integration. the issue is that I can't merge it and I now have a duplicate income