Reconciling invoices
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Reconciling invoices
What do you need to do when your clients pay your invoices using Payments by Wave?
When your client pays you through Payments by Wave, your invoice will automatically be marked as PAID and recorded...
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Well, uh, not quite...In the transactions list, yes, I see the invoice automatically paid with the invoice amount minus the processing fee, and there are also 2 transfer transactions, one for transfer to my bank account from Payments by Wave, which actually bizarrely shows as what I perceive as a debit since the amount is shown in a black font, and the other is a transfer for the same amount but shows as a green credit and the description is a bunch of gibberish WAVE SV9T MSP/DIV .all amounts are for the invoice amount minus the fee, and there is no transaction visible there for the fee itself...I had to go looking for that transaction via the general ledger.
customer refund processed through wave. Invoice still showing on Aged Accounts Receivable. Does Wave not clear original invoice? Dr and Cr showing on Wave transactions. To clear invoice is a manual JE required?
Hi @MP_018 . When a refund is processed through Wave, the corresponding invoice will be marked as "unpaid" as the income has technically been removed from it. There are a few methods to account for this properly based on the reason for the refund.
First, you can add a product to your invoice in the amount that's overdue with a negative sign in front of it. For example, if you refunded $100, you can add a line item with a -$100 amount which will zero out the aminvoice.
Next, if this was bad debt, you can write off the invoice as such by using the article attached: https://support.waveapps.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000031243-Dealing-with-bad-debt-How-to-write-off-an-invoice
Either of these methods should work for you based off of what applies more for your situation. This will also take care of your Aged Accounts Receivables problem.
That's 3 entries for one payment. I have no idea what is going on. I'm ready to switch back to my old way of invoicing using Stripe.
Hey @Emily_L , thanks for reaching out! I would be happy to shed some light on the transactions you are seeing. In the previous version of Wave, you would need to delete the duplicates that get pulled in from the bank connection; this was standard practice for quite a while.
However, when we migrated your account to the new version of Wave, which is really exciting! In the new version, reconciling the invoices that are paid by credit card is automatic and doesn't require you to delete that second transaction. Instead, this is what happens:
1) Your customer pays an invoice online, and this automatically creates an income transaction and corresponding expense for the processing fee (just like before).
2) Wave automatically posts this to the Payments by Wave account, which is a money in transit account. This represents that you don't have this money yet, but you will.
3) The income transaction imports from your bank connection. Wave then recognizes this transaction, and automatically transfers the funds from the Payments by Wave account to your actual bank account in Wave. This is based upon Wave recognizing the WAVSV9Txxxx descriptor for those transactions, so make sure you don't change the descriptions on them!
This article explains this in more detail, but I hope my short version helps!
I don't understand how to move the 'Payments by Wave' that are 'In Transit' into deposits into my business account, which they now are. I cannot do anything to the automatically generated Wave transactions.
Hey @PuzzleMedia, thanks for reaching out. If you have your business bank account connected to Wave, Wave should automatically create a transfer between these two accounts (as mentioned in step 3 above). If that transfer is not automatically generated then you will need to create the transfer manually which this Help Centre article explains. This transfer should show the funds going from the money in transit account (Payments by Wave) to your bank account!
My clients do not pay via Wave and funds are either electronically transfered into our bank account or deposited cash. when I reconcile the income transaction on the Wave accounting to a invoice generated in wave, it only shows the unpaid invoices in Wave and not all the invoices. This then does not give an accurate picture of cash flow and invoices generated through Wave. The invoice has already been marked as paid and the client had received the receipt but the linked bank account does not pick it up as payment for an invoice. So now it is uncategorized income
Hi @dcwprojects . When you're applying a payment to your invoice, you would want to apply it to an unpaid invoice as that transaction represents the payment itself.
If you've already marked the invoice as paid, what you can do is merge the transactions together, so this way you don't have any duplicates sitting in your Transactions page.
I can see how Wave automatically generates an entry when an invoice is paid by credit card (via Stripe), including splitting related charges, fine. Unfortunately importing bank transactions creates a duplicate, so these then have to be deleted. But because the automatically generated Wave entry cannot be edited, it's not possible to designate what account (from Chart of Accounts) to assign an invoice to - how do I get around this problem? In principle I'd rather keep the bank entry so that I can designate the correct account, but then I can't delete the Wave entry. The Wave entry may be great as far as accounting accuracy is concerned, but is pretty useless in terms of information value: "Invoice Payment" is a pretty useless description. What can I do?
Hey @francois12uk! I totally hear where you're coming from here. I think one of your best options might be to create a transfer from the account that the automatic Wave entry is being sent to, to the account that you'd rather have it in. That way, it's just a movement of funds and everything should be accounted for correctly. Let me know if that makes sense - would love to hear your thoughts on this!
... duplication (cannot delete) ...
Hi Connor. Thanks. I sort of understand. The invoices are paid by Wave's own credit card system using Stripe, so payment comes to Stripe first. I had not created a Stripe account so far, but I can do so and could enter the income entry assigned to the correct account there, and then enter a transfer from Stripe to my bank account. I assume this is what you mean. However, the automatic Wave entry (the one which cannot be edited or deleted) automatically assigns the income to the account "Sales (Other)", so I still don't understand: While I can record the sale in the correct account in the Stripe account, it now records the income twice, once as Sales (Other) and the other in the account I actually want it to. I cannot delete the Wave (Sales (Other)) entry, so to avoid doubling the sales I can only delete the one in Stripe, and we're back where we started. So actually no, I don't understand.
In fact, I've now realised that Wave automatically puts all invoices created by Wave into the Account Sales (Other), regardless whether paid by credit card via Stripe or by direct bank transfer (the only difference being in the latter case the entry is created by the bank entry, not by Wave, so is editable). If I change the assigned account from the Invoice # to the account I want, it then regards the invoice as unpaid. Assigning the entry to the Invoice # is fine, but it then puts all my Wave invoices into the Sales (Other) - as a result, Sales (Other) is my biggest income category, yet is meaningless because it actually consists of several of my main income categories. The only way to avoid this is by creating invoices outside of Wave, but then what's the point of Wave?
In fact, the more I think about it and look at the figures and what the system does, the more confused I get. This was supposed to be accounting made easy
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Hey there @francois12uk
When you initially set up you items on your invoice, it defaults to the sales income account:
When you create an item on your invoices, you can select which account each of them are assigned to.
So imagine that I make decks for peoples homes. My invoice contains products like lumber, and of course my labor. If I were to simply put the entire invoice character into one sales account, you wouldn't have the customizability to select which accounts these items goes into.
My lumber would go to "reimbursable materials" and my labor would go to"labor".
This is why you wouldn't need to edit the invoice payment to your chart of accounts.
In any case, you can create a journal transaction under the transactions page to migrate the funds from your sales account to your preferred income account.
Thanks. Mmmm? The mystery plot thickens. It turns out that I had done exactly as you describe when I created the invoices, assigning an account to each item. And yet, for some mysterious reason, it has still ended up lumping everything into Sales (other). Doesn't make sense. However, I'll give it the benefit of doubt - it could be that I knocked everything out of whack by undoing and redoing entries so many times trying to make it work. I'll monitor new invoices I create.
Thank you for clarifying that, as far as it goes. I haven't learned how to do journal migrations yet, so I'll use that for past invoices. I still don't understand, however, why is it not possible to change the account eg at invoice level? - after all if one made a mistake assigning the account when creating the invoice or product/service, surely it should still be possible to correct those mistakes?
Is there a legend to explain the process of invoices being paid and the how they transfered into your account. My payoust say in transit and my payout date is today so what does that mean?
Hey @francois12uk , I don't have a legitimate answer for you as to why you can't change the account on an invoice level. This can be changed through the Products/Services page, but to be clear it doesn't have a retroactive effect which is why Barsin recommended using a Journal to move the funds between accounts.
Hi @Tlemons87 , we don't have a legend, although it looks like your money did in fact land on Feb 19th. It sounds like the money was still processing but it just hadn't hit your account yet. Can you confirm?
I'm trying to reconcile my account and the iWave invoice payments aren't showing up as transactions I can match, therefore I cannot reconcile for the month. What am I doing wrong?
Hey there @StephanieSaville
I may need a bit more context as to what you're seeing in your account. What do the invoice payments looks like on your transactions page? Only invoice payments that live on your transactions page will be able to reconcile. Are your invoices paid off and existing in your transactions page?
@ZoeC mentioned the process below and I was wondering, does that mean there shouldn't be any amount of money in my Payments by Wave account on "Transaction" or "Account Reconciliation" page once I get paid for all Wave invoices I send to my customers?
1) Your customer pays an invoice online, and this automatically creates an income transaction and corresponding expense for the processing fee (just like before).
2) Wave automatically posts this to the Payments by Wave account, which is a money in transit account. This represents that you don't have this money yet, but you will.
3) The income transaction imports from your bank connection. Wave then recognizes this transaction, and automatically transfers the funds from the Payments by Wave account to your actual bank account in Wave. This is based upon Wave recognizing the WAVSV9Txxxx descriptor for those transactions, so make sure you don't change the descriptions on them!
Hey @sgb! Thanks for reaching out - that's right, that Payments by Wave account is one that should always be approaching zero - it's simply a money in transit account that should give you a glimpse of funds that have been paid, but not landed in the bank or posted in your accounting yet.
@ConnorM Thanks for clarifying. Do you know why some of my "Invoice Payment"s stay in Payments by Wave after I get money in my bank account? Some of them go away after the money goes into the bank account like they're supposed to, but some of them don't go away and instead, "Transfer from Wave Payments to your bank account"s show up. Why does this happen and how do I fix this so they go away automatically every time I get paid in my bank account?
Hi @sgb , thanks for getting back! There are a few reasons that a transaction might not get automatically assigned as a transfer to the bank account from the money in transit account, which some more info would help discern. To clarify, here is what's supposed to happen:
Some reasons it might not work:
To resolve any which are outstanding, head to Accounting > Transactions and locate your bank imported income transaction (or, if you don't have bank transactions importing, you can create one by clicking Add Income). Under Category, choose 'Transfer from a Bank, Credit Card, or Loan' and then 'Payments by Wave'. The transfer will be automatically created, and your money in transit account will show the funds having moved to your bank account!
Learn more here as well.
On my transaction page I have showing:
Invoice Pymt $480 (inv#6 pymt from XX) (deposit)
Then on same date, Invoice pymt Merch fees $14.22 (withdrawal)
Then next day Misc Pymt Wave $465.78 (deposit)
So obviously my income was $480 from the client, however they paid via Wave pymts so the Merch fees make sense and the actual income is the $465.78 into my bank account. So is the first transaction for $480 a duplicate? I am hesitant to just delete it as it is the actual payment of the invoice transaction. Will it mess up the invoices if I do delete?
How do I print a report of all the FEES I paid for the year?
Hey there @SproutLocal
You should be able to find all of your fees if you head to Reports > Account transactions (general ledger) report > Filter the account to Merchant Fees Account. There should be an export button at the top for you to print or export to PDF to print this report. Hope this helps and let me know if you have any issues with these instructions
Hi, I have just recently started allowing customers to pay invoices via credit card using the Wave/Stripe integration. Most of the automation has worked well, however the actual merchant fees charged by Stripe and the fees recorded automatically in Wave are different. This means that when I do a journal transfer from "Wave Payments" to the "Bank Account" based on actual money received, there is still a balance in "Wave Payments".
Is this a tech issue or exchange rate issue? (I am located in Australia)
Note: I realise I could just do another journal transaction to clear the account but then the merchant fees for each invoice will be incorrect.
Hi @Crafty_Fox , Wave doesn't automatically account for taxes in Stripe's fees. Since you're in a region where Stripe charges tax on the processing fee (Australia), you'll need to add this manually using a Journal Transaction.
If the tax you're recording is recoverable, the Journal Transaction should look like this:
DEBIT Sales Tax Paid Account for the amount of the tax
CREDIT Payments by Wave clearing account for the amount of the tax
If the tax is not recoverable, the Journal Transaction should look like this:
DEBIT Merchant/Stripe Fee Account for the amount of the tax
CREDIT Payments by Wave clearing account for the amount of the tax
One last thing to note - if the tax you're paying is recoverable, make sure to add this detail to the notes of the Journal Transaction for your records. You'll also want to use the account transactions report for this Sales Tax, found by going to Reports > Account Transactions report, when filing. Because this tax has been entered manually using a Journal Transaction, it won't appear on the Sales Tax report as other transactions do.