after i follow the steps for overpayment using wave payments, why do I get this message:
"Status: Your invoice is awaiting payment". but the invoice is at a $0 balance.
You provide help on what to do if a customer overpays you, but not if you overpay someone. We had an accounting error and overpaid VAT to the govt and are now awaiting a return. How do I account for this. I use Journal entries to record the payments (VAT Payments/refunds to government is the debit and Owner Equity is the credit as the owner pays directly on his credit card). I tried to do a new JE with A/R as the debit and VAT payments/refunds as the credit, but it doesn't show up in my A/R statements??
Hey @HE_Accounting123 that's definitely a tricky situation! Can you send a screenshot of what that JE with that A/R debit and the VAT refund as the credit looks like? That should be appearing in your A/R statements but I'd love to know more about what you're seeing!
Can we get automatic allocation to other outstanding invoices from the same customer? Example would be Chris pays 1,000 and has an outstanding invoice #1 of 100 and #2 of 900. I apply the payment to Invoice #2 so the 1,000 payment will match the cheque I was given. Please add an option for automatic allocation to invoice #1.
Hey @JoshV! Thanks for the suggestion here! We definitely appreciate your feedback. At present, there are no plans to have overpayment bookkeeping an automatic process, but that's a cool idea!
What if the client overpaid you in the form of a tip on a Wave invoice. For example, bill is $65.00 and they tipped you $15 for a grand total of $80 paid in CASH. Deposit $80 into bank, split transaction to show $65 for Wave invoice and $15 for Owner Contribution?
Hi @TODavid69! You could split the transaction to categorize the payment to the invoice and mark that as 'paid'. As for the tip, you could create an income category in your Chart of Accounts called 'tips' and then categorize the split transaction to that. However, I would recommend getting some expert advice from an accountant or bookkeeper as to how you should account for these incase there are specific requirements that need to be considered when accounting for tips.
My client has had to cancel a project due to Covid 19. They had paid me 50% up front last December. They now want to apply the funds paid in December to new project invoices until the balance is used up. Is there a way to create a credit memo. To complicate things the invoice from December was done in a different software before I started using Wave.
Hi,
I have a customer (who i supply a product to), who supplied me with some ingredients. They are suggesting i raise a credit note, rather them invoice me, so they can then deduct that from the next invoice they pay me. How do i go about this?
@JamieD said:
"To post a credit note on Wave, you have to create a new invoice with negative amounts.
Then to allocate the credit note against the invoice, you need to create a positive income transaction and a negative income transaction in the bank account. Both amounts need to be for the total credit value, so that they offset each other in the bank account and don’t change the bank balance. Then you need to allocate the positive receipt against the invoice, and the negative receipt against the credit note."
I there a way to apply a customer credit to a new invoice? Example, customer pays $50 for a $30 order, leaving a $20 credit. I've created a 'Customer Deposit/Over payment' account and split the original transaction allocating $30 toward the original invoice and $20 toward the liability account, but now I want that $20 credit to appear on the next invoice so the 'Amount Due' on the invoice is the current balance and not the individual invoice balance. Thanks
I ended up adding a line item on the invoice for the amount of the credit using a negative number. I really don't want to send an invoice and then apply the credit after the fact. I'm guessing this will make the accounting side a bit more complicated because I still have the extra money in the liability account, but it was more important to me to bill the current amount due on the account and not the invoice amount. Let me know if I missed an easy step to apply a credit to invoice before I send to a customer. Thanks
Hi there @Ben_4SeasonFarms , thanks for your message here. If you'd prefer to do the holding of the payment on their future invoice, that's no problem! You wouldn't need to do the liability account instructions in that case, then - any work you've done on that can be undone if you're applying the discount to the invoice as your option! This is also mentioned in the Help Centre article:
--
" You have three options:
1. Refund your client. Simply cut them a cheque, or return the funds any other way you choose. Add an income transaction for the amount you are refunding (-$100, in this example) to keep your bookkeeping and your bank balance correct. 2. Apply the money to another open invoice for your customer, if one exists. This is as simple as marking the transaction as an invoice payment against that invoice. 3. Hold the funds against a future invoice (a credit for the customer). "
--
So, it looks like you wanted to do number 2, which means you don't also have to do number 3!
By applying the invoice overpayment method, It mess up the client's statements (new feature in wave) where the amount for invoice shows 0. It becomes confusing to explain to client why the invoice is 0 . Additionally over paid invoice shows extra amount in the invoice and they question why the invoice is different than it should be .
For example
Invoice A123 is billed for $100
Invoice A124 is billied for $200
Client Paid $300 throught wave in A123.
a. When i add "invoice over payment" and add the addtional $200 to A123, the Invoice amount in client statement shows $300.
b. When i add "invoice over payment" to A124 and and put -$100, the invoice shouws $0i n client statement.
I don't understand why Wave does not create an account number for each customer. This way when a payment is received or an invoice created it is associated with that customer account number. This would then minimize the process steps that are needed to apply credits to overpaid invoices.
Reporting could then be pulled based on account number listing each invoice that had been created, billed amount, amount paid and any balance applied or brought forward showing.
This is typical of project based accounting which Wave is not unfortunately. We operate on a small business mindset for those who prefer transaction based accounting. The difference is that account number for clients, or projects which we know our users would begin to do is a bit of a major overhaul for our team at this time. After migrating hundreds of thousands of users from our old platform to our new, we are able to begin releasing new features more easily moving forward. So although this isn't a feature at this time, that's not to say that it won't ever be!
Similar to a previous members posts. My customer had 3 open invoices so I sent a Customer Statement for them to review. They decided to pick one invoice and made one payment for all 3. Now I have 1 overpaid invoice and 2 unpaid invoices. I went to split the transaction and it is locked.
Why does Wave Payments freeze / lock out the split function under transaction details for Wave Payments?
Hi there @freaky_tree_fab , thanks for your message! The reason the invoice payment can't be split is because it is a record of real funds having moved in your Wave account - it's a proof of payment from Wave as your payment provider. Since it was only paid with real funds on the one invoice, then that payment must accurately reflect that in terms of the invoice payment transaction.
That said! You can still get that other invoice to be marked as paid. We have a Help Centre article especially for this circumstance, and you can read those directions here.
In my previous accounting system, if a customer overpaid, I could see the credit amount on the accounts receivable sheet and know to send them a statement. Credits don't show up on the Wave accounts receivable report. I have to trust that my written log is correct or go back through every transaction for my 200 customers every month.
I'm still new to Wave and working through the differences. Today, I discovered that my customers with credit balances have been receiving overdue notices for the credit amount. I hope Wave figures out a way to correct this. If a customer overpays, I shouldn't need to keep a written record of it. It should be recorded electronically on my customer's account. Through my previous system, the credit could be applied to any open invoice.
I am grateful for the ability to make customer statements. However, today I have a mess as I had created a "credit balance" entry for those who had overpaid. Now I realize that the credit balance is accumulating on the statement. I have to go back an eliminate the "credit balance" entry for customers who had them since April. This has created a lot of extra work for me.
Please figure out how to apply a credit to a customer, allow that credit to be applied to any open invoice, and allow the credit to be seen on the accounts receivable record.
Ok 3 problems with this!
1) Wave doesnt show me the unpaid invoice when I select payment for invoice under category; "No results found". Please fix this.
2) My deposit (bank) account is a different currency to my invoice, therefore I need to apply an exchange rate like wave does when I record a payment for an invoice through the invoice section. Please tell me how to work around this.
3) If my Overpayment account is an income account, Wave lets me link it to a customer but my overpayment account is a liability account and Wave does not let me link it to a customer. Please add this feature.
Hey @AndréKoch! Thanks for reaching out here. Happy to address these problems one by one.
1&2) You should be able to locate the unpaid invoice as long as the payment transaction and the invoice itself have matching currencies. I believe the reason you're seeing these two issues is intertwined. You will need to record a payment manually from the invoice itself, and then adjust for the exchange rate manually via journal transaction in your accounts.
3) Can you elaborate on why your overpayment account is a liability account? I'd love to try to break that down together to determine how to best move forwards here.
I used a Wave invoice and the client overpaid by CC. Now I am not allowed to change the deposit in the "Payments by Wave" account. How do I split this payment into payment for two invoices?
I had created an account called 'Customer overpayment account'. What I do is:
1) Create invoice, key in actual amount received together with the surplus
2) Go to Transactions, split the payment with the surplus goes into COA
3) in the next invoice for same customer, I had put in payment debited from COA
This works well so far but needs to manually record who paid extra. However, when it comes to generating statement for each customer, the surplus doesn't show at all. So the statement module is not working for me. Hopefully there is a way to solve this. Thanks
@Jamr said:
I used a Wave invoice and the client overpaid by CC. Now I am not allowed to change the deposit in the "Payments by Wave" account. How do I split this payment into payment for two invoices?
I finally figured out a way to solve this that didn't involve changing invoice amounts when a customer overpays me using Wave payments. Even if the balance is now negative, you can still record a manual payment on the invoice. I do that and apply the overpayment amount to the prepay account for that customer. Then, I can pay other invoices using the prepay account. It shows on the customer statement as a refund issued, but then they can also see the payment being applied to other invoices or see the credit so their statement amount shows correctly. Also, it shows on my balance sheet if there's a balance in the prepay account so I can make sure I applied everything correctly.
It isn't as good as allowing customers to pay multiple invoices themselves, but is much better than having to edit the items on the invoice as suggested by Wave above.
Thanks Teresac.
I just showed the unpaid invoice as paid through the wave account EZPZ.
Until Wave lifts their restriction of not being able to edit a wave payment, the "Payments by Wave" account will have to show an incorrect balance. It is too much trouble to go through creating an account just because we do not have the accounting tools we need .
It would be nice for us accountants, make Wave look like a great platform and a great crowd pleaser to give our customers the ability to make one payment to pay multiple invoices without all this trouble.
This just needs to be fixed correctly, rather than these workarounds. This probably will make me leave the platform after trying it out for a few months.
Question - I am accounting for customer overpayments as GraceLee commented on August 5, 2020. However, the credit balance is not showing up on the client statement. I did assign a customer to the overpayment portion on the transaction. How can I show the client what their true balance is?
Since Wave does not currently have a formal feature to accommodate over/underpayments, any balance categorized into customer overpayment liability account will not reflect on the Customer Statement I'm afraid. This is because the liability account is not associated with the customer's activity.
You can always generate a report for your overpayment account by going to Reports > Account Transactions (General Ledger) > Select the account in drop down menu.
What I did to make my customer statements accurate:
1. Leave the overpayment on the customer's most recent invoice, so that invoice shows a credit balance
2. Create a journal transaction for the amount of the overpayment transferring it from Accounts Receivable to that customer's credit account.
This makes both the customer statement and the balance sheet correct.
However, this takes extra maintenance. The next time you invoice this customer, you need to
1. Locate the original payment transaction
2. Split the transaction and apply the overpayment amount to the next invoice
3. Find your journal transaction, and reduce it by the amount paid to the new invoice, so it now reflects only the amount of the customer's remaining credit, or delete it altogether if they've used it up.
I think in the long run (feature request!) it would be better if the customer statements added up any transaction that's tagged with that customer. It would make the bookkeeping a lot easier while still keeping their statements accurate.
Comments
after i follow the steps for overpayment using wave payments, why do I get this message:
"Status: Your invoice is awaiting payment". but the invoice is at a $0 balance.
You provide help on what to do if a customer overpays you, but not if you overpay someone. We had an accounting error and overpaid VAT to the govt and are now awaiting a return. How do I account for this. I use Journal entries to record the payments (VAT Payments/refunds to government is the debit and Owner Equity is the credit as the owner pays directly on his credit card). I tried to do a new JE with A/R as the debit and VAT payments/refunds as the credit, but it doesn't show up in my A/R statements??
Hey @HE_Accounting123 that's definitely a tricky situation! Can you send a screenshot of what that JE with that A/R debit and the VAT refund as the credit looks like? That should be appearing in your A/R statements but I'd love to know more about what you're seeing!
Can we get automatic allocation to other outstanding invoices from the same customer? Example would be Chris pays 1,000 and has an outstanding invoice #1 of 100 and #2 of 900. I apply the payment to Invoice #2 so the 1,000 payment will match the cheque I was given. Please add an option for automatic allocation to invoice #1.
Hey @JoshV! Thanks for the suggestion here! We definitely appreciate your feedback. At present, there are no plans to have overpayment bookkeeping an automatic process, but that's a cool idea!
What if the client overpaid you in the form of a tip on a Wave invoice. For example, bill is $65.00 and they tipped you $15 for a grand total of $80 paid in CASH. Deposit $80 into bank, split transaction to show $65 for Wave invoice and $15 for Owner Contribution?
Hi @TODavid69! You could split the transaction to categorize the payment to the invoice and mark that as 'paid'. As for the tip, you could create an income category in your Chart of Accounts called 'tips' and then categorize the split transaction to that. However, I would recommend getting some expert advice from an accountant or bookkeeper as to how you should account for these incase there are specific requirements that need to be considered when accounting for tips.
My client has had to cancel a project due to Covid 19. They had paid me 50% up front last December. They now want to apply the funds paid in December to new project invoices until the balance is used up. Is there a way to create a credit memo. To complicate things the invoice from December was done in a different software before I started using Wave.
Hi,
I have a customer (who i supply a product to), who supplied me with some ingredients. They are suggesting i raise a credit note, rather them invoice me, so they can then deduct that from the next invoice they pay me. How do i go about this?
@DebSchwab @RobG I'm afraid that Wave does not have the ability to create a credit note at the moment. In saying that, my colleague @JamieD explains a current workaround in a separate discussion ongoing about Credit Notes by saying
I there a way to apply a customer credit to a new invoice? Example, customer pays $50 for a $30 order, leaving a $20 credit. I've created a 'Customer Deposit/Over payment' account and split the original transaction allocating $30 toward the original invoice and $20 toward the liability account, but now I want that $20 credit to appear on the next invoice so the 'Amount Due' on the invoice is the current balance and not the individual invoice balance. Thanks
I ended up adding a line item on the invoice for the amount of the credit using a negative number. I really don't want to send an invoice and then apply the credit after the fact. I'm guessing this will make the accounting side a bit more complicated because I still have the extra money in the liability account, but it was more important to me to bill the current amount due on the account and not the invoice amount. Let me know if I missed an easy step to apply a credit to invoice before I send to a customer. Thanks
Hi there @Ben_4SeasonFarms , thanks for your message here. If you'd prefer to do the holding of the payment on their future invoice, that's no problem! You wouldn't need to do the liability account instructions in that case, then - any work you've done on that can be undone if you're applying the discount to the invoice as your option! This is also mentioned in the Help Centre article:
--
" You have three options:
1. Refund your client. Simply cut them a cheque, or return the funds any other way you choose. Add an income transaction for the amount you are refunding (-$100, in this example) to keep your bookkeeping and your bank balance correct.
2. Apply the money to another open invoice for your customer, if one exists. This is as simple as marking the transaction as an invoice payment against that invoice.
3. Hold the funds against a future invoice (a credit for the customer). "
--
So, it looks like you wanted to do number 2, which means you don't also have to do number 3!
I need to be able to Hold the funds against a future invoice (a credit for the customer). "
--
By applying the invoice overpayment method, It mess up the client's statements (new feature in wave) where the amount for invoice shows 0. It becomes confusing to explain to client why the invoice is 0 . Additionally over paid invoice shows extra amount in the invoice and they question why the invoice is different than it should be .
For example
Invoice A123 is billed for $100
Invoice A124 is billied for $200
Client Paid $300 throught wave in A123.
a. When i add "invoice over payment" and add the addtional $200 to A123, the Invoice amount in client statement shows $300.
b. When i add "invoice over payment" to A124 and and put -$100, the invoice shouws $0i n client statement.
both of them are misleading.
I don't understand why Wave does not create an account number for each customer. This way when a payment is received or an invoice created it is associated with that customer account number. This would then minimize the process steps that are needed to apply credits to overpaid invoices.
Reporting could then be pulled based on account number listing each invoice that had been created, billed amount, amount paid and any balance applied or brought forward showing.
Hey there @scout_treas
This is typical of project based accounting which Wave is not unfortunately. We operate on a small business mindset for those who prefer transaction based accounting. The difference is that account number for clients, or projects which we know our users would begin to do is a bit of a major overhaul for our team at this time. After migrating hundreds of thousands of users from our old platform to our new, we are able to begin releasing new features more easily moving forward. So although this isn't a feature at this time, that's not to say that it won't ever be!
We appreciate your input.
Similar to a previous members posts. My customer had 3 open invoices so I sent a Customer Statement for them to review. They decided to pick one invoice and made one payment for all 3. Now I have 1 overpaid invoice and 2 unpaid invoices. I went to split the transaction and it is locked.
Why does Wave Payments freeze / lock out the split function under transaction details for Wave Payments?
Hi there @freaky_tree_fab , thanks for your message! The reason the invoice payment can't be split is because it is a record of real funds having moved in your Wave account - it's a proof of payment from Wave as your payment provider. Since it was only paid with real funds on the one invoice, then that payment must accurately reflect that in terms of the invoice payment transaction.
That said! You can still get that other invoice to be marked as paid. We have a Help Centre article especially for this circumstance, and you can read those directions here.
In my previous accounting system, if a customer overpaid, I could see the credit amount on the accounts receivable sheet and know to send them a statement. Credits don't show up on the Wave accounts receivable report. I have to trust that my written log is correct or go back through every transaction for my 200 customers every month.
I'm still new to Wave and working through the differences. Today, I discovered that my customers with credit balances have been receiving overdue notices for the credit amount. I hope Wave figures out a way to correct this. If a customer overpays, I shouldn't need to keep a written record of it. It should be recorded electronically on my customer's account. Through my previous system, the credit could be applied to any open invoice.
I am grateful for the ability to make customer statements. However, today I have a mess as I had created a "credit balance" entry for those who had overpaid. Now I realize that the credit balance is accumulating on the statement. I have to go back an eliminate the "credit balance" entry for customers who had them since April. This has created a lot of extra work for me.
Please figure out how to apply a credit to a customer, allow that credit to be applied to any open invoice, and allow the credit to be seen on the accounts receivable record.
Thank you.
Ok 3 problems with this!
1) Wave doesnt show me the unpaid invoice when I select payment for invoice under category; "No results found". Please fix this.
2) My deposit (bank) account is a different currency to my invoice, therefore I need to apply an exchange rate like wave does when I record a payment for an invoice through the invoice section. Please tell me how to work around this.
3) If my Overpayment account is an income account, Wave lets me link it to a customer but my overpayment account is a liability account and Wave does not let me link it to a customer. Please add this feature.
Hey @AndréKoch! Thanks for reaching out here. Happy to address these problems one by one.
1&2) You should be able to locate the unpaid invoice as long as the payment transaction and the invoice itself have matching currencies. I believe the reason you're seeing these two issues is intertwined. You will need to record a payment manually from the invoice itself, and then adjust for the exchange rate manually via journal transaction in your accounts.
3) Can you elaborate on why your overpayment account is a liability account? I'd love to try to break that down together to determine how to best move forwards here.
I used a Wave invoice and the client overpaid by CC. Now I am not allowed to change the deposit in the "Payments by Wave" account. How do I split this payment into payment for two invoices?
I had created an account called 'Customer overpayment account'. What I do is:
1) Create invoice, key in actual amount received together with the surplus
2) Go to Transactions, split the payment with the surplus goes into COA
3) in the next invoice for same customer, I had put in payment debited from COA
This works well so far but needs to manually record who paid extra. However, when it comes to generating statement for each customer, the surplus doesn't show at all. So the statement module is not working for me. Hopefully there is a way to solve this. Thanks
I finally figured out a way to solve this that didn't involve changing invoice amounts when a customer overpays me using Wave payments. Even if the balance is now negative, you can still record a manual payment on the invoice. I do that and apply the overpayment amount to the prepay account for that customer. Then, I can pay other invoices using the prepay account. It shows on the customer statement as a refund issued, but then they can also see the payment being applied to other invoices or see the credit so their statement amount shows correctly. Also, it shows on my balance sheet if there's a balance in the prepay account so I can make sure I applied everything correctly.
It isn't as good as allowing customers to pay multiple invoices themselves, but is much better than having to edit the items on the invoice as suggested by Wave above.
Thanks Teresac.
I just showed the unpaid invoice as paid through the wave account EZPZ.
Until Wave lifts their restriction of not being able to edit a wave payment, the "Payments by Wave" account will have to show an incorrect balance. It is too much trouble to go through creating an account just because we do not have the accounting tools we need .
It would be nice for us accountants, make Wave look like a great platform and a great crowd pleaser to give our customers the ability to make one payment to pay multiple invoices without all this trouble.
This just needs to be fixed correctly, rather than these workarounds. This probably will make me leave the platform after trying it out for a few months.
Question - I am accounting for customer overpayments as GraceLee commented on August 5, 2020. However, the credit balance is not showing up on the client statement. I did assign a customer to the overpayment portion on the transaction. How can I show the client what their true balance is?
Hey @Remember !
Since Wave does not currently have a formal feature to accommodate over/underpayments, any balance categorized into customer overpayment liability account will not reflect on the Customer Statement I'm afraid. This is because the liability account is not associated with the customer's activity.
You can always generate a report for your overpayment account by going to Reports > Account Transactions (General Ledger) > Select the account in drop down menu.
What I did to make my customer statements accurate:
1. Leave the overpayment on the customer's most recent invoice, so that invoice shows a credit balance
2. Create a journal transaction for the amount of the overpayment transferring it from Accounts Receivable to that customer's credit account.
This makes both the customer statement and the balance sheet correct.
However, this takes extra maintenance. The next time you invoice this customer, you need to
1. Locate the original payment transaction
2. Split the transaction and apply the overpayment amount to the next invoice
3. Find your journal transaction, and reduce it by the amount paid to the new invoice, so it now reflects only the amount of the customer's remaining credit, or delete it altogether if they've used it up.
I think in the long run (feature request!) it would be better if the customer statements added up any transaction that's tagged with that customer. It would make the bookkeeping a lot easier while still keeping their statements accurate.