Jean, you have 2 choices.
Neither of them optimal b/c Wave does not have Vendor or Customer sub-ledgers.
Prepare and post the Invoice for the customer job as soon as you know you're doing the job - for the full amount. Then as cash payments come in you can pay down the invoice. You will always have a balance outstanding until the final payment.
Prepare a "Deposits" account in the Income section of your Chart of Accounts. Prepare a "Deposits Rec'd" Product or Service in your Invoice section. Invoice each cash deposit with a Deposit product or service as they are received and pay this invoice with the cash deposit. This will catagorise your deposits into a separate account. On Final Billing, prepare an Invoice for the full amount of the sale using the correct product or service and then add items showing the deposits (using the "Deposit" product or service) as negative amounts. This will post the full amount into the sales account and remove the deposit amounts from the deposit account. Plus it gives you a final record showing all the cash transactions.
I have to add a $200 credit to a customer's account from a deposit that they made BEFORE I started accounting with Wave. This will be a credit only for a future payment later one day.
This is NOT invoiced now, nor is it a withdrawal. NOR is it a reoccurring invoice.
Do I just notate in their account because the below answers that were given don't work?
Hey @Rezinate! Sorry to hear you're having trouble with this. Thank you for the screenshots. It should reflect in the drop down there if you have created it under 'Customer Prepayments' as you have. Are you able to try some browser troubleshooting to see if this helps to resolve the issue? This Wave guide has browser troubleshooting steps to follow.
Hi @Jean! It sounds like what you are wanting to track could be a bit more technical than what Wave can currently do. If you are not seeing what you need to track from the Reports (such as Account Transactions report) then it might be best to track the specific data you need in a sheet.
It looks like what @LaurenM and @Jesper1 are saying will work for me too:
@LaurenM: I agree 100% with @Jesper1 . I'd just like to have a "Customer and Prepayments" line as an invoice option for the Income account dropdown. This would be awesome.
I would be happy to pay a small fee for Wave monthly to solve this (and several) small business accounting nightmares.
Thanks @EmmaP, however it has noting to do with the browser. I'm using "Chrome Version 79.0.3945.130 (Official Build) (64-bit)."
Here is the screen shot again:
Thanks for the article. But Im having a slight confusion here. Im starting to use wave to manage a software development business. What my process with a client usually is,
1. Issue an Estimate.
2. If customer confirms get a pre payment.
3. After/ Upon delivery issue an invoice with 60 days credit period.
But per the article if Im to record (2) Pre payment properly. I need to create the invoice first. But If Im creating the invoice I have to specify a due date. Which is not practical as I can't issue a Invoice without actually delivering. What am I doing/ thinking wrong here? What would be the solution?
This took me a while to figure out so I'm posting my process in case it helps others.
RETAINERS HOW TO 1. Set up retainer holding account for a specific client
Go to Accounting > Chart of Accounts > Liabilities & Credit Cards tab > scroll down Customer Prepayments and Customer Credits > Add new account (Name it: [NAME OF CLIENT] RETAINER)*
2. Receiving payments (this will save client prepayments to a liability holding account)
On Transactions page find and select a retainer payment that your client has made.
Under ‘Category' choose the CLIENT RETAINER account you made step 1 (find it under the liability accounts).
Under ‘Customer’ add the customer name and save.
3. Applying invoices to the retainer (this will pay invoices from the liability holding account)
When you have an invoice ready, select 'Record a payment’
From ‘Payment method’ dropdown select ‘Other’
From the ‘Payment account’ dropdown find and select ‘CLIENT RETAINER’ which you made step 1.
Click ‘Submit’
You’ll have the option to send the client a receipt for their records.
4. Print a running balance for your client
Go to Reports > Balance Sheet.
Click on the Details tab.
Scroll down to find your CLIENT RETAINER account and click the name to be taken to that account summary page.
Amend details as needed and click the ‘Update Report’ button.
Click ‘Export’ button at the top of page to generate a balance report you can send to the client.
@Wonder said:
This took me a while to figure out so I'm posting my process in case it helps others.
RETAINERS HOW TO
1. Set up retainer holding account for a specific client
• Go to Accounting > Chart of Accounts > Liabilities & Credit Cards tab > scroll down Customer Prepayments and Customer Credits > Add new account (Name it: [NAME OF CLIENT] RETAINER)
Receiving payments (this will save client prepayments to a liability holding account)
• On Transactions page find and select a retainer payment that your client has made.
• Under ‘Category' choose the CLIENT RETAINER account you made step 1 (find it under the liability accounts).
• Under ‘Customer’ add the customer name and save.
Applying invoices to the retainer (this will pay invoices from the liability holding account)
• When you have an invoice ready, select 'Record a payment’
• From ‘Payment method’ dropdown select ‘Other’
• From the ‘Payment account’ dropdown find and select ‘CLIENT RETAINER’ which you made step 1.
• Click ‘Submit’
• You’ll have the option to send the client a receipt for their records.
Print a running balance for your client
• Go to Reports > Balance Sheet.
• Click on the Details tab.
• Scroll down to find your CLIENT RETAINER account and click the name to be taken to that account summary page.
• Amend details as needed and click the ‘Update Report’ button.
• Click ‘Export’ button at the top of page to generate a balance report you can send to the client.
Thanks alot. This clears my concern.
One more thing, how can I issue a payment receipt for the client on pre-payment?
@prabath There's no ideal answer here. You'll need to adapt as best to your situation.
Is your client definitely needing a receipt or are they simply interested in having a running total of what they've given you?
If they are ok with the total, provide them with the report from Step 4 above (it shows dates and amounts received and taken).
With the method above the incoming money is seen as a liability (what you owe) not income (what you gain). Receipts can only be made for income so if you definitely needed a receipt you would need to move the money over to income.
If the prepayment is only a deposit and non-refundable anyhow, I'd go straight to a separate invoice with a line item called 'prepayment' due immediately, then log the payment and issue a receipt. Issue another invoice with the balance due on completion of the job.
If the prepayment is for the whole job or credits then log the total as income and issue the receipt. You'll need to keep track of work against it elsewhere. If you don't use all the credits you may need to offer them a refund. If the credits are time based, perhaps set up automatic timed invoices that chip away at the total rather than for work completed.
Either way I would have wording in my contract that explains what they can expect in terms of how the money is handled. With the liability method your client may not be able to claim it straight away without an invoice however the point of a retainer is that there is some kickback for them for providing money upfront (eg getting work at a cheaper rate, locking in a block of time etc).
This took me a while to figure out so I'm posting my process in case it helps others. (Original disappeared on edit?)
RETAINERS HOW TO
1. Set up retainer holding account for a specific client
Go to Accounting > Chart of Accounts > Liabilities & Credit Cards tab > scroll down Customer Prepayments and Customer Credits > Add new account (Name it: [NAME OF CLIENT] RETAINER)
2. Receiving payments (this will save client prepayments to a liability holding account)
On Transactions page find and select a retainer payment that your client has made.
Under ‘Category' choose the CLIENT RETAINER account you made step 1 (find it under the liability accounts).
Under ‘Customer’ add the customer name and save.
3. Applying invoices to the retainer (this will pay invoices from the liability holding account)
When you have an invoice ready, select 'Record a payment’
From ‘Payment method’ dropdown select ‘Other’
From the ‘Payment account’ dropdown find and select ‘CLIENT RETAINER’ which you made step 1.
Click ‘Submit’
You’ll have the option to send the client a receipt for their records.
4. Print a running balance for your client
Go to Reports > Balance Sheet.
Click on the Details tab.
Scroll down to find your CLIENT RETAINER account and click the name to be taken to that account summary page.
Amend details as needed and click the ‘Update Report’ button.
Click ‘Export’ button at the top of page to generate a balance report you can send to the client.
Thanks @EmmaP, however it has noting to do with the browser. I'm using "Chrome Version 79.0.3945.130 (Official Build) (64-bit)."
Here is the screen shot again:
Hey @Rezinate! I'm sorry to hear about the issue you've been seeing here with regards to that account not populating correctly in your drop down list. I've submitted a ticket to my escalated development teams for them to take a look at this for you. We'll reach out to you directly as soon as we hear back!
Hey @Rezinate, I've checked in with my teams and they've let me know that this will be something they'll be looking into in the future. In the meantime, as a workaround, you can navigate to Accounting > Transactions, and categorize an income transaction as a payment for that invoice, while having it in the Customer Prepayments account. That should be your best bet!
Thanks for providing us the steps on how to set up retainer holding account. I have successfully done from step 1 to 3. I have created the retainer holding account under name - Customer Advance Payment and add customers under this account balance
When I perform Step 4,
Go to Reports > Balance Sheet. ok
Click on the Details tab. ok
Scroll down to find your CLIENT RETAINER account and click the name to be taken to that account summary page. ok
Amend details as needed and click the ‘Update Report’ button. I have problem here
When i select the specific customer name, it will only show the advance payment the customer made. However, it can't show the invoices offset. The offset invoice only appeared in the main account - Customer Advance Payment.
May i know how to i generate a report for individual customer to show their advance payment balance?
What if the payment terms for a project base service which are 20% upfront, 30% for 2nd payment and then 30% and 20% for the rest, how can I schedule the invoice? When I set the first invoice with the due date for upfront due date, the invoice shows total amount as the amount due, although we can place the payment terms in not, unfortunately the customer seldom to read it carefully, he/she just focus on the amount due date, what is your recommendation how can we can record the kind of invoice?
Unfortunately there is no way to do this on Wave's invoices technically speaking.
What you could do as a workaround is send an invoice with an end date for the projects closing date. Your client could then make small incremental payments to the invoice until it is fully paid off. I understand this is not the workaround you were hoping for however our invoice scheduler is not this detailed.
Hi,
Mentioned below, almost a year ago, are expected improvements coming that will potentially resolve some of the pain points discussed in these comments. Any updates?
I'm not averse to the workaround of sending an estimate to a customer but changing the heading to say 'Deposit Request'. However, there are three more spots that reference 'Estimate' (below) and wondering if these can be changed anywhere to make it seem like a Deposit Request that won't create income.
Estimate Number: Change to Deposit Request Number
Estimate Date: Change to Deposit Request Date
Expires On: Change to Deposit Request Due Date
The only issue here is that you can't use Wave's payment processing option.
HI @DanFin! Thanks for reaching out here. I can see how having the ability to change the 'Estimate' header would mean that other fields that reference 'estimate' would need to be changed as well. At the moment the ability to change these fields is not on the immediate road map and I am unable to provide an ETA but I can see how this would be useful to have!
I still don't understand how to record a customer pre payment. How am I supposed to ATTACH a customer? I understand I have to set something up an account under Customer Prepayments and Customer Credits, but is that one account for these options or do I set up one account for each customer? Do I put my name or the customer's name in the Account Name field. Then once that is sorted, what next? How do I record the payment? I don't think your instructions are clear enough.
Nintu,
You need to take a bookkeeping course. Wave is a simple and effective tool to manage your books but it presumes a basic understanding of accounting principles.
I don't mean to say this in any kind of disrespectful way to you. Accounting has rules and a mathematic logic and Wave follows these. One has to be familiar with this underlying structure to get the most out of this, or any accounting platform.
Believe me, I know how frustrated you are! Find yourself a good bookkeeper and work with them and take their advice.
Kimpton
This is definitely not clear. You do not deposit actually money into this pre-payment account. It's deposited in a separate account. What happens when you have an invoice where only a partial amount is covered in the pre-payment account? The running balance does not match up if you record a payment to other > pre-payment account. You need to post a walk-through video with a running balance of this scenario.
How would I best handle the following scenario:
My customer gives me a $100 deposit on a $150 job via PayPal through my POS credit card reader. After fees, I receive $96.80 of the $100 paid and this $96.80 is what posts to the bank account. I need to put a credit of $100 for the deposit on the invoice and show a balance of $50 due. When I do this there is $100 Invoice Payment transaction and $96.80 REALTIME PAYPAL PAYMENT. What do I need to do here to properly account for the $3.20 lost to PayPal fees in Wave?
Welcome to one of the limitations of Wave; you'll have to construct some sort of workaround.
If you set up another Income account called Transaction Fees then you can setup another item in your Products & Services called Fees.
When your customer pays their invoice by Paypal, Square, ect then you will have to edit the original invoice by adding the new Service called Fees. The amount you enter there is the negative of the charge and is not taxable; in your example you would enter -3.20 as the charge for Fees.
This will change your Invoice Total to 96.80 plus what ever taxes on the $100 sale. Save the Invoice and now you can pay manually or on the Transactions page; it will match the amount received from the POS.
Your accounts will show a $100 sale and a negative $3.20 sale. And $50 left owing on the invoice.
This workaround does not consider a Deposit or Prepayment circumstance, only an invoiced sale, because you asked about tracking transaction fees.
I often need to generate an invoice to a customer for an order deposit. Upon receipt, this is a liability and I do not want to recognize it as income. Upon delivery of product or service, I invoice the entire value and credit the prepaid deposit amount. Wave's CoA includes a liability account for prepayments and/or deposits, which reflects this setup. However, it appears only an income account can be included with "sell this" on invoices.
My customers do not send me partial or pre-payments without documentation. I have used pro-forma invoices for this in past work, but do not see that option with Wave. Do you have a suggested workaround, besides using manual transactions to "move" the deposits to and from the liability and income accounts?
Managing an HOA with the neighbors. Sometimes a neighbor (customer) will purchase materials we are going to be using to repair the roads. Rather than pay them for the materials, we want to apply it as a customer prepayment. This prepayment will likely be there for months since we only send HOA invoices a couple times a year, so the prepayment won't be tied to an invoice. I haven't been able to find a way to reflect a materials purchase "prepayment" and have it show up on the customer statement. Please help.
You're correct when you say that unfortunately there is no way to add a liability or asset account to your invoices at this time. Not sure if you could use a journal transactions to debit the income account and credit a holding liability account for each invoice that you create?
Hi @Mr_Paul
Unfortunately the only items that are able to appear on a customer statement are invoice items. There is no way to add to your customer's statement otherwise.
To date, to receive deposits for my wedding clients I have invoiced them in total as asked them to only pay a certain amount. I am realizing that I need to be allocating this amount as a liability rather than income. My question is, when an invoice is paid partially through a bank transfer, I am not able to edit it to allocate that partial payment to my 'deposits 2021 liability account' through the invoice. Wave says that "Payments received through Wave are automatically categorized to ensure accurate bookkeeping." So, how I do allocate this as a prepayment (deposit) for their wedding next year?
Wondering, would I categorize it differently within my transactions? I see three transactions in my accounting that have to do with this invoice...
1- that attaches the $$ to the invoice - "Invoice ### from ....."
2- the $$ is "transfer from payments by wave"
3- then the $$ is "transfer to LLC bank account"
-is it in this process that I categorize it into my liabilities account for next year's weddings? and how would I reconcile it next year, when the final payment is done and it's no longer a liability?
Phew, so many questions.....
Ok my biggest question/issue is, when a client pays an invoice via wave - how can I attribute that payment to a prepayment liabilities account? What's the point of invoicing in wave if a client cannot pay in wave in a way that I have control over how that money is attributed? I am a wedding florist and due to COVID 99% of my 2020 weddings have been moved to 2021 and I need to change their previous payments from income to a liability. Please help me figure this out as having all this 'income' that's not really income this year is hurting my business. Please help!!!!
Comments
Jean, you have 2 choices.
Neither of them optimal b/c Wave does not have Vendor or Customer sub-ledgers.
Hope this helps,
Kimpton
I have to add a $200 credit to a customer's account from a deposit that they made BEFORE I started accounting with Wave. This will be a credit only for a future payment later one day.
This is NOT invoiced now, nor is it a withdrawal. NOR is it a reoccurring invoice.
Do I just notate in their account because the below answers that were given don't work?
Hey @Rezinate! Sorry to hear you're having trouble with this. Thank you for the screenshots. It should reflect in the drop down there if you have created it under 'Customer Prepayments' as you have. Are you able to try some browser troubleshooting to see if this helps to resolve the issue? This Wave guide has browser troubleshooting steps to follow.
Hi @Jean! It sounds like what you are wanting to track could be a bit more technical than what Wave can currently do. If you are not seeing what you need to track from the Reports (such as Account Transactions report) then it might be best to track the specific data you need in a sheet.
Hey @LaurenM , due to the circumstances it sounds like it would be best to just note this in their account.
Many thanks @EmmaP and @Kimpton
It looks like what @LaurenM and @Jesper1 are saying will work for me too:
@LaurenM: I agree 100% with @Jesper1 . I'd just like to have a "Customer and Prepayments" line as an invoice option for the Income account dropdown. This would be awesome.
I would be happy to pay a small fee for Wave monthly to solve this (and several) small business accounting nightmares.
Thanks @EmmaP, however it has noting to do with the browser. I'm using "Chrome Version 79.0.3945.130 (Official Build) (64-bit)."
Here is the screen shot again:
Thanks for your help!
Thanks for the article. But Im having a slight confusion here. Im starting to use wave to manage a software development business. What my process with a client usually is,
1. Issue an Estimate.
2. If customer confirms get a pre payment.
3. After/ Upon delivery issue an invoice with 60 days credit period.
But per the article if Im to record (2) Pre payment properly. I need to create the invoice first. But If Im creating the invoice I have to specify a due date. Which is not practical as I can't issue a Invoice without actually delivering. What am I doing/ thinking wrong here? What would be the solution?
Thanks
This took me a while to figure out so I'm posting my process in case it helps others.
RETAINERS HOW TO
1. Set up retainer holding account for a specific client
2. Receiving payments (this will save client prepayments to a liability holding account)
On Transactions page find and select a retainer payment that your client has made.
3. Applying invoices to the retainer (this will pay invoices from the liability holding account)
When you have an invoice ready, select 'Record a payment’
4. Print a running balance for your client
Thanks alot. This clears my concern.
One more thing, how can I issue a payment receipt for the client on pre-payment?
@prabath There's no ideal answer here. You'll need to adapt as best to your situation.
Is your client definitely needing a receipt or are they simply interested in having a running total of what they've given you?
If they are ok with the total, provide them with the report from Step 4 above (it shows dates and amounts received and taken).
With the method above the incoming money is seen as a liability (what you owe) not income (what you gain). Receipts can only be made for income so if you definitely needed a receipt you would need to move the money over to income.
If the prepayment is only a deposit and non-refundable anyhow, I'd go straight to a separate invoice with a line item called 'prepayment' due immediately, then log the payment and issue a receipt. Issue another invoice with the balance due on completion of the job.
If the prepayment is for the whole job or credits then log the total as income and issue the receipt. You'll need to keep track of work against it elsewhere. If you don't use all the credits you may need to offer them a refund. If the credits are time based, perhaps set up automatic timed invoices that chip away at the total rather than for work completed.
Either way I would have wording in my contract that explains what they can expect in terms of how the money is handled. With the liability method your client may not be able to claim it straight away without an invoice however the point of a retainer is that there is some kickback for them for providing money upfront (eg getting work at a cheaper rate, locking in a block of time etc).
This took me a while to figure out so I'm posting my process in case it helps others. (Original disappeared on edit?)
RETAINERS HOW TO
1. Set up retainer holding account for a specific client
2. Receiving payments (this will save client prepayments to a liability holding account)
3. Applying invoices to the retainer (this will pay invoices from the liability holding account)
4. Print a running balance for your client
@AlexL @EmmaP any ideas for my post above?
Thanks for your help!
> @Rezinate said:
Hey @Rezinate! I'm sorry to hear about the issue you've been seeing here with regards to that account not populating correctly in your drop down list. I've submitted a ticket to my escalated development teams for them to take a look at this for you. We'll reach out to you directly as soon as we hear back!
Thanks for this article. I really needed this information today!
Hey @Rezinate, I've checked in with my teams and they've let me know that this will be something they'll be looking into in the future. In the meantime, as a workaround, you can navigate to Accounting > Transactions, and categorize an income transaction as a payment for that invoice, while having it in the Customer Prepayments account. That should be your best bet!
Hi @Wonder ,
Thanks for providing us the steps on how to set up retainer holding account. I have successfully done from step 1 to 3. I have created the retainer holding account under name - Customer Advance Payment and add customers under this account balance
When I perform Step 4,
Go to Reports > Balance Sheet. ok
Click on the Details tab. ok
Scroll down to find your CLIENT RETAINER account and click the name to be taken to that account summary page. ok
Amend details as needed and click the ‘Update Report’ button. I have problem here
When i select the specific customer name, it will only show the advance payment the customer made. However, it can't show the invoices offset. The offset invoice only appeared in the main account - Customer Advance Payment.
May i know how to i generate a report for individual customer to show their advance payment balance?
What if the payment terms for a project base service which are 20% upfront, 30% for 2nd payment and then 30% and 20% for the rest, how can I schedule the invoice? When I set the first invoice with the due date for upfront due date, the invoice shows total amount as the amount due, although we can place the payment terms in not, unfortunately the customer seldom to read it carefully, he/she just focus on the amount due date, what is your recommendation how can we can record the kind of invoice?
Hey there @yckelvin
Unfortunately there is no way to do this on Wave's invoices technically speaking.
What you could do as a workaround is send an invoice with an end date for the projects closing date. Your client could then make small incremental payments to the invoice until it is fully paid off. I understand this is not the workaround you were hoping for however our invoice scheduler is not this detailed.
Hi,
Mentioned below, almost a year ago, are expected improvements coming that will potentially resolve some of the pain points discussed in these comments. Any updates?
I'm not averse to the workaround of sending an estimate to a customer but changing the heading to say 'Deposit Request'. However, there are three more spots that reference 'Estimate' (below) and wondering if these can be changed anywhere to make it seem like a Deposit Request that won't create income.
Estimate Number: Change to Deposit Request Number
Estimate Date: Change to Deposit Request Date
Expires On: Change to Deposit Request Due Date
The only issue here is that you can't use Wave's payment processing option.
HI @DanFin! Thanks for reaching out here. I can see how having the ability to change the 'Estimate' header would mean that other fields that reference 'estimate' would need to be changed as well. At the moment the ability to change these fields is not on the immediate road map and I am unable to provide an ETA but I can see how this would be useful to have!
I still don't understand how to record a customer pre payment. How am I supposed to ATTACH a customer? I understand I have to set something up an account under Customer Prepayments and Customer Credits, but is that one account for these options or do I set up one account for each customer? Do I put my name or the customer's name in the Account Name field. Then once that is sorted, what next? How do I record the payment? I don't think your instructions are clear enough.
Nintu,
You need to take a bookkeeping course. Wave is a simple and effective tool to manage your books but it presumes a basic understanding of accounting principles.
I don't mean to say this in any kind of disrespectful way to you. Accounting has rules and a mathematic logic and Wave follows these. One has to be familiar with this underlying structure to get the most out of this, or any accounting platform.
Believe me, I know how frustrated you are! Find yourself a good bookkeeper and work with them and take their advice.
Kimpton
This is definitely not clear. You do not deposit actually money into this pre-payment account. It's deposited in a separate account. What happens when you have an invoice where only a partial amount is covered in the pre-payment account? The running balance does not match up if you record a payment to other > pre-payment account. You need to post a walk-through video with a running balance of this scenario.
How would I best handle the following scenario:
My customer gives me a $100 deposit on a $150 job via PayPal through my POS credit card reader. After fees, I receive $96.80 of the $100 paid and this $96.80 is what posts to the bank account. I need to put a credit of $100 for the deposit on the invoice and show a balance of $50 due. When I do this there is $100 Invoice Payment transaction and $96.80 REALTIME PAYPAL PAYMENT. What do I need to do here to properly account for the $3.20 lost to PayPal fees in Wave?
Welcome to one of the limitations of Wave; you'll have to construct some sort of workaround.
If you set up another Income account called Transaction Fees then you can setup another item in your Products & Services called Fees.
When your customer pays their invoice by Paypal, Square, ect then you will have to edit the original invoice by adding the new Service called Fees. The amount you enter there is the negative of the charge and is not taxable; in your example you would enter -3.20 as the charge for Fees.
This will change your Invoice Total to 96.80 plus what ever taxes on the $100 sale. Save the Invoice and now you can pay manually or on the Transactions page; it will match the amount received from the POS.
Your accounts will show a $100 sale and a negative $3.20 sale. And $50 left owing on the invoice.
This workaround does not consider a Deposit or Prepayment circumstance, only an invoiced sale, because you asked about tracking transaction fees.
I often need to generate an invoice to a customer for an order deposit. Upon receipt, this is a liability and I do not want to recognize it as income. Upon delivery of product or service, I invoice the entire value and credit the prepaid deposit amount. Wave's CoA includes a liability account for prepayments and/or deposits, which reflects this setup. However, it appears only an income account can be included with "sell this" on invoices.
My customers do not send me partial or pre-payments without documentation. I have used pro-forma invoices for this in past work, but do not see that option with Wave. Do you have a suggested workaround, besides using manual transactions to "move" the deposits to and from the liability and income accounts?
Managing an HOA with the neighbors. Sometimes a neighbor (customer) will purchase materials we are going to be using to repair the roads. Rather than pay them for the materials, we want to apply it as a customer prepayment. This prepayment will likely be there for months since we only send HOA invoices a couple times a year, so the prepayment won't be tied to an invoice. I haven't been able to find a way to reflect a materials purchase "prepayment" and have it show up on the customer statement. Please help.
Hey there @TiV
You're correct when you say that unfortunately there is no way to add a liability or asset account to your invoices at this time. Not sure if you could use a journal transactions to debit the income account and credit a holding liability account for each invoice that you create?
Hi @Mr_Paul
Unfortunately the only items that are able to appear on a customer statement are invoice items. There is no way to add to your customer's statement otherwise.
To date, to receive deposits for my wedding clients I have invoiced them in total as asked them to only pay a certain amount. I am realizing that I need to be allocating this amount as a liability rather than income. My question is, when an invoice is paid partially through a bank transfer, I am not able to edit it to allocate that partial payment to my 'deposits 2021 liability account' through the invoice. Wave says that "Payments received through Wave are automatically categorized to ensure accurate bookkeeping." So, how I do allocate this as a prepayment (deposit) for their wedding next year?
Wondering, would I categorize it differently within my transactions? I see three transactions in my accounting that have to do with this invoice...
1- that attaches the $$ to the invoice - "Invoice ### from ....."
2- the $$ is "transfer from payments by wave"
3- then the $$ is "transfer to LLC bank account"
-is it in this process that I categorize it into my liabilities account for next year's weddings? and how would I reconcile it next year, when the final payment is done and it's no longer a liability?
Phew, so many questions.....
Ok my biggest question/issue is, when a client pays an invoice via wave - how can I attribute that payment to a prepayment liabilities account? What's the point of invoicing in wave if a client cannot pay in wave in a way that I have control over how that money is attributed? I am a wedding florist and due to COVID 99% of my 2020 weddings have been moved to 2021 and I need to change their previous payments from income to a liability. Please help me figure this out as having all this 'income' that's not really income this year is hurting my business. Please help!!!!