Record a payment on account
Sometimes money arrives before you know exactly which invoice it belongs to — a deposit, a prepayment, or a lump sum covering several invoices you have not picked yet. You can record it on account: the money goes into your books straight away, and you allocate it to invoices whenever you are ready.
Before you begin
- You need a payment method set up and your Accounting Settings configured.
- It helps (but is not required) to know which customer the money came from — you can note this so the invoice list is pre-filtered when you allocate later.
Steps
1. Record the payment
- Go to Payments → Customer Payments and select Record Payment.
- Fill in the payment details:
- Payment Date, Amount, Currency and Payment Method (all required).
- Reference and Bank Reference (optional) — for example a transaction or remittance reference.
- Under Received From (Optional), you can link the payment to a customer:
- Customer — start typing to search by name, email or account number and pick the customer. This pre-filters the invoice list when you allocate.
- Payer Name (as on bank statement) — the name exactly as it appears on your bank statement, if it differs from the customer's name.
- Add Notes if useful.
- Post immediately is ticked: the payment goes into your books straight away. Untick it to keep the payment as a Draft to review first.
- Email the customer a receipt is not ticked. Tick it only if the customer should hear about this payment now — see Send the customer a receipt below.
- Select Record Payment.
[Screenshot required: Record Payment page showing the Received From (Optional) customer and payer-name fields]
You are taken to the payment's details page.
2. Post it to your books (only if you kept it as a draft)
A draft has not yet entered your accounts. To hold the money on account:
- On the payment's details page, select Post Payment.
- Confirm. As there are no allocations yet, the whole amount is posted on account (unallocated).
The payment's status changes to Posted, and the money now shows in your books and in the Unallocated Items report.
3. Allocate it when you are ready
Once posted, you can match the money to invoices at any time — now or later. On the payment's details page select Add Allocation and match it to one or more invoices. Full instructions are in Allocate an existing payment.
Send the customer a receipt
Recording a payment never emails anyone on its own. A payment you record is often bookkeeping — a bank transfer matched days later, an old payment entered while setting up, a correction — and a customer should not get an email for those. When they should hear from you, you decide:
- While recording — tick Email the customer a receipt. It is sent once the payment is posted.
- Any time afterwards — open the payment and select Send receipt. It is offered on a posted payment that was recorded as coming from a customer.
The receipt says what you received and on what date, which invoices it paid (and what each still owes), and any amount held on the customer's account. It goes to the customer's invoice contact. If the customer has no email address, you are told so and nothing is sent: add an address to the customer, then use Send receipt.
What happens next
- The posted, unmatched amount sits in your unapplied receipts holding position — it is safely recorded but not yet set against any invoice.
- It appears on the Unallocated Items report so you can see, at a glance, money that still needs matching.
- Allocating it later reduces the chosen invoices' balances and updates their statuses automatically.
Accounting impact
Posting the payment increases your bank balance and records the amount as unapplied receipts (a holding position). No customer's accounts receivable balance changes until you allocate the money to their invoices.
Important notes
- On account = posted but unallocated. A payment must be posted to count as money on account. A payment left as a Draft is not yet in your books.
- You don't have to allocate all at once. Allocate part of the payment now and the rest later; the remaining balance stays on account.
Troubleshooting
- I can't see an "Add Allocation" button. Allocation only becomes available once the payment is Posted. Post it first (step 2 above).
- A generic error when posting. Posting writes to your ledger, so it needs your Accounting Settings in place (including the accounts for holding unapplied receipts). Configure them under Settings → Accounting, then try again.