I work as a childminder and a parent has accidentally made a payment before she intended to and has asked if I can refund it to her and she will pay it again at a later date. I have no problem with that so I transferred the money back and then issued a credit note against the part paid invoice, choosing the refund option rather than hold as credit. The refund has appeared in my bank account feed as I expected it to, however, the invoice that the credit note was issued against is still showing the payment which I feel is going to confuse things when this parent comes to make the payment again, as it is still showing as partially paid. Is there something I’m missing?
The payment would still be tagged to the invoice, so it’s left there as a bit of an audit trail. You should be seeing that a payment was allocated, and a payment has been refunded, and as such have 2 matching bank statement entries too.
What should change however, is the status of the invoice, if for example the refund equals the total paid, the invoice should then be “SENT” rather the “PART PAID” or “PAID IN FULL”
The invoice was for ÂŁ28. The client paid ÂŁ22 and I allocated it to the invoice. When she asked if I could transfer the money back I applied a credit note for ÂŁ22 to the invoice, meaning the amount now allocated to the invoice should be zero and the status should have changed to SENT but it is still saying PART PAID.
Apologies for the delay here @tlc_78 - I’ve been looking into this with a colleague.
What’s happening is actually just the way it’s presented. The payment itself has been refunded, the balance outstanding would now be the full value and you can still log a full payment, so it doesn’t affect the debtors control account.
I have logged this with our team however, so it can be reviewed.
A better way to log it might have been to detach the payment from the invoice (turning it into a prepayment on their account rather than a payment against a specific invoice) and then “refund balance”. This would leave the original invoice unpaid.
I have now received payment from the client, which will cover the invoices already issued as well as the next two, but if I choose to “pay from credit” will it only pay off the £6 that it thinks is the balance of the invoice?
The way I dealt with the new payment was to input it as a new transaction to my bank account and then tried to allocate it to the unpaid invoices. Would I be better deleting the transaction and allocation the full payment (ÂŁ112) to the invoice which is appearing as part paid? Should that then allocate the full invoice amount of ÂŁ28 to that invoice and put the rest as credit?
What does your bank statement say? I would try to match this as close as possible.
If this shows that you have refunded the part payment and then received the payment in full, I would try to replicate this on QuickFile so it all matches up.
I tried dealing with it the way I suggested above but the client now appears to be in ÂŁ22 more credit than she should be. Any help gratefully received.
I think there’s a bit of confusion here because of the payment - but don’t panic, we’ll try and set things straight and get everything recorded correctly.
By raising a credit note you’ve effectively written off that part of the invoice rather than refunding it, so it would mean that the £22 is no longer due.
If they’re all individual payments (as in they’re all relating to this one invoice), you may find it easier to delete them and the credit note so the invoice shows as due in full and puts you back at the beginning.
Here’s how I would record things from the start:
Tag the initial £22 payment to the client rather than the invoice (from the bank statement you would select “pay down multiple invoices or hold on account” when tagging the payment)
View that payment (View client >> View >> All Payments)
Refund the payment, which creates the refund bank entry as a result. Invoice hasn’t been touched but both the £22 in and acknowledge out would now be on your statement and showing as tagged.
If the payment is allocated to an invoice, that’s not a problem. When you view the payment you would need to detach it from the invoice first before you can refund it.
