When you receive a payment from a customer, you create a corresponding document in the system.
When you save the document for the first time, the system assigns a unique reference number
to it for tracking purposes and a status that indicates the current state of the document
within its processing flow.
The main stages are the following:
- Recording: In this stage, you create a payment or provide all the
necessary information to the system.
By default, the system assigns to the payment the
Balanced status when you save it for the first time.
This status indicates that
the user has finished editing the payment and it is ready to be released, although you
still can edit a payment with this status. Alternatively, if you select the
Hold check box to indicate to the system that this payment is not
ready to be released, the system changes the payment status to On hold.
For
details, see: About payment recording.
- Application:
In this stage, you specify the list of the outstanding documents to
which the system should apply the payment. You can do this while you record the payment or
after you have released the payment.
You can fully or partially apply the payment amount
to an outstanding document, or distribute the payment amount among multiple outstanding
documents. The system creates application records, which include the paid amount, for each
included outstanding document. The system does not change the payment status during this
stage; it remains Balanced, On hold (if Hold is
selected), or Open (if the payment has been released).
For details, see: About manual payment application.
- Releasing a payment:
You can release a payment only if it has the Balanced
status.
When you release the payment, the system checks the available payment balance and
processes the payment accordingly.
If the available payment balance is zero (that is, if
the payment has been fully applied to an outstanding document), the system changes the
statuses of both the payment and the paid document to Closed.
If the available
payment balance is not zero, the system changes the payment status to Open. This
status indicates to users and to the system that the payment is ready to be applied to the
outstanding documents of a customer.
For details, see: About release of payments and prepayments.
- Releasing application records:
If you specify a list of outstanding documents for a
payment with the Open status, you should release the application records after you
have finished distributing the payment amount between the outstanding documents.
You can
fully or partially apply the payment amount to outstanding documents.
When you release the
applications, the system checks the available payment balance.
Based on this data, the
system processes the payment differently, in one of the following ways:- If the payment amount is fully applied to an outstanding document, the system does
the following: releases application records; changes the statuses of the payment and
the paid document to Closed; and decreases the balances of the paid document
and the payment. The system may change the balance of the customer, if documents with
different currencies are involved.
- If the payment amount is partially applied, the system leaves the payment status as
Open; it also decreases the balances of the paid document, the payment, and
the customer. If some outstanding documents were fully paid with the applied amount,
the system changes the status of the paid document to Closed.
In addition to the actions you perform during the main stages, you may need to do the
following:
Process stages