About payment processing flow

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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:

• Register finance charges that may accompany a payment.
  
  For details, see: About the registration of finance charges.
• Correct a released payment by voiding it and recording the correct one.
  
  For step-by-step instructions, see: Void a payment or prepayment document.
• Reserve a payment with the Open status by selecting the On hold check box for the payment.
  
• Allocate a payment for a sales order if the Distribution functionality is enabled in the Enable/disable functionalities (CS100000) window.
  For details, see: About payment reservation for sales orders.

You can use invoice-wide settings, located under Data entry settings on the General settings tab of the Customer ledger preferences (AR101000) window, to change the processing flow of invoices.
For details, see: About changing the processing of customer ledger documents.

In Visma.net ERP, you can require users to perform additional steps during the recording of a payment by using settings located under Data entry settings on the General settings tab of the Customer ledger preferences (AR101000) window.
For details, see: About changing the processing of customer ledger documents.