Suggestion for Improvement - Supplier prepayment & Customer payment in advance explanation option on bank reconciliation

I also need this. I saw that Xero has prepayment of suppliers and clients built in, it would be nice to have this feature in clearbooks.

Hi, I just found that actually we can do this already.

If we receive a customer prepayment we go to: Sales > Money In and we add the prepayment there, including assigning the prepayment to the client. If you are also importing your bank statements you might find that the entry is now listed again in your bank feed, you will need to manually delete the bank feed entry so it doesnt appear twice.

Once you added the prepayment you can see the prepayment is now listed under "Unallocated cash". As you complete the work then you can raise invoices and pay off the invoice using the unallocated cash balance.

Follow the reverse for payments to suppliers in advance.

Hi David,

That's exactly right and probably explained better than I could. Thanks for bringing this to our attention, I have now marked this as implemented as it is already part of the system.

All the best,

Chris

Hi Chris - sorry but I don't think Jodie's suggestion has been implemented.

From what she said, my own experience and David's second post you still can not reconcile a bank statement item against a payment on account, ie this is still a fault with the system.

To explain more fully. Someone pays you £100 on account so, using the system above, you enter it into the bank and against the customer's record via Money In in the Sales menu. You then upload the bank statement and try to explain the £100 but you can't. If it was paying off an invoice or matching any other manual receipt already entered (via the bank menu) the entry would appear on the list to "allocate" or "reconcile" but if you've entered it via the sales or purchases menus, it's invisible on the bank import screen.

This leads to the daft situation, as described by David, of having to delete the entry from the statement and, if you want to reconcile your bank account, having to go to the bank account, find the £100 you entered and "reconciling" it with a green tick.

So, to record a payment on account of either an invoice or bill, I'd avoid this feature altogether and just enter it via the bank in & out naming the customer or supplier to make sure it's recorded on their record, then when the final invoice/bill goes out or comes in, I'd enter it as usual but enter the initial dummy entry as a negative line in the invoice/bill (this also makes sure you are VAT compliant - see below).

You can enhance this process by putting the initial money in or out to a balance sheet account if there's going to be a delay in the final invoice or bill, especially if the delay spans a year end.

David (and Chris) the other main problem with this feature is that there's no VAT reporting, in that, generally, VAT has to be recorded at either the invoice date or the money date, whichever is earlier.

To be honest, I wouldn't pay anything on account without a bill and always send out an invoice with "Payment on Account" if I need clients to pay up front.

Although this thread is many years old, I wanted to respond that prepayments and over payments can be recorded using the 'Save as unallocated payment/receipt' button when explaining a bank transaction. This will reduce the balance on the supplier or customer account but leave the payment to be allocated to bills or invoices as a later point.

Also, any existing manually entered transactions can be reconciled with a bank feed/import transaction, including payments on account, prepayments, overpayments, part payments, payments allocated to multiple invoices, bank transfers etc.

See this support guide for more information.