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R Thompson
Level 1

Creating a credit memo from an unapplied balance

I have a customer that paid an invoice with a credit card, and then a week later sent in an ACH for the same invoice.

 

QBO help says to 1) Apply the payment to a different invoice, 2) refund the customer, or 3) record the overpayment as a tip. I don't really want to do any of these. I just want to turn the "Unapplied" balance into a Credit Memo and use the "send" feature to notify the customer of the credit.

 

The customer can then choose to apply that credit to a future invoice of their choosing to keep their system and mine in sync. If I apply the unapplied balance to some other random invoice of theirs, they invariably seem to pay that invoice in full, creating a mess.

 

So is there a way to turn that "Unapplied" balance into a credit memo?

 

I can't for the life of me figure out how. The closest I've maybe come is to delete the ACH payment, and create a credit memo for that amount, but that just seems wrong - e.g. deleting all the ACH payment info.

Thanks for any help.

 

5 Comments 5
JessT
Moderator

Creating a credit memo from an unapplied balance

Hi R Thompson!

 

The unapplied ACH payment, which is normally shown as a deposit in the customer's profile, is already saved as a credit/overpayment. It debits the bank account and credits the A/R by default.

 

I recommend sending a statement to your customer, showing their balance including the unapplied deposit because we can't just simply convert that deposit into a credit memo. It would require moving the deposit amount from A/R (deposit) to a clearing account, then back to A/R (as credit memo), which is not normally done in QBO.

 

Create a statement:

 

  1. Go to Sales on the left navigation bar.
  2. Select Customers and click the name of the customer in concern.
  3. Click the New transaction button in green.
  4. Choose Statement.
  5. Set the Statement Type to Balance Forward.
  6. Select the Start Date and End Date.
  7. Select the name of the customer in concern.
  8. Click Print or Preview if you want to check it first, and then Save and send.

 

Alternatively, you can create a temporary credit memo and send it to your customer. Then, save a PDF copy of it, attach the copy to the deposit (ACH payment), and delete it afterward.

 

Let us know if you have other questions in mind.

R Thompson
Level 1

Creating a credit memo from an unapplied balance

Thank you for the response. I'll adjust accordingly - probably continue creating a corresponding credit memo in excel, but will see if your statement solution will work adequately for us.

123145708681502
Level 1

Creating a credit memo from an unapplied balance

How to apply from unapplied credit memo 

Adrian_A
Moderator

Creating a credit memo from an unapplied balance

Hi,

 

I'll take that you want to apply a credit memo on an invoice to reduce your customer's balance on their next invoice. I'll guide you through the steps.

 

Here's how:

 

Once you've already created a credit memo, you can follow the steps below to link the credit memo to an existing invoice.

 

Here's how:

 

  1. From the + New tab, select Receive payment.
  2. Select the customer's name on the Customer drop-down.
  3. On the Outstanding Transactions field, tick the open invoice.
  4. In the Credit section, select the credit memo.
  5. Enter how much of the credit you want to apply.
  6. Enter the necessary information.
  7. Click Save and close.

 

Moreover, you can check this article as your guide to managing customer refunds:

 

 

Keep me posted whenever you have concerns about refunds.

lp_mi
Level 3

Creating a credit memo from an unapplied balance

I just had this happen and ended up having to apply the overpayment to the job/project it was overpaid to then I issued a credit memo on same job/project. Once I created the next invoice, I applied the credit to it. It worked.

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