Tip of the Month 2025 - January - Understanding Accounts!
This month, we are going to be looking at the Accounts section. Understanding the accounts section is really important in helping understand what has been invoiced, what is owed and what payments have been made. Let's get started!
Did you know that you can hide credit notes and reversed
payments?
Ticking these boxes can mean the difference between an account that looks like this;
REMEMBER: The Account Balance is the sum of the invoices, minus the sum of the payments. If the account balance is £0.00, that means that the payments and the invoices are the same value. If the account is in credit, the sum of the payments if higher than the sum of the invoices and inversely, if the account is in debt, the sum of the invoices is higher than that of the payments.
Invoices will be highlighted in one of the following colours: green, yellow, red or burgundy.
- Green - Indicates that the invoice has been fully paid
- Yellow - Indicates that the invoice has been partly paid; a payment has been added to this invoice but does not equal the invoice total
- Red - Indicates that the invoice is unpaid; no payments have been allocated to this invoice
- Burgundy - Indicates that the invoice has been credit noted. This invoice is no longer live and will have to be run again at the correct amount. Credit noted invoices don’t contribute to the account balance.
Simple, right?
REMEMBER: If an invoice is red or yellow, that doesn’t always mean that a payment has not been made, it just means that a payment has not been allocated to the invoice.
It is important that payments are allocated to invoices. If a payment is added to an account but not allocated to an invoice, the invoice will show as unpaid.
Why is this important? I hear you ask!
Well! A few reasons! If you want to send an account
statement to a parent, it will show them how much they need to pay from each
invoice. If the payments haven’t been allocated to the invoices, the amount on the
statement will not be accurate. Also, next time you run an invoice, any amount
missing from a previous invoice will be a “Brought forward balance”.
Did you know that you are able to change the order of the History tab in a child's account ?
By default the most recent invoice will be at the top
of the History section, but you are able to click on any of the column headings
(Date / Type / Trns No. / Description / Invoice Total / Payment Amount) to
order by that instead.
For example, if you click on the 'Date' column heading, the child's account history will be ordered oldest to newest, which can make it easier to understand as you'll be reading forwards in time instead of backwards.
Did you know that you can view or resend invoices?
In the History section, just click on the blue invoice
number in the “Trns No.” column. This will show you a breakdown of the invoice.
Wherever you see a grey plus button, you can click on it to view details of the invoice.
You can also resend the invoice via email from this page. Click the “Email” button to send a copy of the invoice via email. If you want to preview the copy that the parent receives, just click “Print” to have a look!
We talked earlier about how Credit Notes don't contribute to the account balance and how you can hide them to make the history section easier to understand.
or give us a ring on 0800 002 9242 - Option 5!
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