[17.9.28] Improvements to automatic credit allocations

Implementation of automatic credit allocation in Manager was a concept which was always causing issues among users. The latest version is attempting to solve these issues.

Eliminating automatic overpayment entries

In theory, automatic allocation of overpayments keeps accounts receivable and accounts payable tidy even if bookkeeping errors occur because overpayments on one invoice are automatically re-allocated to different invoice. This means invoices are either paid or unpaid - never overpaid.

It’s a great feature until it’s not.

For example, your customer might pay the same invoice twice by mistake. Manager will “hide” this fact by automatically allocating the duplicate payment to the next unpaid invoice. Then customer pays the next unpaid invoice but since the invoice has been already paid or partially paid by previous payment, new payment results in overpayment which will roll onto next invoice. And so on.

When customer realizes they’ve paid twice some older invoice, it can take a lot of effort to untangle these rolling overpayments. In other words, Manager does save the time in the beginning but it really just defers inevitable - at some point, the overpayment will have to be dealt with and it will be more difficult to untangle these payments after longer period of time.

Better solution is to simply leave overpayments on invoices sit untouched so they can be dealt with manually without automatically affecting other invoices which might have been settled properly.

So the latest version is no longer going to automatically create automatic “Overpayment” entries on invoices. If invoice is overpaid, it will be shown on Sales Invoices or Purchase Invoices tab as Overpaid.

Invoice being Overpaid is considered a bookkeeping error. You should click on negative figure under Balance due column to examine ledger for the invoice and make sure the balance due comes to zero.

There are number of ways how to fix it.

  • If customer has paid twice, you can simply Spend money to pay them back overpaid amount. This will bring balance due on invoice to zero thus invoice will be marked as “Paid in full”
  • If customer has other unpaid invoices, you can edit the transaction which received money and re-allocate to other invoice(s) which will again bring invoice balance to zero thus invoice will be marked as “Paid in full”
  • If customer doesn’t have other unpaid invoices and doesn’t want to be paid back because they want to apply overpaid amount to future invoice(s), edit the transaction which received money and do not allocate overpaid amount to any invoice. This will make Manager automatically allocate only portion of the amount to make invoice “Paid in full” while reminder will be applied automatically to the next issued invoice.

Whatever approach you choose, in order to bring invoice to “Paid in full” status, the balance due amount must be brought to zero.

The same applies for suppliers & purchase invoices.

Making all transactions under invoice ledger clickable

By eliminating automatic allocations of overpayments, the ledger of invoice is now more straightforward. This means we can take things a bit further.

Previously, when you were receiving money (or spending money) on invoices and didn’t select any invoice, Manager would automatically spread the amount across unpaid invoices.

This would result in Automatic payment using available credit transaction on which you weren’t able to click Edit button.

The latest version doesn’t show Automatic payment using available credit in invoice ledger anymore. Instead, you will always see which specific transaction has credited the invoice and you can click Edit button on such transaction. This is useful when transaction was automatically allocated to one invoice but you’d like to explicitly allocate it to different one.

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Ummm, can we have a feature, so this can be made automatically without needing to correct all the overpaid invoices manually?

:frowning:

The latest version should fix all overpaid invoices automatically but going forward all new overpayments will have to be resolved manually.

If you allocate payment to account receivable and then customer credit account and not to the invoice will it then automatically allocate to invoice like its working now?

@durkpotgieter yes. you don’t have to choose the invoice. Manager will still automatically allocate the amount paid to one or more invoices.

All Guides on spending and receiving money are up to date on this subject.

Will Try out, All aboard! backup your data first before update the new one.

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Don’t get too excited, @acecombat2. :star_struck: This is actually a small change and only affects overpayments when specific invoices are designated. It does not affect how Manager behaves when money is paid or received and no invoice is selected. In the latter case, the exact same automatic allocation process as before occurs.

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Well the way I see it, the process will give us a room to fix the entry and easier to check the systemic error… I don’t have the ‘entangled’ problem due to my low transactions. Still curious how the flow gonna be for my situation.

I think that you meant Version 17.9.38 (not 17.9.28 as per your post)

The 17.9.28 is correct, as you can see here:

https://www.manager.io/desktop/releases/

Since then, there have been 10 additional updates bringing the latest version to 17.9.38, which has even more changes since this conversation was started.

There are often several updates in a day :slight_smile:

what will happen to previous entries.

I see … I wasn’t aware of that … sorry all.

Please see this comment from @lubos in another thread:

My interpretation of this is that all existing entries will be treated the way they have in the past (overpayments allocated to unpaid invoices), but going forward (everything you receive a payment for after the update that is overpaid) you will need to manually make a choice.

Hi @lubos
This update has affected my previous year’s (2013, 2014, 2015, 2016) data which has already been audited.

Now all those previous entries which were over overpaid and automatically adjusted with Paid in full status, shows Overpaid status.

Why Manager’s latest updates should affect the past entries?

I don’t want to sit down and waste my time in manually reallocating my past audited books.

Is there a way to switch the books to automatically adjust over payment like before?

Kindly help!

You cannot “switch the books” automatically. Since you have overpaid invoices, Manager has no way of telling where you wanted the excess funds to be allocated. You didn’t say whether your problem applied to sales invoices, purchase invoices, or both. But let’s assume sales invoices. I think the problem will not be so hard to fix as you might believe.

Since you have overpaid invoices, that means you specifically allocated payments to them that were in excess of the balance due. So there are necessarily other invoices that might have previously been paid in full through the automatic allocation that now are not. You don’t have to correct invoices to which you did not allocate payments specifically, only the ones to which you did. Here is how I would proceed:

  1. Back up your data in case something goes wrong during the correction process.

  2. Update your software. If you only updated to 17.9.28 and now see this problem, you should be aware that subsequent updates have improved the situation. In some cases, simply updating could make your problem disappear. But that will depend on exactly how you entered things in the past. If updating does not cure your problem, continue below.

  3. Go to the Sales Invoices tab and sort by status by clicking on the Status heading. This will group all Overpaid invoices together. You may, depending on all statuses, be able to click the heading until Overpaid invoices come to the top. Export the portion of the list with Overpaid invoices to a spreadsheet for reference during the remaining steps. This step is only for convenience so you can note which Customers have Overpaid invoices. If you already know which these are, or you have only a handful of customers, you may be able to skip this step.

  4. Go to the Customers tab and click on the number under the Invoices heading for one of the customers found in step #3.

  5. Click on the Invoice date heading until the oldest invoice is listed first.

  6. Click on Balance due for the oldest Overpaid invoice.

  7. Edit any bank or cash transactions listed by deleting the invoice number in the account allocation fields. That receipt will now no longer be specifically allocated to a single invoice. Any excess funds will be distributed to later invoices just as they were before the change in version 17.9.28.

  8. Go back to the sales invoice listing for this customer and find the next Overpaid invoice and repeat step #7. If you somehow got lost in the process, reset to step #4 and follow through again to step #7.

The point of this is that all of your invoices are not affected, only the ones where you specifically allocated excess receipts against a single invoice, expecting the excess to be carried forward. Those automatically credited invoices and any invoices for which receipts matched balances due are unaffected. And the process I’ve just described takes much less time to perform than to read about it. When finished, all your balance sheets and P&L statements should once again match what was audited.

Let us know if this fixes things or if you still have other questions.

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Thank you for the elaborate solution to rectify the mess in my books caused by the recent Manager Update.
I still stand by thought that Manager Updates should not affect user’s past data that has been AUDITED

We have no notes / working nor do i remember how those overpaid Sales Invoice were adjusted of my previous year’s data.
Moreover, my books are audited until 2016 and now we are coming close to our closing for this financial year, and Manager update has caused all the old automatic overpaid invoice adjustment to show up.

At least provide a feature for the users to enable or disable automatic credit allocations.

We as it is have workload for closing our financial and preparing for VAT in UAE starting 1st Jan 2018 to add to my workload of the manually allocating over payments now which Manager did automatically all these year!!!

Kindly help with a feature to enable / disable automatic credit allocation @lubos

But this is how Manager worked before the update (17.9.28) That’s how we went ahead with our accounting.
Now you can’t expect the user to sit down with old data of 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 till present 2017 and manually allocate the overpaid invoices which manager did for us before.

Something must have gone wrong because Manager update would not cause your invoices becoming overpaid.

Do you have a backup from before the upgrade? I could try to “upgrade” the file myself to see if I can observe the same issue and figure out why it’s happening.

If you don’t have a backup prior upgrade, you can still send me your accounting file and I could fix that. My email is lubos@manager.io.

Sure Lubos, I will mail you the backup file before the update.
Thanks.