Changing Receipt fields, adding client details + description of work etc

Dear All

Firstly, @ Lubos - thank you for making this excellent software available free of charge for us desktop users.

I should preface the following inquiry by saying I have no understanding of coding, or the ability to create custom templates. So please bare with. I also apologise if I have missed the question and/or answer I have in this post.

I understand how to use the invoice and payment + receipt functions. My invoices are fine - they include all my business details, the client name and invoice details. My receipts are however not so fine - they appear as a bare ‘receipt’ recording the payment against an invoice # but without the client name and description.

I would very much like to have the customer (addressee) and the description of work on the receipts, along with balance due (if any). Even better would be, if when a part payment is made, the receipt that issue was a ‘part payment’ type of receipt.

My ideal receipt would be the current "invoice’ after payment has been applied.

My work around has been, after payment allocated, to pdf the invoice again and save as “Receipt - Tax Invoice…” - which is ok …but for the “Invoice” that still appears in the template. And it is another step which perhaps may be easily avoided.

Thank you for your help.

Regards

None is required for what you want.

You are correct that the receipt form does not include the customer’s address. But it includes a field for Payer. If you create the receipt from a sales invoice, the customer’s name is automatically filled, along with other information from the sales invoice. If you build the receipt from scratch, you must enter the Payer’s name yourself. See https://www.manager.io/guides/7820.

That isn’t the purpose of a receipt in an accounts receivable situation. That’s the purpose of the sales invoice. The receipt records money coming in against an invoice. It has nothing to do with what the money is for beyond the invoice. Now, if you are selling on a cash basis without sales invoices, you can enter all the details line item by line item.

The receipt is for however much was received. Whether that amount is an overpayment, partial payment, or exact match to an invoice is irrelevant.

Then reprint the sales invoice. It will show amounts credited against it and any remaining balance due. If you use the built-in Plain theme, you will even get a Paid in Full stamp when that occurs.

If you have used a tax code for a country where substitution of Tax Invoice for Invoice is known to be required, that occurs automatically.

I understand.

Is there any way to:

  1. include the customers address under their name

  2. include by “Payment” the name of the (in my case client) that appears in the Invoice?

The purpose is to a) appear more professional and b) save the customer from manually searching invoice numbers to allocate to their client file (which is paper based).

I am not sure what this means, but it would be great if I could generate an "invoice’ which saves as a 'receipt by itself. I am in Australia with GST.

Lastly - since I am here - when I receipt monies against sales invoices GST is not automatically allocated/highlighted, but when I contribute funds (equity) it is. Any idea what I have done wrong?

Your questions are not clear.

  1. If you are referring to a receipt, no. If you’re referring to using the paid invoice as a receipt, it’s already there.

  2. By “Payment” where? On what form? This is the first time you’ve introduced a payment. So far, you’ve been addressing receipts.

You can always enter something in the summary-level Description field at the top of any transaction form something like “Receipt for payment of Invoice #12345.”

You can’t. These are two distinct accounting transactions. The comment you quoted was addressing your remarks about changing a title to Tax Invoice.

Do you have the GST tax code selected for Receipts under Form Defaults?

Apologies - I am a lay person - not an accountant.

By payment I meant a payment from a client ie a receipt. I understand it is already there, but it still is headed “Invoice” when it is not. And I have to rename it.

Manually by text box?

That I understand.

Yes, I understand the context of my question, but I did not understand your answer.

Yes.

Thank you for your help.

No, you don’t. The fact that the invoice number is the same, the content is the same, and the mini-statement at the bottom shows receipts and a reduced or zero balance due makes the purpose of the copy obvious. So will the Paid in Full stamp. You are not the first person to use Manager. If these were serious problems, many would be complaining.

Manually, yes. Text box, no. Just enter it into the field on the Edit screen.

I think you are being constrained by your erroneous belief that you must rename things. You don’t need to, but I was addressing your apparent desire to have the title become Tax Invoice. After you’ve said more, I think I misunderstood you. I now think you would be better off to abandon this line of inquiry, because you are going down an unnecessary path.

Stick to tried and true approaches: 1) Raise a sales invoice, 2) Create a receipt when the customer pays. Remember that the customer knows who they are. They know they paid you. While some people like to send receipts to confirm the receipt, most businesses don’t. The payment clearing the customer’s bank is confirmation enough. You seem to be making this harder than it needs to be.

I found what I was looking for: the ability to change the title "Invoice’ to a custom title (eg “Receipt”) via Edit.

In case anyone else was looking.

@Tut - I’m sorry - did you address this with me. I may have missed it.

And nor should it. GST is a component of the sales invoice, and is not a component of the receipt. The receipt is just a payment against the total of the sales invoice.

There should be no GST against contributed funds

Why do you have the GST tax code selected for Receipts under Form Defaults ?

Yes, I addressed it several ways, all telling you it was unnecessary and a bad idea. So I specifically did not point you toward the Guide about changing titles.

You stated earlier you are not an accountant. Renaming an invoice as a receipt is something an accountant would never do. As I already explained, these are distinct transactions with separate purposes in accounting. Marking a sales invoice as paid or showing the receipts applied against it are the normal methods. What you describe has a high probability of confusing the accounting department of your customer.

Noted. Thanks. But I am doing it anyway.

Errrr - because all the money paid to me include GST.

Yup.

Money received is not subject to tax. Items purchased or sold are subject to tax (buyer paying tax to seller). Since you are issuing sales invoices, the tax is applied on the sales invoice. As @Brucanna and I have both told you already, the receipt only satisfies the debt created by the sales invoice.

If you were making cash sales and recording them on receipts, then you would apply tax to the various line items. But that is not your case.

My apologies for reviving this topic, but there is a handful of situations in which we need customer’s name and address on the receipt.

In my case, the client is a registered charity and for all intent and purpose, the receipt is to record a donation/ income, not to set off a receivable, and the customers database contains details of donors. The receipt is needed for tax deduction purpose hence showing customer details is important on the receipt being issued.

The ideal situation is for their accountant to issue a receipt when a donation comes in from a donor/ supporter, she then checks the customer database for the donor (and if new, enter details) then issues a receipt which also records the donation income. Right now, the receipt setup is unacceptable for tax deduction purpose.

Also, receipts are not tied to the customer database so clients like churches cannot issue an annual receipt or statement to the supporters and because of this, I cannot convince my church clients to switch to Manager - right now many of them keep supporters data and donation data on Excel.

What my charity client has done is to customize the Invoice as a stop-gap, which is more customizable - Invoice becomes “Donation receipt”, Due Date is hidden, and then she issue a receipt dated the same date as this invoice.

But some things cannot be changed - Invoice number, Invoice date, and the words PAID IN FULL cannot be hidden or removed and they are shown on the receipt. Looks out of place for a charity, doesn’t it?

So @Tut I hope you can see there are special companies and a more powerful receipt is needed for them.

Any suggestions on how to improve my client’s setup would be much appreciated.

I suspect what you actually need is for this idea to be implemented

I am the one who generated the idea @Patch linked. I recognized these needs long ago.

These could be changed or suppressed with a custom theme using substitution filters.

There are three solutions to this problem:

  • Send the modified invoice before entering the receipt.
  • Remove the PAID IN FULL stamp by following this Guide: https://www.manager.io/guides/22026.
  • Use any of the built-in themes besides the default Plain theme. They do not include the PAID IN FULL stamp.

Of course, many charities send a nice thank-you letter (containing necessary information required for deductibility by local law) as confirmation of donations rather than an accounting receipt. This would let your client go back to a one-transaction approach in Manager. Skip the modified sales invoices and just enter receipts. Then send the thank-you letter.

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