Clearing Unpaid Invoices

How do I clear unpaid Invoices?

What do you mean by “clear?” Are you referring to a sales invoice or a purchase invoice? And do you mean one that will, in your judgment, never be paid? If so, you must write it off to bad debts. Use a journal entry: debit an account named something like Bad debts (create one if you don’t already have one) and credit Accounts receivable (for the specific invoice) and c

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The Invoice shows up as overdue, but I’ve received payment and what it to show as Paid.

That situation shows that you did not record the payment correctly when you received it. You will need to find that transaction and correct or replace it.

The easiest way to record payments is through the Sales Invoices tab. View the sales invoice and click on Receive Money. The specific sales invoice will automatically be selected and the amount in full filled in. You can edit any the information.

You can also do it through Bank Accounts or Cash Accounts tabs. Receive Money in the appropriate account and allocate the payment to Accounts receivable and the appropriate invoice.

The fact that your invoice is still showing as unpaid means the payment went somewhere else. Check Suspense, which should always be empty. One mistake people make in accounting is to allocate payments against sales invoices directly to some income account. That should have been done when the invoice was created, not when payment is received. The receipt goes to clear the account receivable.

ok Thanks.

Still having issues, can not get Overdue payment to disappear. When I get paid for a job where do I input that and will it automatically show the invoice as Paid and no longer Overdue?

New to accounting new to Manager, thanks for your patience and help.

New to accounting? See http://www.accountingcoach.com. You can learn virtually everything you need there. There are also some other good sites on the web. Before you can use Manager, you need to understand the basics of double-entry accounting. It’s not just a bookkeeping program.

New to Manager? Read all the Guides. They are a work in progress, but getting better all the time. Before plunging in with your real business, I suggest creating a test business. (You can have as many as you want.) Experiment with a variety of entries and see what happens via frequent checks–as in after every single transaction–of the Summary, so you can see what happens. You can even follow through the accountingcoach.com examples by entering them into Manager.

As I said in my earlier reply, you have made some error in entering the payment received. Without seeing your books, I can’t tell what it is, so you will have to track it down. As you do this, remember every blue number can be clicked to drill down and see what transactions contributed to it. I would start with your bank account(s) and find the transaction where you recorded payment. Look at what account you allocated the payment to. If it was anything except Accounts receivable (and the subaccount for the actual invoice), you must correct that or it will always show as overdue.

I found this was happening because I didn’t click the cleared/incleared box, if you reconcile weekly you can also clear it that way

I am also having the issue that I am not able to clear unpaid invoices. When I open the invoice in sales invoices, view I can see that there is a field that is called “receive money” I choose Received in: and there it say “No matches found” How do I customise that field ? So far I have created a reconciliation account I have posted the payments into as I could not figure out how to manage this.

Have you set any cash accounts? If you have then you can receive in any of those accounts.

Yes I have set a cash account.

If you have a created cash account - they should appear in the panel

@olafsg i’m not sure i understand how you’re trying to “clear” the payments for the invoices that you’ve issued but it usually should the follow the steps below…

  1. open the outstanding invoice in your Sales Invoices tab
  2. click on “Receive Money” at the top part of Manager
  3. in “Received in” choose the cash account that you’ve already set up (if it shows “No Match Found” that means you either haven’t set up a cash account yet or you’re trying to type in a keyword that doesn’t exist in you cash account)
  4. make sure that “Status” is showing “Cleared” and in the box next to it, choose the date when the payment has cleared your bank
  5. Record this transaction by clicking “Create” at the bottom of the screen

hope this helps…

Hi There I am new and dumb to all of this and would like some clarification on your statement above.
I have a client with multiple outstanding invoices. This client has closed doors and will probably never pay these invoices. I would like this to reflect in the books and I am not too sure what or how to do this.
Thanks for your time on this.
Stuart

in your chart of accounts create a suitable account under the expenses category for recording the unpaid amounts.
read this guide on how to create an account Add an ordinary account | Manager

make a journal entry from your Accounts receivable account of your customer to the newly created expense account.
read this guide Make journal entries | Manager

set the customer as inactive Manage inactive customers | Manager

@sharpdrivetek has already explained the procedures. The one thing left out is that such an account is usually named something like Bad debts. The reason for this procedure is that you originally thought the sales invoices would be paid and recorded your entitlement to the income. So that income would be taxable. Now, the circumstances have changed. You invested the time to perform services or the costs to deliver goods, but have no hope of collection, so those expenses are considered as lost and should not be taxed as income.

If you ever recover the amount due (perhaps through a bankruptcy court or civil law suit, for example) you would then report the income as non-operating or miscellaneous income, but not through another sales invoice.

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Thanks for this info. Really useful.
I have done as you pointed out and this works really well.