Re: Prepayment

[Del Miller <..hidden..>]

Chris Travers wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 11:13 AM, Del Miller <..hidden..> wrote:
>   
>> Hello again,
>>
>> How would one do a prepay type of thing with LSMB?
>>
>> I have a customer who would like an invoice for $2000 today that will be
>> applied to future work.  I can invoice him but as soon as the payment is
>> processed it will then show a zero balance due rather than a credit.  I
>> could not invoice him and simply apply the payment as credit to his
>> account... but he needs an invoice.  I could invoice, then delete the
>> invoice, then apply the payment -- but that just seems wrong.  Is there
>> some other way that I'm missing?
>>     
>
> Ok, the key question is exactly what your customer needs.  You can
> provide a receipt for a $2000 payment, but an invoice is supposed to
> be issued when goods are delivered.  Perhaps you should provide a
> sales order with notes saying that $2000 has been pre-paid?
>   
Hi Chris & thanks for the reply.

Well, my customer said, "Get me an invoice so I can prepay you." -- or
something to that effect.  I assumed that he needed an invoice on his
end for his accountant to work with.  I don't know what else they
*could* use just that they requested an invoice and I gave them one.
Then I started to wonder about whether this was the correct thing to do
and began trying to figure out what would happen when the check came in.

I hadn't really thought it would present a problem as I've seen the
'Credit Limit: xxx Remaining: -yyy' line on the sales invoices and
figured that the -yyy could go positive somehow and then be billed
against but the exact mechanism for such magic was unknown to me.

I can see from the above that I probably should not have issued the
invoice.  As to the other options, the Sales Order with a note seems
awkward and the receipt idea doesn't satisfy the 'get me an invoice'
requirement.

If you're client made such a request how would *you* handle it?  What
would be most 'correct'? 

Regards
Del