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Small and medium business | Business Central, N...
Suggested answer

Recording customer / vendor prepayments without an invoice

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Posted on by 10

Hi, Please I need some help and will really appreciate if anyone could share their experience.

All the manuals and articles I have read and videos I watched all seem to suggest that creating a prepayment invoice always comes first before a customer cash receipt or vendor payment. This is not always the case.

On a daily basis, we have some of our customers pre-pay for their orders when a prepayment invoice has not been created or sent to them and may not be created till several weeks when we expect to receive delivery from our vendors. So we have cash in the bank from customers but no prepayment invoice. Sometimes, we also make payments for ongoing projects (no inventory item specified) without any purchase pre-payment invoice created.

My questions:

What is the best way to record these types of prepayments such that system is still able to tag the prepayment to a customer or vendor?

I have tried two options, but both come with some accounting issues as follows:

Option 1 - Record a customer receipt / vendor payment using a cash receipt journal. This post negative amounts against AR and AP subledger and GL which violates the accounting rule forbidding set-off of asset and liabilities without contractual obligation to do so.

Option 2 - Record a customer receipt / vendor payment directly to the dedicated prepayment asset / liability general ledger account. The issue with this is that system doesn't tag prepayment record to a customer /vendor. So, tracking prepayments for vendors/customers and matching the payments to invoices (whenever they finally get issued and posted) is a tedious manual process. For vendors, there is the high risk of paying an invoice when a prepayment already exists for the transaction if somebody in the accounting department is away on vacation or just doesn't remember.

I believe there must be a better way with Navision and that maybe, I am simply missing something.

Appreciate any help or guidance.

Thank you.

David

  • Suggested answer
    Community Member Profile Picture
    on at
    RE: Recording customer / vendor prepayments without an invoice

    Prestidge,

    If your Accounting and compliance team wants to link/apply these Prepayments against the open Sales Order/Purchase Order, you need to follow the Prepayment process. If not, as you noted in your question, you can end up paying a Vendor twice or sending out a Sales Invoice when its been fully paid.

    The steps are very quick, for Prepayment processing. You can always deposit the Customer payment on the Cash Receipt journal first. You can then process the Prepayment Invoice and apply the payment received. This can be done at month-end or after the you post the C/R journal. You can also manually prepay a Vendor, on account, then after create the PO Prepayment and apply this payment to the document.

    It is very simple and if you want to chat on Teams, feel free to contact me at steven.chinsky@wipfli.com.

    Hope this helps.

    Thanks,

    Steve

  • Prestidge Profile Picture
    10 on at
    RE: Recording customer / vendor prepayments without an invoice

    Please let me also clarify that the accounting function (receiving and recording cash received) and operations function (order processing) are different in my company. This is why receiving/ paying cash without there being a prepayment invoice creates a problem of how to record the receipt or payment especially at month-end or year-end accounting cycles.

  • Community Member Profile Picture
    on at
    RE: Recording customer / vendor prepayments without an invoice

    Prestidge,

    You are not alone when Customers send prepayment earlier than the Sales Order/Prepayment Invoice process. However, let me lay out how I teach my customers how to complete the transaction and maintain the link between a Sales Order prepayment or Purchase Order prepayment:

    1. Upon receipt of a Customer prepayment, go to the Sales Order, update the % of prepayment for the Order (make sure all Sales Lines are included in the prepayment % and the total prepayment = actual prepayment received).

    2. On the Sales Order, generate the Post Prepayment Invoice.

    3. Go to the Cash Receipts Journal, enter the actual Prepayment receipt applying to the Prepayment Invoice posted.

    4. The Sales Order will now be Released automatically. NOTE: You need to have the Job Queue running for Codeunit 383 and 384.

    You are now good to go with the Sales Order to ship when ready and when you Invoice the prepayment will self-apply to the Invoice and any new Sales Lines added after prepayment will be a receivable.

    As for the Purchase Order, the same process can be followed, just replace Sales Order with Purchase Order. I would suggest if you prepay a Purchase Order you generate the Prepayment Invoice for the Vendor so the Payment Journal can suggest for payment or you manually Apply.

    All the above is the recommended process but as you can see you can receive money from the Customer earlier and still process to create the links.

    Do you follow?

    Hope this helps.

    Thanks,

    Steve

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