Payment Tracking
← Payments in Billing & Invoice Management
JustOn Billing & Invoice Management allows for tracking payment operations for invoices. To this end, it can register payment transactions that have occurred in external systems as payment entries. Each payment entry represents a record of a bank statement, that is, a registered payment operation intended to meet an open invoice amount.
Actively collecting payments
Payment collection, as the name suggests, generally involves all processes or tools for actively collecting money from customers – instead of just waiting for them to pay.
Generally, you distinguish between procedures for triggering outstanding payments within the regular due terms and those for collecting overdue receivables.
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
| Automatic payment collection | JustOn can store credit card or bank account data and, if supported by the payment provider integration, use it to automatically collect payments for open invoices. |
| SEPA payment orders | JustOn exports bank transfer orders – SEPA Direct Debit and SEPA Credit – for invoices or account balances, which can directly be used by banks for triggering the corresponding payment operations. |
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
| Account statements | Account statements are reports that show the billings and payments of a given account for a specific time period. Businesses can use them to remind customers of sales that have not yet been paid, without expressly stating an overdue receivable and without starting a dunning process. JustOn implements account statements using specific statements that summarize the account's balances. |
| Dunning statements | Dunning statements officially notify customers of overdue payments. According to the overdue status, these notifications can progress from friendly reminders to firm warning letters. JustOn implements dunning process support based on configurable dunning statements. Using multiple dunning levels, you can build your individual dunning escalation scenario. |
| Debt collection | If the dunning communication remains unfruitful, businesses may turn customers over to debt collection agencies, who usually proceed to take other collection options. To support this option, you can specify the name of a debt collection agency when configuring your dunning levels. When set, JustOn copies the name to the invoice, where it is then available for further custom processing. |
| Individual value adjustment | Individual value adjustment (or IVA) is an accounting procedure for devaluing receivables, for example, outstanding payment requests for invoices. JustOn implements IVA for invoices using specific bookkeeping data. |
| Write-off | Write-off is an accounting procedure for reducing or completely removing the value of an asset or receivable – for example, an uncollectible payment for an invoice. JustOn supports writing off invoices using specific balances that count against the invoice balance. |
Payment Entries
JustOn registers invoice-relevant payment transactions that have occurred in external systems as payment entries. Each payment entry record represents a payment operation registered at a bank. See the payment entry as a "container" for external payment information, which must finally be saved as a balance record.
To acquire payment entries, JustOn imports specifically configured CSV files.
Matching payments
Users assign the payment entries to invoices, which creates corresponding balance records of the type Payment and associates them with both the (converted) payment entry and the target invoice. The payment entry itself is not directly linked to the invoice. It is the balance association, which reduces the payment amount of the invoice, or, if balanced out completely, sets the (open) invoice Paid.
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Using the integration with JustOn Cash Management, JustOn Billing & Invoice Management directly creates payment balance records for the captured amount.
In addition, you can manually set an invoice Paid using the function Register Payment, which also directly creates a payment balance record.
Payment Entry Matching and Assignment
After importing payment entries, you assign them to invoices. This is a two-step process:
(1) First, JustOn automatically matches payment entries to existing invoices and dunnings. This produces a list of likely matches based on the following main conditions:
- The invoice has the status
Open, or, respectively, the dunning has the statusClosed. - The invoice number or, respectively, the dunning number is found in the reference field of the payment entry.
JustOn compares the contents of the payment reference with specified fields of the matching target objects. If a matching invoice number is found, it always takes precedence over other possible matches. For further details, see Matching Logic.
(2) Second, after reviewing the matching proposals, users assign the payment entries to invoices or dunnings. This creates balance records of the type Payment, which are assigned to the corresponding invoices or dunnings. The originally imported payment entries are set to the status Converted.
If there is no matching invoice or dunning but a matching account, a payment entry can be assigned to the corresponding account. This creates a balance record on the account. Doing so, you can, for example, handle pre-payments received from customers before the invoices are issued.
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Be aware of the following payment matching specifics:
- For the matching to work, the payment entry field
Payment Providermust be empty. - Overpayments are split along the open invoice amount: one part covers the open invoice amount and is assigned to the invoice, whereas the remainder is assigned to the account.
- If there are more than one open invoices found for an account, JustOn sorts them by their date and settles the oldest one first.
- If a payment entry matches a cancellation invoice or a canceled invoice, JustOn uses the account of the originally canceled invoice as the matching target. Any created payment balances will be assigned to this account, without relating to the canceled invoice or the cancellation invoice.
- If a payment entry matches a paid invoice, JustOn uses the account of the invoice as the matching target. Any created payment balances will be assigned to this account, without relating to the paid invoice.
- In case of a chargeback, JustOn includes invoices of the statuses
Paid,Settled,ClosedandCanceledto find a likely match. -
For payment entries assigned to statements (dunnings or account statements), JustOn distributes the payment amount to the invoices referred to by the statement. Again, the invoices are sorted by their date, with the oldest one settled first.
In case of an overpayment, JustOn creates an account balance for the remaining amount.
Payment Amount Calculation
When creating the payment entry from imported payment data, the effective payment amount is calculated as follows:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Credit | For deposits from customers. An empty value equals 0. |
| Debit | For payouts to customers. An empty value equals 0. |
| Payment Amount | Credit - Debit |
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The invoice amount or credit amount is matched against the calculated payment amount.
Settling a credit of -10 €
Import
| Credit | Debit | Payment Amount |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | -10 |
or
| Credit | Debit | Payment Amount |
|---|---|---|
| -10 | -10 |
Settling an invoice of 10 €
Import
| Credit | Debit | Payment Amount |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 10 |
or
| Credit | Debit | Payment Amount |
|---|---|---|
| -10 | 10 |
Matching Logic
Basically, the matching implementation assumes that you want to balance out an open invoice amount. This is why by default, JustOn assigns a credit payment amount to an open invoice (or, conversely, debit amounts to open credits). For details, see Payment Amount Calculation.
To find the correct assignment target, the automatic matching process compares all words (strings separated by spaces) that are contained in the Reference field of the payment entry with specified fields of matching target objects. The custom setting Payment Matching Fields determines which fields of which objects to consider, controlling the matching scope.
The matching process involves multiple passes.
The basic procedure compares the payment entry Reference content with invoice fields. To this end, JustOn ships pre-defined matching settings for the invoice number, the IBAN and the account number:
| Name | Source | Field | Reference Match Expression |
|---|---|---|---|
| Invoice Number | Invoice__c |
Name |
|
| Invoice IBAN | Invoice__c |
BankAccount__c |
[A-Z]{2,2}[0-9]{2,2}[a-zA-Z0-9]{1,30} |
| Account Number | Invoice__c |
Account__r.AccountNumber |
Should this pass yield no results, a second one is performed: JustOn searches fields of related objects in order to find the correct invoice, like a customer number from the account.
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JustOn compares the payment reference with all specified fields. A matching invoice number, however, always takes precedence over other possible matches.
Note that the order of the matching field definitions is irrelevant to the matching process. In the first pass, all invoice fields are examined, in the second pass all other fields.
For the payment matching to succeed,
- avoid specifying multiple invoices per payment operation, and
- prevent line breaks, space characters or semicolons from breaking the invoice number in the reference string.
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Importing payment entries as output by accounting systems (rather than bank statements) helps facilitate the payment matching in JustOn.
Usually, no customization is needed. Depending on your data or business requirements, you may need, however, to modify the matching logic. In this case, make sure that you use only fields that are set to be unique, that is, whose value can only exist once in your org. Otherwise you may produce poor results or break the matching logic.
For details about customizing the matching logic, see Payment Matching Fields.
To support return debits or other chargeback operations, JustOn allows to handle chargeback payment entries. Assigning a chargeback payment entry creates a balance of the type Chargeback, which offsets a payment balance. Consequently, assigning a chargeback balance to a paid or settled invoice will set the invoice back to the status Open.
CSV Import
You can import payment entries from CSV files produced by your bank. With this respect, the following specifics are important:
- CSV import configuration
- To match the CSV file's contents, you must specifically configure the import. Among others, the configuration specifies the file encoding, column separator, field mapping, etc.
- Duplicate check
-
JustOn writes the name of the original CSV file into the
Infofield of the produced payment entry. This helps avoid importing the same file twice.Consequently, CSV files to be imported must have a unique name.