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Managing Balances

In banking and accounting, a balance represents an amount of money due on an account, produced as the result of debit and credit transactions.

In JustOn, specifically, business operations like, for example, finalizing invoices or credits, assigning payments, issuing refunds, applying dunning fees, etc., create individual balance records. Consequently, the balances show the debits and credits for each account.

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Generally, JustOn creates balances automatically with specific operations, for example, finalizing invoices, assigning payment entries, etc. Certain business use cases, however, may require balances to be created manually, like pre-payments or payouts.

For information about the data saved with balance records, refer to the Balance object reference.

Balance concepts

Balances are associated to the account in a master-detail relationship.

JustOn adds up the balance records for invoices and for accounts, thus creating invoice balances and account balances.

Invoice balance
The invoice balance is the sum of all balances for a particular invoice. If this sum is 0, the invoice is considered Paid; if the sum is not zero, the invoice is set Open.
Account balance
The account balance is the sum of all balances for a particular account. A positive amount is considered a debit, and a negative amount is considered a credit.

The balance aggregation affects the following fields:

Object Affected Field Field Type Description
Account Balance Roll-Up Summary (SUM Balance.Amount) Shows the sum of all balances associated to this account. A positive amount is considered a debit, and a negative amount is considered a credit.
Invoice Balance Currency (16,2) The sum of all balances for this invoice. An invoice is considered paid or settled when the balance is zero.
Status Picklist The main invoice status, is set Open when the balance is not zero, is set Paid when the balance is zero.
Payment Date Date The date on which the payment for this invoice has been received completely. Is cleared when the balance is not zero, is set to the date of the last balance record when the balance is zero.

Think of the following example: A customer has made a pre-payment for an ordered product, and a user registers this, creating a balance record of the type Prepayment. Pre-payments (or any other existing balance records) are considered accordingly upon invoice creation. When the invoice is finalized (its status set Open), JustOn generates a balance record of the type Invoice. The balance record amount equals the grand total amount of the invoice. Then, the user registers the final payment with the invoice, generating a record of the type Payment. The invoice balance records may look like this:

Balance Record Amount Date Description
Prepayment -10 € 2017-03-02 Received a pre-payment of 10 € from the customer
Invoice 25 € 2017-03-27 Set the invoice Open with a grand total of 25 € and a payment due date of 2017-03-27
Payment -15 € 2017-03-31 Received the outstanding 15 € from the customer

The invoice is set Paid (-10 + 25 -15 = 0) with a payment date of 2017-03-31.

Related information:

Standard Balance Types

Automatic Balance Assignment

Pre-Payment Balance

Balance Overpayment

Payment Balance Transfer

Accessing Balances

Balances are associated to an account and may be registered with an invoice. This is why you usually access balances from these contexts – via the Balances related list on the account or on the invoice.

Certain business cases, however, may require accessing balances without respect to their contexts. To this end, JustOn provides the Balances tab.

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The Balances tab is available as of JustOn 2.61. If you have upgraded JustOn from an earlier version, you must specifically allow accessing the new tab.

The Balances tab provides multiple list views of all Balance records. By default, the following list views are available:

List View Name Description
All Displays all existing balances
Payments Displays all balances of type Payment or Prepayment
Payouts Displays all balances of type Payout or Refund
Unassigned Displays all balances which are not assigned to an invoice and which are not locked
SEPA Validation Error Displays all balances with an existing SEPA Validation Error (failed account balance export)

Manually Creating Balances

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Generally, JustOn creates balances automatically with specific operations, for example, finalizing invoices, assigning payment entries, etc. Certain business use cases, however, may require balances to be created manually, like pre-payments or payouts.

You can create balances in two contexts: either via an account or via an invoice. When starting from an invoice, the new balance is immediately assigned to this invoice.

Creating Balance on Account

To create a balance starting from an account:

  1. Open the account for which you want to create a new balance.
  2. In the Balances related list, click New.
  3. Specify the details as necessary.

    The mandatory details include account, date and amount.

    Note that a positive amount is considered a debit, and a negative amount is considered a credit from the account's view.

  4. Click Save.

    This creates the new balance record, making it available for assignment to any draft or open invoice of the current account.

Creating Balance on Invoice

To create a balance starting from an invoice:

  1. Open the invoice for which you want to create a new balance.
  2. In the Balances related list, click New.
  3. Specify the details as necessary.

    Note that the balance amount is pre-filled with the open payment amount.

  4. Click Save.

    This creates the new balance record and immediately applies it to the current invoice balance.

Deleting Balance Records

You can delete incorrect balance records or balance records that have been erroneously created or rendered obsolete.

  1. Open the balance you want to delete.
  2. Click Delete, then Continue to confirm and complete the operation.

Manually Controlling Assignments

You can manually assign existing balances to draft or open invoices. There are two options to do so:

In case of incorrectly assigned balances, you can revoke the assignment.

If a payment balance is assigned to a wrong account or invoice, you can move the balance to another account and, optionally, assign it to another invoice.

In addition, you can individually prevent a balance from being automatically assigned to an invoice on finalization.

Manually Assigning Balances to Multiple Invoices

To assign free account balances to multiple invoices from a list view:

  1. Navigate to the Invoices list in the invoice run view, or open the Invoices tab and select an appropriate list view.

    The list view Recently Viewed does not display the Assign Balances button.

  2. Select the checkboxes next to the invoices you want to include in the balance assignment, or leave all checkboxes unmarked to include all listed invoices in the assignment.

  3. Click to open the action menu, then select Assign Balances.
  4. Click Continue to confirm and complete the operation.

    This assigns all free account balances to draft or open invoices of the corresponding accounts.

Manually Assigning Balance to Invoice

To register a payment balance to an individual invoice of one account:

  1. Open the invoice for which you want to register a payment balance.
  2. Click Register Payment.

    This shows two sub-tabs:

    • Assign an Existing Balance: Lets you assign an existing free account balance to the invoice.
    • Create a New Balance: Lets you create a new balance record, which is immediately applied to the invoice.

    If there are no balances available, you are directly presented the dialog for creating a balance.

  3. On the Assign an Existing Balance sub-tab, select the balance you want to assign to the current invoice, and click Assign.

    The Split Payments option splits an overpayment balance, irrespective of the corresponding setting Allow Overpayments.

  4. On the Create a New Balance sub-tab, specify the balance details as necessary, then click Save.

    Note that the balance amount is pre-filled with the open payment amount.

    Depending on your selection, this either assigns the selected balance to the current invoice or creates the new balance record, immediately applying it to the current invoice. As a consequence, this reduces the payment amount of the invoice, or, if balanced out completely, sets the (open) invoice Paid.

Manually Unassigning Balance From Invoice

  1. Open the Invoices tab.
  2. Click the number of the invoice you want to modify to open the detail view.
  3. In the Balances section, click the number of the balance you want to unassign.
  4. Click Unregister Payment, then click Continue to confirm and complete the operation.

    This revokes the assignment of the selected balance to the current invoice, removing the balance amount from the invoice balance.

Moving Balance to New Account

  1. Open the balance you want to move.
  2. Click Move Payment.
  3. In the New Assignment section, select the account to which you want to move the current balance.

    This displays the open invoices of this account.

  4. Optionally, select an invoice to which you want to assign the current balance.

  5. Click Continue to confirm and complete the operation.

    This transfers the current balance to the new target account and, if selected, immediately assigns it to the target invoice.

Preventing Automatic Balance Assignment

By default, JustOn Billing & Invoice Management assigns new or free payment balances on the account to invoices on finalization (see Automatic Balance Assignment). You can disable the automatic assignment for individual balances:

  1. Open the balance you want being exempt from the automatic assignment.
  2. Click next to the No Auto Assignment checkbox and select it.
  3. Click Save.

    This prevents the current balance from being automatically assigned to an invoice on finalization.

Refunding Payment

Using the payment page shipped with the (legacy) JustOn Self-Service Extension, businesses provided their customers the option to directly pay their invoices. To this end, the JustOn Self-Service Extension integrated with payment service providers.

Depending on your payment service provider integration, you can use JustOn's balance management functionality to directly refund a payment made via the payment page of the (legacy) JustOn Self-Service Extension.

Refunding a payment balance directly returns the specified amount to the customer. In JustOn, this operation creates a balance record of the type Refund for the account.

Note

In order to refund a payment from the corresponding Balance detail page, the following conditions must be met:

  • The type of the balance is Payment.
  • The payment has been made via the (legacy) Stripe integration.
  • There is no pending Stripe refund.
  • There is no previously failed refund for the selected payment.
  • The payment is not yet fully refunded.
  • The Refund button is made available.
  1. Open the balance you want to refund.
  2. Click Refund.
  3. Optionally, adjust the amount to be refunded.

    If there is already a partial refund for the payment balance, the Refund page shows the total refunded amount and the available refund amount.

  4. Optionally, select a refund reason.

    The following refund reasons are available:

    • None
    • Duplicate
    • Fraudulent
    • Requested by the Customer

    If you believe the charge to be fraudulent, specifying fraudulent as the reason will add the associated card and email to your Stripe block lists, and will also help Stripe to improve their fraud detection algorithms.

  5. Click Refund Payment to confirm and complete the operation.

    This starts the refund process and returns you to the original payment balance.

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Allow some minutes for the refund to be processed by the payment service. On successful completion, JustOn creates a refund balance. In case of errors, JustOn creates a corresponding payment entry.

For details about a payment transaction, possible errors, etc., click Show Transaction in Stripe Dashboard.

Exporting Bank Transfer Orders from Balances

Once set up, you export SEPA Credit orders from the Balances tab or from the Balances related list of an account.

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If necessary, you can configure a list view filter to display relevant balances only. Filter criteria may include the balance types (Payment or Prepayment), the amount (negative values) or the date.

  1. Open the intended balance list view.

    If exporting from the Balances tab:

    1. Open the Balances tab.
    2. Select the list view Unassigned.
    3. Select the checkboxes next to the balances you want to export, or leave all checkboxes unmarked to include all listed balances.

    If exporting from the account context:

    1. Open the account for which you want to export bank transfer orders from balances.
    2. Navigate to the Balances related list.
    3. Optionally, click View All and select the checkboxes next to the balances you want to export.
      Continuing without selection includes all balances in the export scope.
  2. Click Export.

  3. Select the export configuration settings you want to apply.
  4. Set a payment date.

    By default, the balance date is used. For balances whose date is in the past, JustOn corrects the payment date to TODAY + 2.

    The payment date must be two to five days in the future. For details, ask your bank.

  5. Optionally, select or deselect the Create Reverse Balances checkbox(es).

    This overwrites the preconfigured Create Payments setting made in the export configuration.

  6. Click Continue.

    This exports the bank transfer orders for the balances included in the current list selection and the specified date range according to the selected export configuration. Find the exported SEPA XML files in the target as defined by the selected export configuration, or, if not specified, on Salesforce's Files tab in the group Owned by me.

    If you have selected the option Create Reverse Balances, JustOn creates reverse balances for the exported balances to offset their amount.

    Note

    Depending on the number of processed transfer orders, the SEPA XML file size may become too large. This is why JustOn truncates the SEPA XML at about 3 MB, producing another file.

    In any case, be aware of possible limitations of the target banking system. Check with your bank how many entries are allowed per XML file and what size the XML files may take.

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The exported balances as well as the generated reverse balances are locked – the Locked field is set true, and the Locked Reason is set to SEPA Export. Locked balances are exempt from certain business processes like (further) exports or automatic balance assignment.

Collecting Payment Balances

JustOn Billing & Invoice Management supports collecting out-of-statute payments by creating write-off balances.

Once set up, you can invoke the collection – depending on your business use case – either

  • from a single balance record,
  • from a dedicated filtered balances list view that shows the relevant records, or
  • from the Balances related list on the Account detail view.

Collecting Single Payment Balance

To collect and write off an individual payment balance:

  1. Open the relevant payment balance record.
  2. Click Collect.
  3. Set a write-off date.

    The current date is set by default.

  4. Select a tax rate or select No tax calculation.

    The write-off amount is always a gross value. Tax rates control the booking detail creation. The available tax rates are taken from the configured tax rules. For details, see Booking Write-Off Balances.

  5. Click Continue.

    This creates a write-off balance for the current payment balance and locks the two related balances.

Collecting Multiple Payment Balances

You can collect and write off multiple payment balances from the Balances tab or from the Balances related list of an account.

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If necessary, configure a dedicated filtered balances list view that shows the relevant records. Relevant balance records must

  • relate to the same business entity,
  • be of the types Payment or Prepayment,
  • not be related to invoices,
  • not be locked,
  • have passed the statute of limitations applicable in your jurisdiction.

For details on creating a custom list view, see Create or Clone a List View in the Salesforce Help.

  1. Open the intended balance list view.

    If collecting from the Balances tab:

    1. Open the Balances tab.
    2. Select the filtered list view to show the relevant records only or select the checkboxes next to the payment balances you want to collect.

    If collecting from the Balances related list of an account:

    1. Open the account for which you want to collect payment balances.
    2. Navigate to the Balances related list.
    3. Click View All.
    4. Filter the list view or select the checkboxes next to the payment balances you want to collect.
  2. Click Collect.

  3. Set a write-off date.

    The current date is set by default.

  4. Select a tax rate or select No tax calculation.

    The write-off amount is always a gross value. Tax rates control the booking detail creation. The available tax rates are taken from the configured tax rules. For details, see Booking Write-Off Balances.

  5. Click Continue.

    This creates write-off balances for the selected payment balances and locks all related balances.

Next steps:

Setting Up Balance Management Options

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