Applying Account Credit to an Invoice

How to do it

1. Open the invoice.
2. In the sidebar, find Available to Allocate. That is the credit on the billing account this invoice belongs to.
3. Choose Apply Credit, enter an amount, and confirm.

The credit is drawn from the oldest payments first, so the account's oldest money is used up before its newest. You do not choose which payment it comes from.

It stops at what the invoice owes

If you ask to apply more than the invoice is short, it applies the shortfall and tells you it did. Nothing is refused and nothing is lost: the rest of the credit stays on the account for the next invoice.

If the invoice already owes nothing, applying credit to it does nothing at all, and says so.

What happens on the invoice

The amount applied comes off what is owing. If that clears the balance the invoice becomes Paid; if it only reduces it, the invoice becomes Partially Paid. Either way the invoice total is unchanged: credit is a payment, not a discount.

A journal entry is posted for the application, and it names the invoices the money actually reached.

After a refund

If a payment that was applied to an invoice is later refunded, the invoice goes back to owing that money, and the account's credit reflects the refund. The credit history keeps both the original application and the refund, so the sequence is readable afterwards.

Partly refunded payments still count

A payment that was partly refunded still counts as having paid what was not returned. If someone paid $100.00 against an invoice and $30.00 was later refunded, the invoice is $70.00 nearer to settled, not back to owing the whole thing. This is true everywhere the amount owing appears: the invoice, the account balance, AR aging, the delinquency report, and the resident's own portal.

If a figure looks wrong

The one check worth doing: on the billing account, credit in minus credit out should equal the credit available. If those two disagree, take a screenshot and send it to support rather than working around it.