A customer journal changes a customer's balance without taking or paying cash — a write-off, a credit note, a charge-back, an adjustment, or moving a balance to another party. It posts a single, balanced entry: one side is the customer, the other side is the contra you choose.
Cash in or out goes through Receipts / Payments, not here. Use this screen only for non-cash adjustments.
Before you start
- You need the Customer journal permission (menu: Sales → Customer Journal).
- Know which way you're moving the balance:
- Credit Customer — reduces what the customer owes (refund-in-kind, write-off, credit note).
- Debit Customer — increases what the customer owes (charge-back, adjustment, reversing an advance).
Steps
- Open Sales → Customer Journal → New.
- Set the Journal date and Amount.
- Pick the Customer whose balance you're adjusting.
- Choose the Action — Credit Customer or Debit Customer (see above).
- Department defaults to your own; change it if the entry belongs elsewhere.
- Choose the Contra type and the Contra (the other side of the entry) — see the next section.
- Add a Ref document and a Note for the audit trail.
- Review the Customer Balance (AR) card (and the contra balance) — it previews the balance after posting. Then Save.
Contra type — the other side of the entry
The Contra type decides what the other side of the journal is:
- GL Account (default) — a general-ledger account (income, expense, a control account, etc.). The account list is filtered to the accounts valid for the chosen action.
- Customer — another customer. Use this to move a balance between customers — for example, transferring an insured patient's covered amount to their HMO account, or settling one customer's balance against another's.
- Vendor — a supplier account, for a cross-party offset.
Pick the type first; the Contra picker then lists the matching records (accounts, customers, or vendors). Changing the type clears the contra so you re-pick from the right list.
Collecting payment against a client journal
When a customer owes money via a debit journal — for example an HMO-rejection re-bill moved back to the patient — you can take that payment on the Receipts screen. Open a receipt for the customer and, below the outstanding invoices, a "Client journals owed" section lists their open debit journals. Enter the amount against the journal (like paying an invoice), add the tender, and save. The receipt settles that specific journal, so the customer's balance and the journal's outstanding amount both come down.
Or send them a payment link. In that same "Client journals owed" section, click 🔗 Send payment link to generate a secure online (Paystack) link for the patient's balance and email it to them — they get a link to copy or a QR to scan. When they pay online, the payment is credited to their account automatically. (The patient needs an email on file, or you can type one; the money reaches your pharmacy's own Paystack account when your gateway is set up.)
The "Outstanding" column already accounts for payments taken on account. If you previously received cash from this customer without matching it to a specific journal (the receipt was saved with no allocation, so the money sat as unapplied credit), the grid nets that credit against the oldest open journals first. So a journal that's already been paid on account shows a reduced amount — or drops off the list entirely — and the total owed on the grid always agrees with the customer's balance. You can only allocate up to that netted amount, so you can't accidentally collect the same debt twice.
Tips
- The Posting effect line under the form spells out what the entry does once you've chosen an action and contra — a quick sanity check before saving.
- Journals created by another process (a gateway refund, an HMO settlement) are managed by that process and don't appear in this list for hand-editing.
Common problems
- "Pick a contra account." → You haven't selected the contra (right-hand side). Choose a contra type, then a contra record.
- I can't find a cash/bank account in the contra list — that's intentional. Cash movements go through Receipts (money in) or Payments (money out), not a customer journal.
- The customer or contra I want isn't listed — it may be inactive, or (for the contra) you have the wrong Contra type selected. HMO accounts appear only under the Customer contra type, not in the ordinary customer pickers.
- "This journal was created by …" — machine-posted journals (refunds, HMO settlements) can't be edited here; adjust them from where they were created.