An invoice that has taken more money than it costs. The customer's payment is real and the money is in the bank — it is just attached to the wrong bill, and until it is moved the customer's balance is wrong in two places at once.
Each row is a correction waiting to be made, and expands to show exactly which receipts to correct.
Before you start
- You need permission to view financial statements.
- Nothing on this screen changes anything. You correct the receipts, and the invoice follows.
How an invoice ends up here
When a receipt is saved, the system checks the allocation against what the invoice costs at that moment. Two things get past it:
- The invoice changed afterwards. A night is re-billed, a rate corrected, a discount applied, a line removed — the invoice total drops, and the receipt that was allocated against the old, higher figure is never revisited.
- The allocation was written elsewhere. Payments entered in the desktop application, or by a bulk settlement, don't pass through the same check.
Either way the invoice quietly carries more than it should, and the surplus turns up as credit the customer doesn't recognise.
Reading the report
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Invoice Total | What the invoice costs today |
| Allocated | Everything receipts have put against it |
| Over By | The difference — money sitting on the wrong bill |
At the top: how many invoices are affected, the total amount misplaced, and how many customers are involved. Beside it, in grey, settled to the kobo — the invoices allocated to exactly their total. Those are fine today, but any downward change to one of them tips it straight into this list, which is how the first one happened.
Steps — clearing one
- Click the arrow at the left of a row to open its receipts.
- Click Open receipt on the one to correct. (A receipt marked committed to folio is locked to a guest still in house — it can only be corrected after that stay is checked out.)
- Reduce its allocation to what the invoice actually has outstanding.
- Save. The freed amount becomes unallocated credit on the customer.
- Put that credit where it belongs: allocate it to an invoice that is genuinely short, or refund it through a Client Journal (Debit Customer) if the customer is owed it.
The invoice drops off this report as soon as its allocations no longer exceed its total.
Tips
- Work from the top. The list is ordered by amount, so the largest misattribution is always first.
- If a customer has both an over-allocated invoice and another invoice that is short, it is usually the same receipt spread wrongly across the two — correct both sides on that one receipt and nothing else needs touching.
- An empty report is the normal state. Anything appearing here is worth understanding, not just clearing.
Common problems
- "Open receipt" isn't shown → the receipt is committed to an open folio. Check the guest out first; the receipt unlocks when the folio is finalised.
- The invoice total looks wrong, not the allocation → correct the invoice rather than the receipt. Note that an invoice cannot be edited to a total below what has already been allocated to it — free the allocation first.
- It reappears after I fix it → something is still writing allocations outside the app for that customer, most often the desktop application. Note the receipt number and when it was entered before correcting it again.