Researching Misapplied payments in Accounts Receivable

By Jeff Cozens

I am surprised that people often do not examine new features with Solomon. I‘ve lost track when this report was originally released. It was probably back in the days of the 2.06 version of Solomon. Nevertheless, I am surprised how many clients don’t realize the power and flexibility of the report: Application Payments (08.820.00).

I find this report works best if you practice the operating procedure that whenever you are applying AR payments and you are using either screen Payment Application (08.030.00) or Payment Entry (08.050.00) that you consistently fill in your customers check number in the correct place.

In the Payment Application screen, the field labeled number should be used for your customer check number:

In the Payment entry screen, the field labeled number should also be used for your customer check number.

By adopting this practice of entering your customer’s check payment or wire transfer payment reference number, you will easily be able to track these payments via a standard report: Payment Applications (08.820.00)

Here are just a few of the types of research activities you can use to solve various queries

Question 1: In reconciling your bank check book, you seemed to have missed recording payment receipt information for one check. How do I quickly answer this query?

Answer: Go to Payment Application report under AR Reports

Under the tab called Report, for the field called Report Format: choose Summary

On this tab, select range of period to encompass dates you are working with. (I.e. To / from range of Dates)

Next click on the Select Tab, and enter this expression in the three columns:

Field	Operator	Value
ar08820_wrk.adjgrefnbr	Contains	200008

Note: I recommend you save these values as a template for this report, so you can quickly run the report in the future.

I recommend you use the operator contains instead of equals, because of possible data entry errors for the check number, especially in situations where check numbers which begin with zeros (i.e. 0000100). This search is slower than an equal operator, but it will be more encompassing.

Question #2: You get a call from a customer claiming that they paid and invoice and they you cashed there check. When checking this payment application history for this customer, you cannot find any reference to the payment. You want to know if you mis-applied the payment to another customer’s account.

Answer:

Go to Payment Application report under AR Reports

Under the tab called Report, for the field called Report Format: choose detail

On this tab, select range of period to encompass dates you are working with. (I.e. To / from range of Dates)

Next click on the Select Tab, and enter this expression in the three columns:

Field	Operator	Value
ar08820_wrk.adjgrefnbr	Contains	200008

Note: I recommend you save these values as a template for this report, so you can quickly run the report in the future.

You will see all payments using this specific check number string. Hopefully you can quickly determine which customer received the payment incorrectly.

Here is an example of this screen when we searched on a specific check number:

Report truncated to make it more visible in this presentation.

In this standard report, you see which documents were paid down by the payment and what dollars were paid against various invoices if payments applied across multiple documents.

Note: Don’t forget about the AR feature screen called, Application Inquiry / Reversal (08.240.00), which can quickly resolve the misapplication of funds.

Question #3:

I need to create an audit trail on how payments were applied by my AR clerk. The AR clerk applied cash via the Cash Application screen. I know that the payments were process in batch 000122.

Answer:

Go to Payment Application report under AR Reports

Under the tab called Report, for the field called Report Format: choose detail

On this tab, select range of period to encompass dates you are working with. (I.e. To / From range of Dates)

Next click on the Select Tab, and enter this expression in the three columns:

Field	Operator	Value
ar08820_wrk.adjbatnbr	Equal	000199

Note: I recommend you save these values as a template for this report, so you can quickly run the report in the future.

Here is a sample of this report: