Invoicing and payments

[nealrm]

This should be simple, you send out an invoice, the customer sends back a check, and you credit the amount against the invoice. But at what level of invoicing does that breakdown. If you are sending out 100+ invoices a week, it is still reasonable that payments would be applied against specific invoices instead of applied against the appropriate customer accounts? When trying to post check against specific invoice, what do you do when they don't provide the invoice information, the information is incorrect, or it states they are paying an invoice they already paid?

We generally follow these guidelines:
Post the check against the invoice on the check or the payment slip. If that is not available or incorrect, post against the oldest invoice in the account that matches the check amount. If you cannot match a specific amount, combine invoices to match the payment amount. If that is not possible, post the check against the oldest invoice that can be paid in full, repeat until no more matches are possible. If any amount remains, credit it against the account.

Are these reasonable? What do you tell a customer when they ask why check #1234 was posted against invoice 4321 and not 4320?

[Evan]

I agree with your payment posting policy. If they ask a question, you tell them that you apply payments to the oldest invoice first as they had not specified an invoice. I'd also ask them whether they have a dispute on invoice 4320 to try to figure out why that hasn't been paid yet.