How Can I apply a credit from one job to another job?

When you record the Customer Payment, for the customer, do you choose Adams Agency, or do you choose Bob, Cindy and/or Dan?

If you were to choose Adams Agency, then all of the Adams Agency invoices/credits for all jobs would be available to work with. If you just choose Bob, then only Bob's invoices/credits would be shown.

When you open a Customer to receive payment on many of their jobs, I don't know a way of paying an invoice on one job and applying a credit from a different job to balance the payment received.

To answer your question: Yes, I open up the customer (Adam's Agency) Not the individual job.

FOR EXAMPLE:

In receive payments...

1) I open 'Adams Agency' Customer field
2) A list of all their jobs appears below
3) I need to apply a lump-sum payment of $5,000 against 3 seperate accounts. (There are 2 invoices and 1 credit memo)
4) I do not know how I can apply credit from one account to balance against an invoice from another account to achieve the total lump-sum payment

FOR EXAMPLE:

Bob - Owes $5,000
Cindy - We owe $1,000
Dan -Owes $1,000

How can I apply Cindy's credit against the invoices of Bob and Dan for a total of $5,000 (5,000-1,000+1,000 = 5,000)

5) The way I have been doing it - If you apply payments you'll be short the amount of the credit memo. If you apply the (2) invoices of $6,000 you'll only have a payment total of $5,000 leaving you $1,000 short because you can't apply the credit memo against those invoices. I'll then make a note "Invoice 4555 net of Credit Memo 4449"

Any solutions?

Thanks

I just went to a sample company and created the situation you're talking about.

QuickBooks will allow you to cross-apply job invoices, but not credits. In order to apply the credit, you have to have that particular job and only that job chosen in the Customer Receipts window.

I'm going to put into Intuit for a correction in their next update, but in the meantime:

Either you go back to the credit memo and change the customer:job from Cindy to Adams Agency, or

Transfer the credit to Adams Agency with two journal entries. If you want to do this I'll tell you how to do it.

If the customer is paying multiple jobs with a check is it necessary to process invoices/credit memos using jobs? Do you really need to issue invoices/credit memos to Bob, Cindy and Dan, or can you just issue invoices to Adams Agency referencing as a ship-to or otherwise referencing Bob, Cindy and Dan in the description?

You have to judge what you get out of it by separating them, against all the work that goes into maintaining the separation.

BrownB:

I beleive there are variations to this issue, and its been asked previously, and answered. For instance:

-An agency recived ONE government check to pay the tuition of a number of students set up as customers.
-One business receive a payment from Target's AP for 20 different stores, and credit for one store is applied to another
-Your example of one check for the Adams agency paying for two "Jobs", and owing on another

In checking this issue previously, I find that if you open the customer "Adams agency", and there's only open invoices, and not open credits. then you can take the one check and apply it to different jobs, such as Bob, Cindy, and Dan. The problem comes up when there are also credits, or AP mixed in.

To start with, I have a "cash type" clearing account to offset AP to AR, a barter situation, but its a procedure that I'm able to use for others such as the example above.

To use your example, I would do a JE to receive the $5000.00 payment to the Adams Agency into my "cash clearing account".

Step 1 (you got the check) Do a Journal Entry

Debit Cash Operating Account: $5000.00
Credit (barter) Clearing account: $5000.00

Step 2 (Do TWO receive payments for open AR items)

-Do receive payment on the open Jobs

Credit job (Bob): $5000.00
Debit barter clearing acount: $5000.00

Credit job (Dan): $1000.00
Debit barter clearing acount: $1000.00

*** NOTE: DEPOSIT the funds to barter clearing account ***

Step 3 (payment on AP )

Make a payment on (AP: Cindy)

Debit AP: $1,000
Credit barter clearing account: $1,000.00

*** NOTE: PAY the bill FROM the barter clearing account, not the cash operating account ***

Here's a reconciliation:

Cash Operating Account:
- Debit of $5000.00 (you got a check for $5000.00)

Barter clearing account transactions:

-Credit from check payment $5,000.00
-Credit from AP payment $1,000.00 (paid Cindy)
-Debit from AR: $6,000.00 (got paid from Bob and Dan)

AP Account

Debit of $1,000 (paid Cindy)

If you anlayze the above, its a variation of the barter arrangement. But the barter procedure can be extended using clearing accounts where one check is used to pay various customers, jobs, and where credits from one job is used on another, such as how "Target" pays from one location.

Explaining it another way, you put cash from the from the Adams Agency first into the "operating cash account", then transfer it over to the BARTER account, and THEN use the barter account to divvy up the payment, and OFFSET the payable.

Frank Chin

Brownb:

Took another look at your inquiry, and you have an open AR credit for Cindy of $1,000.00 instead of an open AP of $1,000.00 that I assumed

In this case, follow directions from help on "issuing refunds of AR credit memos". The procedure ends with a check issued to the AR customer from the "cash operating account"

In this case, instead of using the the "cash operating account", issue the check out of the "barter clearing account instead.


New Step #3

Step 3 (payment on AR credit )

Debit AR: $1,000
Credit barter clearing account: $1,000.00


** NOTE: Issue the make believe payment from the the barter clearing account, not the cash operating account ***


The new reconciliation is:


Cash Operating Account:
- Debit of $5000.00 (you got a check for $5000.00)

Barter clearing account transactions:

-Credit from check payment $5,000.00 (transfer in from operating account)
-Credit from AR credit refund $1,000.00 (paid Cindy)
-Debit from AR: $5,000.00 (got paid from Bob)
-Debit from AR $1,000 (got paid from Dan)

Note: Barter account zeros out with DR/CR totals of $6,000 each.

I realize some people feel its a bit of work. BUT the only difference between this as compared to if Bob, Cindy, and Dan were separate customers, or jobs, is the transfer in of $5,000 from the operating account to the "barter account", and then treating the subsequent entries as payments received and payments made.

In essence, you received payments separately from Bob and Dan, and issued a payment to Cindy as if they were separate entities.

Frank Chin

I have customers with various jobs which I have set up. I now have one job that has a credit and another job with an invoice for the same amount and I need to move the credit to clear the invoice. HELP!! Can someone give me an easy way to accomplish this. Would greatly appreciate any suggestions.

I have several customers which I have set up with jobs. One customer has a credit memo on a particular job and wants to use it against an invoice that is on another job in the same amount. How can I apply the credit memo to the invoice???? Thanks in advance for any help.

When you go to Receive Payments, and you enter the name of the CUSTOMER instead of the name of the job, all transactions for that Customer and all the jobs are listed, so you can apply payments and credit between the jobs.

This is NOT an easy way to accomplish this and maybe someone has a better idea - but I would use 2 journal entries (because you can only use 1 accounts receivable line per entry) to move the credit from one job to the other.

1st Journal Entry Accounts Receivable + Job Name with the credit you want to move to the other job - debit, Clearing Account (type bank account) - credit.

2nd Entry - Accounts Receivable + Job Name of the one you want to use the credit for - credit, Clearing Account- debit.

Then you have to apply the credits to BOTH jobs in the receive payments window.

> When you go to Receive Payments, and you enter the name of the CUSTOMER instead of the name of the job, all transactions for that Customer and all the jobs are listed, so you can apply payments and credit between the jobs.

In QB Pro 2005 Mac v 7.0.1 R2, when you enter just the customer name, only invoices that were not assigned a specific job show up. So even though I've got a customer with several invoiced jobs (who pays weekly with one check), I can't even remotely assign a payment to multiple jobs or apply credit memos to multiple jobs. What an insanely frustrating oversight.

I know this an old post, but was there any resolution to this issue? The journal entry fix is only a partial/stop gap solution as it skews the job cost accounting/profitability for both projects. Also, posting two journal entries per credit when we may post 30 credits in a single check, is a nightmare. This has been what we have done to date.

I was hoping............