Apply payment to multiple customer's invoices

[michael21]

We have a number of cases in which we receive a single payment that applies to several different customer's invoices.  For example, a management company may require that billings go to the property, showing the property as the bill to.  Once the property approves the bill, it goes to the management company for payment.  If the management company has multiple properties for whom we have worked, we will get a single payment for all the properties we worked on.  In another case, we work with a membership warehouse store.  We sell to the homeowner, (and must have them as the bill to for their full warranty to take effect) but the warehouse store will be paid by the homeowner and will then pay us.  When they pay us, they deduct their fee, but worse, sometimes they deduct the fee on the same payment as the primary payment for the job, other times the fee is deducted from some other payment they make.  This necessitates a negative payment amount which takes us out of the advanced payment feature because it doesn't allow negative payments.  I have created an idea for this, (COMMUNITY-I-895), but I wonder if anyone else has encountered this problem and how you might have resolved it.

[MDuffey]

No problem! Just voted as well. I'll spread the word for more votes.

[michael21]

Thanks for the Kudo's on this @MDuffey & @wch_alex .  I have this loaded in the ideas section as COMMUNITY-I-895.  Would sure appreciate votes for it there.  Thanks.

[michael21]

You are right @kevinfow that's in the announcement titled "Transitioning to Payment Collections & Legacy Payments Sunset" in this section of the community.  We actually began using the advanced payment option a couple of months ago but had to turn it off because of this problem.  The new feature allows you to enter a payment from a customer and then apply it to that customer's invoices, enter another check from another customer and then apply the check to that customer's invoices.  It does not allow you to enter a check and then apply it to multiple different customer's accounts.  If Service Finance sends you an ACH paying for 2 different customer's jobs, you will still have to enter that as 2 payments not 1.  You could do that, just as we do with the legacy payment process we had to retreat to, but unlike the legacy system, payment amounts in the new payment system must be positive, greater than 0 amounts, so the work flow described above can't be done.  I was hoping that someone else who had encountered this problem might have a suggestion, but I'm not seeing it yet.

[michael21]

Thanks for the response, @kevinfow, but this doesn't really address the point.  As your post says, when you select "Apply Payment", you can pull up a customer and see all of his invoices.  Our problem is what to do with a single payment that has both payments and fee deductions for multiple customers.  For example, lets say customers A, B, and C all buy systems from Joe's Warehouse Store.  Lets also say that Joe's deducts 5% as their fee.  Then Joe's sends us a check paying for and deducting the fee for the jobs we did for A and B, but they also deduct the fee they charge us for C's installation from that same check.  They will pay for C's job on a later check.  We would either have to enter a single check that applied to invoices from all 3 customers or we would have to break this up by customer and then apply a "negative check" to deduct the customer C fee.  Neither of these are supported in the advanced payment process that ST is now in the process of implementing.  Worse, I now find out that the legacy application process, which will allow us to enter a negative payment amount, is to be phased out.

[kevinfow]

We just received notification that Service Titan is updating the payment processing system this fall and that part of this update will be accepting payment for multiple customers.

[kevinfow]

On the accounting page there is a button "Apply Payment". From there you can call up a customer that has multiple invoices and then next to each open invoice there is a button "Pay Multiple". Click that for each invoice being paid and it will allow you to enter the check information. Once paid each invoice paid on that check will show the payment with a note ($100.00 of $750.00). 

[JessicaSmith]

I always just applied the check as separate checks for each customer- input the same check number on each payment, and they should add up to the check total.

[michael21]

Thanks Jessica, we are doing that also, at least for now, but it suffers two problems.  First, because applying each customer as a separate check means that we have to apply negative checks when our warehouse store deducts one customer's fee from another's payment, we can't go to the advanced payment collections option, something we would very much like to do.  Second, while this works, it has always been my experience that the more a transaction looks like the "real world", the more likely it is to be accurately processed.  In this case, we received one payment, not several.  If we enter it as one payment, we are more likely to get it right.