Taking Payment for Sales

There are number of ways to take payment against a sale. Payment can be taken before or after the sale is invoiced.

1. Record payments already taken, e.g. cheques, BACS...
2. Take payment by card - prepayment or deferred

Learn more about supported card methods

Record Payment Already Taken (Cheque, BACS etc)

Perhaps you're receiving a cheque against a sales order, or are recording a BACS receipt into your bank account for an invoice. Both of these "cash receipts" will need to be recorded in Brightpearl against the sale. This can be done in various ways:

1. From within the sale

This method can be used to record funds received against a single sale, and also can be used to record pre-payments before invoicing.

1. Search for and open the sale.
2. In the products & prices tab, click the Take payment button.
3. Choose a bank account (the one that you have received funds into).
4. Enter the amount, the date and a reference.
5. Click Allocate payment.

2. Use the Payment Allocation screen

1. Search for the customer.
2. When the customer is listed, click their name to view/edit the record.
3. In the Financials detail box on the right-hand side click Allocate payment.
4. Choose a bank account, a date and enter a reference.
5. Click the Pay in full button next the invoices to clear. To part pay enter the amount paid in the amount to pay field.
6. Click Allocate payment button.

The receipt is created and the invoices marked as paid. The customer account balance is updated and the accounting posted.

3. Using the Bank Matching process

Learn about bank matching

Dealing with Under/Over Payments

If a customer has under or over paid, you can simply leave it on account to allocate against a later invoice or receipt, or you can write it off to gains and losses with an adjustment.

First of all you will need to set up your "adjustment accounts".

1. Go to Accounting > Chart of accounts.
2. Add a new nominal code.
3. Mark it as yes "Allocate discounts to this account".
4. Save.

Now when you take a payment from the customer you can follow the steps above and enter any under or over amount into the adjustment column. Once you have entered an adjustment value you will be able to select your adjustment nominal code just below.

This will write-off the outstanding amount.

Learn how to deal with under or over payments after you have already allocated the payment

Take Card Payments within Brightpearl

If you use SecureTrading, Sagepay or CreditCall to process your card transactions, then you can use the built-in tools to process the card in a Virtual Terminal environment, actually within the Brightpearl system. You can take a prepayment where you haven't yet invoiced the sale, or a deferred payment whereyou haven't yet received the funds.

Recording a Pre-payment

If you are receiving funds before you have invoiced the sale, then you need to record this in the accounting system so that your daily reconciliation will match up. You need to create a payment on the customer's account that is connected to the sale, so that when the sale is invoiced, the payment on account will be matched to the invoice. If you use the in-built credit card processing console, this pre-payment will be done for you.

1. Search for and open the uninvoiced sale.
2. In the Products & prices tab, click the Take payment button.
3. Choose a bank account (the one that you have received funds into).
4. Enter the amount, the date and a reference.
5. Click Allocate payment.

If you search your accounting data for everything that relates to the order reference, then you'll see a pre-payment on account with ref "accntXXX" where XXX is the order ID. There will also be a negative balance on the customer account to record the fact that you've received funds but have not yet invoiced.

When you invoice this sale, the SI (Sales Invoice) will be connected to the SR (Sales Receipt). Brightpearl will handle any over or under payments.

Deferred Credit Card Payments

If you are using a credit card provider set to "deferred payment", then you will see that when the card is processed using the on-screen system, the amount is added into the "provisional" box on the order. This is because you have not yet received the funds, and the money should not be shown in the accounting system.

To transfer the balance from the "provisional" box into the accounting system, you can:

• Invoice the sale. Any amount in the provisional box will be allocated against the sale using the Tax date of the order, into the bank account specified by the payment method on the sale.
• Use the "release funds" feature in the Sales List report (see below).

Releasing Deferred Funds

Typically you will reach the end of a day and you will have shipped a number of sales that contain "provisional funds" to clear. You need to log in to your payment provider system and release these.

You also need to record in Brightpearl that the funds should be allocated into the relevant bank account. If you also "invoice" these same sales at the end of the day, then the Provisional funds will be allocated into the bank account as set by the payment method on the order.

You can also follow these steps to allocate the released funds:

1. Go to Sales > List All Sales/Quotes.
2. Click Show filters to search for the relevant orders. You can use the Payment to release field to show only sales that have an outstanding "provisional" value.
3. Click Filter report to display the search results.
4. Select the sales by ticking the checkbox on the left.
5. Select Release payment from the -More actions- drop-down menu above the listing.
6. Click Submit.

The following must be true for a sale to have the funds allocated using this process:

• The sale must not yet be paid in full (using Sales Receipts in the accounting)
• The sale must have a payment method set
• The payment method must be set to a bank account
• There must be an amount in the "provisional" box

We suggest that if you want to use this list of sales to cross reference against your payment provider system, that you print/export the list BEFORE allocating payment, since the sales will be harder to find once the amount has been allocated.

You can use Brightpearl to process credit cards directly from within the system, which will automatically create accounting entries for you.

Supported Card Methods

Current cards supported for credit card payment in Brightpearl admin are:

• Secure Trading - visit site
• Credit Call - visit site
• SagePay - visit site

Taking prepayments of deposits on sales not yet invoiced

Whilst you are building a quote, you may want to take credit card payment in advance of invoicing. If you do this, then the payment will be entered into your accounts as a "payment on account", tied to the sales order ID (Quote ID). If you later invoice the sales order, then all prepayments will be allocated to the invoice.

Taking payment for an invoice

If you've already invoiced the sale, then you can still take payment by credit card. The balance taken will simply be allocated against the invoice.

Setting Up

Secure Trading

There are no differences to the above process, apart from the fact that Secure Trading allow "deferred payment". In this situation, the funds are not allocated in your accounts, you will need to allocate them manually when you release the sale in the ST portal.

Setting up Secure Trading

Credit Call

Credit call allows you to store a user's card information (encrypted) for later re-use. The actual card data is not stored on the Brightpearl servers, they are 100% securely stored with Credit call, and accessed by a security "hash" code.

If you revisit the card payment screen for a user that you have dealt with before, then you'll be given the choice of using a new card, or their previous card details.

Setting up Credit call

Sagepay

The Sagepay back-office card processing works in a slightly different way to that on your e-commerce site, but uses the same account. You need to ensure that you have a MOTO (Mail order telephone order) merchant account with Sagepay.

Once you have signed up with Sagepay and entered the details into Brightpearl, whenever you click to open the Allocate payment screen, you'll get an option to use the Sagepay card console.

Getting started with Sagepay

Releasing deferred payments and imported sales

If your card method is set to "defer" payment, then the total amount authorised will be added to the sale in the "provisional" box, and no accounting entry will be made.

All orders imported using the import process will automatically be set to provisional, if a payment method and payment amount is given in the import dataset.

To release the provisional amount paid

Releasing payment will create an accounting entry and remove the provisional amount from the sale. The accounting entry will be a Sales Receipt against the order, using the bank account specified for the payment method on that order.

1. Go to Sales > List All Sales/Quotes.
2. Click Show filter and select Yes in the Payment to release field.
3. Click Filter report to display the search results. You'll see the provisional amount paid and payment method as two extra columns.
4. Tick the checkboxes next to the relevant sales and then select Release payment from the -More actions- drop-down menu.
5. Click Submit. Accounting entries will be created.

It does not matter whether the sale has been invoiced or not, but remember that once a sale has accounting entries against it, it cannot be deleted. If a sale already has full payment marked against it, then the release payment process won't enter any transactions into the accounting system.