Financial Exchange: Customer Charge Account Information

Customer Charge Accounts Overview | Past Due Accounts

Basic

Summary

With each Financial Exchange, Point of Sale sends new account transactions (charges or payments), plus any change to the charge account limit made in Point of Sale, to your QuickBooks financial software. In QuickBooks, the transactions are posted to appropriate accounts and customer invoices (new charges) or customer payments (payments on account) are created.

Certain account activities may be handled directly in QuickBooks, such as printing and sending out invoices, recording payments received by mail, adding finance charges, controlling account aging, and calculation of past due amounts.

QuickBooks sends back to Point of Sale the updated account balance (which overwrites the Point of Sale value), any change in the account limit made in QuickBooks, and any past due amounts and aging information. The latter can be used to alert cashiers and block additional charges to the account in Point of Sale. The latest edit to the account limit (called Credit Limit in QuickBooks) in either program overwrites the value in the other program.

How Specific Account Transactions Are Sent to QuickBooks

Charges to Account

Sales charged to a customers account create invoices in QuickBooks; one invoice for each charge sales transaction in Point of Sale. These invoices are never consolidated with other transactions, even if you are sending summarized data.

Your Accounts Receivable balance is increased by the amount of the charge transaction. Other accounts (asset, income, COGS) are affected as typical for sales.

You can elect via a company preference to include item detail on all receipts or on account charge receipts only, making it possible to create itemized customer invoices and reports within QuickBooks. Customer information is always sent to QuickBooks on account charge transactions and can be sent on all sales transactions by selecting to send detailed information on all receipts.

Payments on Account

Payments on account taken in Point of Sale are sent to QuickBooks as customer payments (if paid by gift card/certificate, a credit memo is created instead).

How the customer payment is applied to open invoices in QuickBooks is determined by your Receive Payments preferences in QuickBooks. With this preference (located in QuickBooks Sales & Customer company preferences), you can choose to Automatically Apply Payments, in which case the QuickBooks rules are used to distribute payments to open invoices. If this preferences is not selected, you will have to manually apply the payments to open invoices.

Your Accounts Receivable balance is decreased by the amount of the customer payment. Other accounts (payment and bank accounts) are affected in the same manner as payments received on sales.

If you prefer, you can take payments on account directly in QuickBooks. Use the Customers Receive Payment option (see your QuickBooks documentation for more information). If choosing this method, the payment should NOT also be entered in Point of Sale. Payments on account recorded in QuickBooks will be reflected in Point of Sale after the next Financial Exchange.

Notes

- Customer account balances are immediately updated In Point of Sale with each charge/payment made. However, with each Financial Exchange the account balance is updated from your QuickBooks financial software.

- You can view the specific document or journal entry created In QuickBooks for account transactions via links from your Point of Sale sales history list (at Headquarters only in multi-store).

- (Pro) Because there may be a lag between charge account activity at a remote store and receiving back the updated balance from QuickBooks/Headquarters, a customer could potentially exceed his/her credit limit by making multiple charges at different stores between data exchanges. Example

To learn more:

- Read the overview: How QuickBooks Handles Point of Sale Data

- Read about various ways to customize Financial Exchange

- Learn more about sending summarized vs. detailed receipts to your financial software

- Read Financial Exchange FAQs