Where statuses go wrong
- A cheque handed to a technician and deposited without anyone updating the invoice.
- A card payment taken on the phone and recorded in a note instead of the record.
- A deposit collected against the job but never applied to the final invoice.
- A customer paying two invoices with one transfer.
- A refund issued but the invoice left marked paid.
- Two people recording the same payment twice.
Matching rules that avoid guesswork
- Every payment record stores an amount, a date, a method and a reference.
- Every payment links to at least one invoice, job or customer.
- One transfer covering several invoices is split into applied amounts.
- Money with no identifiable invoice is held as unapplied, visibly, rather than guessed.
- Balances are derived from applied payments, never typed by hand.
Partial payments, refunds and reversals
A partial payment should leave the invoice in a partially paid state with a correct remaining balance — not marked paid because someone was optimistic, and not left open as if nothing arrived.
Refunds and reversals are their own records referencing the original payment. Editing or deleting the original destroys the audit trail and makes the month impossible to explain later.
A weekly reconciliation routine
- Compare payments recorded in the system against the deposits your bank actually shows.
- Clear the unapplied list — every entry gets matched or explained.
- Check that invoices marked paid have a matching payment record and receipt.
- Look for duplicates: same amount, same customer, same week.
- Flag anything unresolved for your bookkeeper rather than closing it quietly.