Billing Account, payment, invoice interaction

[Anne Jessel]

Hi

I'm trying to understand how billing accounts, invoices and payments
interact in 9.04. As part of this, I'm looking at the case where a customer
gives a part payment (e.g. deposit) before an invoice has been created. I
think a Billing Account is the correct thing to use for several reasons.

Volume 1 of the The Data Model Resource Book covers this in chapter 7, where
it says a "payment may be applied on account, which means it is applied to a
BILLING ACCOUNT without being applied to specific invoices. ... [this]
allows moneys to be accepted in advance of charges."

On
http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBENDUSER/06+Billing+Accounts
it says
"A payment that is applied (or matched) to a Billing Account it should still
be applied to an invoice. In the case where the payment arrives before the
invoice has been generated then once the invoice is generated it should be
applied to the payment or payments."

Also, on
http://ofbiz-new.blogspot.com/2007/06/ofbiz-development-r547609.html it says
"re-factoring of billing account. Now payment applications are *not* applied
to a billing account; they are simply associated to it and can be applied to
pay the invoices associated to the billing account. (543923, 543924,
543944)"


From this information I expected to be able to create a new payment with:

from PartyId: the customer who owns a billing account
payment method type: cash
payment type: Customer Payment

Then I thought I should apply that payment to the customer's billing account
(I couldn't see any other way to associate the payment with the billing
account - did I miss something important here?). This works, though when I
then list the payment applications for this payment, I see that the full
amount has been applied to invoiceId [].

Then I edited an in-process invoice for this customer, setting the billing
account Id field.

At this stage, viewing things under Billing Accounts and Invoices both
looked as I expected.

I set the Invoice status to approved.

However now I can not find any way to apply the payment to the invoice. The
Applications tab under the invoice does not list the relevant payment. If I
specify the paymentId on this screen, the error message says the payment has
already been fully applied. The Available Balance on the billing account
equals the amount of the payment, although the invoice is listed on the
Invoices tab for the billing account.

I guess I have misunderstood what I have read, or the documentation I read
is wrong. Could someone please explain the recommended way to enter a
payment from a customer before an invoice is generated, and then later apply
that payment to the invoice?

Cheers,
Anne.


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