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Fixing A/R Mistakes

House accounts accumulate the occasional mistake: a customer pays more than they owe, a refund leaves an invoice looking unpaid, a payment gets recorded twice, a check bounces. This guide walks through each correction. Background reading: the A/R tab explains the balances involved, and All Open Credit explains open credit in depth.

Two ideas underpin every correction here:

  • Invoice balance is what the customer owes; open credit is unapplied money sitting on their account. The customer's account balance nets the two — so an account can look "even" while an open invoice and a matching credit both sit there waiting to be matched up.
  • Corrections that involve real money changing hands happen at the register (so drawers and tender totals stay right). Corrections that just move money already on the account are safe from the office.

Refund a customer's overpayment by check

When a customer pays more than their invoices total, the extra lands as open credit on their account (the register's Apply Payment table shows it on the Open Credit row; a payment recorded without picking an invoice goes there too). To hand that money back as a check:

  1. At the register, add the customer to a new sale.
  2. Click Return Item to put the register in refund mode.
  3. Type the refund amount into the register search bar and click Payment. This rings a negative payment-on-account line — VMX checks the customer actually has that much open credit and refuses otherwise, with: "Customer only has $ [amount] available open credit. Cannot refund payment."
  4. Tender with the $ - Check button — in refund mode it reads Issue Check. Write the check for the customer.

The customer's A/R tab records the transaction as Payment Refund, and their open credit drops by the refunded amount. Some stores also have a dedicated refund-check tender button configured per-client by VMX.

If the overpayment should stay on the account for future purchases instead, you don't need to do anything — open credit applies to their next invoices (see the next section for how).

A refund went to the account and now an invoice looks unpaid

When a return is refunded to the House Charge tender, VMX adds the money to the customer's open credit — it does not pay down the original invoice. The A/R tab shows the entry as Refund to Open Credit. This is by design (the refund may relate to several invoices, or none), but it leaves the account showing an open invoice and a matching credit, even though the customer's net balance is correct.

To close the loop, apply the credit to the invoice:

  1. Open the customer's page and go to the A/R tab.
  2. In the Open Invoices and Credits table, find the invoice.
  3. Change that row's payment dropdown to Open Credit — the Pay Amount fills in automatically with the smaller of the credit available and the invoice balance.
  4. Click Pay.

To clean up many customers at once, use Reports → Accounts → Open Credits, which lists every account with appliable credit and can auto-apply the simple cases in bulk — see All Open Credit.

Two related notes:

  • If you're undoing an entire house-charge sale the same day, the register's Void All operation refunds the receipt and closes its invoice in one step. It refuses if a payment has already been applied to the invoice: "Could not refund receipt. Invoice already has payment of $ [amount]" — apply corrections to the payment first.
  • VMX can configure your store so house-charge refunds create a credit memo (a negative invoice) instead of open credit, which keeps refunds visible in the invoice list. That's set up per-client — contact help@vmxllc.com if you'd prefer it.

Undo a payment that was recorded by mistake (Revert)

Payments entered on the customer's A/R tab can be undone with the Revert icon (the circular-arrows icon on the payment's row in the account history). Clicking it asks: "Do you want to revert payment # [id]?" — confirming creates an offsetting entry labeled Reverts Payment [id] and marks the original Reverted. Nothing is deleted, so the history stays auditable. Reverting requires the Apply Payments permission.

The Revert icon appears only on entries where undoing is safe bookkeeping:

  • Office-entered payments (rows with the Office badge) — these never involved a register tender, so reverting them is a pure ledger correction.
  • Open-credit applications — applying credit to an invoice moved money already on the account, so unapplying it is equally safe.

Payments rung at the register don't get a Revert icon — on purpose. A register payment is part of a receipt, a drawer count, and the day's tender totals; silently reversing it from the office would make those disagree with reality. To correct one:

  • Same day: void the receipt at the register (Void All) — voiding a receipt with a payment line automatically reverses the payment with it.
  • Later: ring an offsetting refund at the register — Return Item, then Payment for the amount, tendered back however the money is actually going back. (This is the same flow as refunding an overpayment, above.)
  • If neither fits — for example the mistake is weeks old and tangled with other activity — contact help@vmxllc.com and we'll correct it with you.

A payment was recorded as "Credit Card" but no card was ever charged

The payment forms on the A/R tab record entries without touching a card processor — choosing Credit Card there documents that a card was charged elsewhere; it does not charge one. If someone picks it by mistake, the invoice shows paid while no money actually moved.

The fix is the Revert flow above: find the payment row (it carries the Office badge), click Revert, and the invoice balance comes back. Then take the real payment at the register.

This is also why VMX asks "Are you sure?" before recording any office payment, and why the rule of thumb is: new money is rung at the register (Recording an A/R Payment); the office forms are for the exceptions, like a check that arrives in the mail.

Handle a bounced (NSF) check

VMX doesn't have a dedicated bounced-check feature; the correction is a short recipe:

  1. Put the debt back. Find the check's payment entry on the customer's A/R tab. If it was entered in the office (mailed-in checks usually are), click Revert — the invoice reopens. If the check was rung at the register, ring an offsetting entry at the register instead (see "Undo a payment," above).
  2. Pass along your bank's returned-check fee (if you charge one): at the register, ring the fee to the customer's account as a house charge, with a note saying what it's for.
  3. Flag the customer. On the customer's Info tab, set Bad Check to Yes. From then on the register shows a red * BAD CHECK * badge whenever the customer is on a sale, and taking a check from them prompts: "Customer has previously written a bad check. Are you sure you want to accept this check?" (Some stores are configured to block check tender entirely for flagged customers.)
  4. When the customer makes good, record the replacement payment normally — and clear the Bad Check flag if you're satisfied it was a one-off.

Still stuck?

If an account's history doesn't add up and the flows above don't cover it, don't force it — a wrong "fix" is harder to unwind than the original mistake. Email help@vmxllc.com with the customer number and what looks wrong, and we'll go through the ledger with you.