All Open Credit (Open Credits Report)

The Open Credits report lists every customer who has unapplied open credit on their account — money sitting on the account that hasn't been matched against an invoice. Its main job is cleanup: finding customers who have both an open credit and an unpaid invoice, and applying one to the other so statements and A/R aging reflect what the customer really owes.

Find it under Reports, in the Accounts section of the report sidebar, as Open Credits. (Visibility of this report can be limited per employee — if you don't see it in the sidebar, your login may not have access to it. Talk to your administrator, or contact help@vmxllc.com.)

For example: a customer charges a plant order to their house account, then mails a check that gets recorded on their account without being applied to the invoice. The customer now shows an unpaid invoice and a matching open credit. This report surfaces exactly that situation so you can apply the credit and zero both out.

If no customers qualify, the report shows: "There are no unapplied open credits."

What counts as an open credit

Open credit is money on a customer's house account that hasn't been applied to any invoice. It typically gets there when:

An A/R payment is taken at the register and part of it is applied to the Open Credit row of the Apply Payment table (for example, the customer pays more than their invoices total, or pays ahead) — see Recording an A/R Payment.
A payment is recorded in the office on the customer's A/R tab using the Payment form without selecting an invoice — those payments are applied as credit on the account. See the A/R tab.

The customer's current open credit appears as Open Credit in the Balances table on their A/R tab. Customer deposits are also held as credit on the account; separate deposit tracking is enabled per-client by VMX (contact help@vmxllc.com), and where it's on, the A/R tab shows the deposit portion on its own Deposit Balance line while the report's Open Credit $ column includes it.

Open credit vs. store credit — two different things

Open credit and store credit are separate systems and don't mix:

Open credit lives on the customer's house (A/R) account. It has no credit number, and it's applied against the customer's invoices — from this report, from the customer's A/R tab, or when recording an A/R payment at the register.
Store credit is issued from a return at the register, prints on a receipt with a store credit number, and is redeemed at the register with the Store Credit button. A customer's store credits are listed on the Store Credits tab of their customer page — not on the A/R tab. See Store Credit.

The Open Credits report only shows A/R open credit. Store credit never appears here.

Choosing which customers appear: Only Appliable vs. All Open Credits

At the top of the Open Credits report is a dropdown with a Show button:

Only Appliable (the default) — shows only customers who have open credit and an unpaid invoice balance, i.e. accounts where the credit can actually be applied to something right now. The page heading reads Appliable Open Credits.
All Open Credits — shows every customer with any open credit, whether or not they owe anything. The page heading reads All Open Credits. Use this view to see prepayments and credit balances that have nothing to be applied against yet.

Pick the view and click Show to reload the report.

Report columns

Each row of the Open Credits report is one customer with open credit:

# — the customer's account number, linked to their customer page.
Customer — the customer's name and/or company, also linked to their customer page.
Unpaid # — how many unpaid invoices the customer has.
Unpaid $ — the customer's total unpaid invoice balance.
Open Credit $ — the customer's total unapplied open credit.
Appliable $ — the smaller of Unpaid $ and Open Credit $: the amount of credit that could actually be applied to invoices right now. A customer with $200.00 of open credit but only a $75.00 unpaid invoice shows $75.00 appliable.

Click any column header to re-sort. By default the report sorts largest-first by Appliable $ (or by Open Credit $ in the All Open Credits view), so the biggest cleanup opportunities are at the top. The report prints cleanly — the filter and auto-apply controls are hidden on the printout, and a "Generated" date/employee line is added at the bottom.

Auto-apply: clear many credits at once

The Open Credits report can apply credits in bulk for the simple cases. The Auto apply customers with 1 invoice that's form offers two options, then a Go button:

100% payable — for every customer who has exactly one unpaid invoice and enough open credit to cover it completely, apply the credit and pay the invoice in full.
partially payable — for every customer who has exactly one unpaid invoice, apply whatever open credit they have, even if it only partially pays the invoice.

Customers with more than one unpaid invoice are never touched by auto-apply — those need a person to decide which invoice the credit belongs to, either on the customer's A/R tab or at the register.

Each application is recorded on the customer's account as a payment of type Open Credit, just as if you had applied it manually. When it finishes, the page reloads with the updated list. If a customer is skipped, a message explains why, in the form: "Customer #[number]: [reason] (probably due to earmarked open credit)." — see the earmark section below.

Applying one customer's open credit manually

Applying credit requires the Apply Payments employee permission — without it, the payment controls don't appear on the customer's A/R tab. To apply a single customer's open credit to a specific invoice:

Click the customer's number in the # column of the Open Credits report to open their customer page.
Go to the A/R tab and find the Open Invoices and Credits table.
On the row of the invoice you want to pay, change the payment type dropdown to Open Credit. The Pay Amount field auto-fills with the smaller of the customer's available open credit and the invoice's balance due — you can lower it if you want to apply less.
Click Pay.

If you try to apply more open credit than the customer has available, the payment is rejected with: "Failed: $ [amount] open credit available on account [customer number]."

Applying existing open credit this way is safe to do from the office — it just moves credit already on the account (no new money is tendered), so it doesn't affect register tender totals. New payments, by contrast, should be rung at the register — see Recording an A/R Payment and the guidance on the A/R tab.

Earmarked open credit — credit that won't auto-apply

Open credit can be earmarked — reserved for a specific purpose (for example, a prepayment being held for an upcoming job) using the + New Earmark button in the Earmarked Open Credit section of the customer's A/R tab. Earmarked amounts still count in the customer's Open Credit balance, but they are excluded from what can be applied to invoices:

Manual applications can only use open credit above the earmarked total — exceeding it fails with the "Failed: $ [amount] open credit available…" message.
The auto-apply feature on the Open Credits report never dips into earmarked credit: if the amount it would apply is more than the customer's un-earmarked open credit, that customer is skipped, reporting "(probably due to earmarked open credit)". (A customer with an earmark can still auto-apply when their remaining, un-earmarked credit covers the amount.)

To release the credit, delete the earmark (trash icon next to it on the A/R tab), then apply the credit normally. See the A/R tab for more on earmarks.