Linked Transactions, or "how to tell an invoice was paid"?

[Dave Peticolas]

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On Mon, 2001-11-26 at 21:41, Derek Atkins wrote:
> "Olaf Faaland" <ofaaland@home.com> writes:
>=20
> > You may have already thought of this, but that the fact that a payment =
has
> > been applied to an invoice does not mean the invoice's balance is
> > necessarily 0.  Partial payments happen a lot.  Your query is still goi=
ng to
> > have to do a lookup of each linked payment and total them to determine =
the
> > balance.  Or, you'll have to maintain a field in the invoice that keeps=
 the
> > payment status in some form - "paid/not paid", or "unpaid balance", or
> > something.
>=20
> Hmm, good point.  Note that if you do keep an 'invoice is paid off'
> flag, then you only need to keep track of how much of the invoice
> is paid off.
>=20
> Similarly, once I add Customer support, then it really doesn't matter;
> you apply payments from the Customer in a FIFO/LIFO/whatever to the
> existing list of invoices and what really matters is not the
> individual invoices but rather how much the Customer owes you.
>=20
> The fact that there are N invoices in the e.g. 0-31 day period doesn't
> matter; it's the sum of the outstanding balances that matter.

I'm not sure that is the case. Invoices are often issued
under terms that specify penalties (interest) to be paid
if they are late. I know in some industries those penalties
can be negotiated, i.e., they can differ from invoice to
invoice. So tracking the specific invoices with
outstanding balances is important. And if customers can
pay specific invoices out of order, then that would add
another wrinkle.

dave


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