Receive advances

Receive a customer advance to be applied later to an AR sales invoice. If you reverse an advanced to correct information, receive it again to replace the reversed advance.

Subscription Accounts Receivable
Regional availability

All regions
User type

Business
Permissions

Receive Advances: List, View, Add

  1. Go to Accounts Receivable > All > Payments and select Add (circle) next to Advances.

  2. How you receive the advance depends on your summary configuration settings for advances.

    • If you're configured for automatically batching payment groups, select an Account type and Account to receive the advance.

    • If you're configured for user-specified payment groups, select a Payment group to receive the advance.

      • The Payment group groups payments together for deposit into the same account or into undeposited funds. The summary names in the dropdown list are the same ones that you see when you select Accounts Receivable > All > Subledger > Payment groups.

      If you have not already created a Payment group, go to Accounts Receivable > All > Subledger > Payment groups and add one.

      When creating the payment group, select the bank account into which the payment will be deposited. You can also select Undeposited funds for payments (such as cash and cheques) that will be deposited later.

      Payment Groups overview—Accounts Receivable

  3. Select the Payment method by which the customer paid you.
  4. Choose the Customer ID of the customer from whom you received the advance.
  5. Enter the Receipt date and Payment date.
    • The Receipt date is the date on which you received the cheque, cash, credit card, or bank transfer.
    • The Payment date is the transaction date. If the payment was made by cheque, the payment date is the date printed on the cheque. If the payment was made by cash, the payment date is the date you received the payment. If payment was made by credit card, it's the date on which the transaction occurred. If payment was made by bank transfer, it's the date on which the transfer occurred.
  6. For cheque payments, it's recommended that you record the cheque number.
  7. If you're a multi-currency company and the advance is a different currency than your base currency, select the Transaction currency.

    Enter other currency conversion details as appropriate, such as the exchange rate date, type, or rate itself:

    • Type or select a date for the Exchange rate date.
    • In Exchange rate type, select the dropdown to select an exchange rate type such as Intacct Daily Rate, or WSJ Published Rate. If your company's uses custom exchange rate types, you can see them listed here.
    • If you know the exchange rate for this advance, you can enter it in Exchange rate to override system calculations.

    After you enter the Transaction amount for each line item, Intacct converts the amount to the transaction currency that you selected and displays it in the Base amount field.

    Examples:

    • Your company base currency is USD, and your bank currency is also USD. You can receive and record advances in the transaction currency.
    • Your company base currency is US dollars, and your bank currency is GBP. You can receive and record advances only in GBP.
    Multi-currency advances are not supported for undeposited funds accounts. Associate the payment group or advance with a bank account, then try again.
  8. Optionally, add a Payment memo for future reference.
  9. Select or add an Attachment to store a digital version of a supporting document.

    Learn more about who can add attachments.

    You can drag and drop your files to add an attachment. To attach a document to multiple journal entries, see Bulk processing.

Enter line item information

Now enter the line items for the advance that you defined.

  1. Select the GL offset account or Account label dropdown list to select a different account or account label.

    This field displays the default offset account specified when Accounts Receivable was configured (Accounts Receivable > Setup > Configuration). You can overwrite this account by selecting another.

  2. In the Amount field, enter the amount of the advance payment for this line item.

    You can only enter positive line item amounts for advances.

    In a multi-currency company, Intacct displays Txn amount and Base amount instead of Amount. Txn Amount is the amount in the currency in which the payment was received and recorded. Base Amount is the amount in the base currency of your company. If yours is a multi-currency company, enter the Txn amount and Base amount.

  3. Optionally, in the Memo field, enter text to help you identify this line item.
  4. Optionally, select a Department and Location.

    (These dimensions are primarily used for multi-entity companies.)

  5. Optionally, you can select a Dimension for each line item. Select Add to select a dimension to associate with the line item: Project, Customer, Item, Employee, or Supplier.

    6. A dimension is a category of data that you can organize and sort in meaningful ways. Sage Intacct provides the following predefined dimensions:

    • Location
    • Department
    • Class
    • Customer
    • Item
    • Project
    • Supplier
    • Employee
    • Warehouse (if you subscribe to Inventory Control)
    • Contract (if you subscribe to Contracts)

    In addition, Intacct enables you to define new dimensions to suit your needs. Use these user-defined dimensions to organize and sort categories of data unique to your business. For example, if you’re a software company with multiple product lines, you can create a user-defined dimension called Line of business. Then add the values Direct customers, Channel partner, and OEM.

    Dimensions enable you to collect, sort, analyze, and report on data within one category, or between categories, so you can identify key factors such as:

    • Your most profitable or most costly items or customers
    • The return on investment of a project or department
    • Whether and to what degree a new product or product line is successful
    • Which way a particular aspect of your business is trending
    • Intacct dimensions give you fine control over data definition and data hierarchy

    With dimensions, you can customize financial reports around specific business activities, get greater visibility into how the business is doing, and make faster, more meaningful business decisions.

    Think of dimensions as a more powerful alternative to subaccounts.

    Additional fees can apply for the Project dimension and user-defined dimensions. Contact your account representative for more information.

  6. Repeat steps 1 through 5 for as many line items as you need.
  7. Select Post or Draft.
    If you assigned a document sequence to advances in Configure Accounts Receivable, Intacct assigns a Payment ID to the transaction when you post.

Next step: Apply the advance to an AR sales invoice