Prepaid Setup

A very common practice in the world of billing is to set up and operate customer in a Prepaid manner, meaning customer accounts can only use services to a value not exceeding the deposit held. This ensures that your accounts receivables is always in the black and your customer  is never owing you. 

To operate a customer account in a Prepaid manner please follow the steps below:

1. Go to the Invoice Items module and create an new Invoice Item called "Prepaid Credits" with a negative Unit Cost as follows:
   
   Item Code: PPC
   Item Description: Prepaid Credits
   Invoice Item Type: Regular
   Unit Cost: -100
   Quantity: 1
   Tax Exempt: YES
   Track Inventory: NO
   
   Once saved your Invoice Item should look as follows:
   
   
   
   For more information on creating Invoice Items please see the Invoice Item - Create topic.
   
   

2. Create a new Recorded Invoice for the customer account that you would like to operate as a Prepaid account and add the Prepaid Credits Invoice Item to the Invoice.  
   
   

   NOTE

   Increase the item quantity to the desired amount so that you have the line total that you want. Here we have the unit cost of the Prepaid Credits Invoice Item set as -$100 therefore, if you would like the customer account to start off with $600 of Prepaid Credits then you would change the quantity to 6 ($100 x 6 = $600).

   

3. Click the 'Record Invoice' button to ensure that the new Invoice is changed from Draft status to Recorded Status. A Recorded Invoice is charged against the customer account balance, while a draft Invoice is not. 
   
   
   For more Information on creating Invoices please see the Invoice - Create topic.
   
   
4. Go to the customers account and view the 'Balance & Activity' tab. You will now see that the customer has a $600 Prepaid Credits.
   
   
   All future Invoices will reduce the customer account balance. 
   
   When ever the customer makes a payment that you record, the balance will again increase.