Prepayments

In Nimble AMS, you can receive prepayments from constituents to later apply to orders. In addition, pending refunds on orders may be applied to a prepayment payables GL account as a credit refund, which allows you to apply a refund from one order to another. The prepayments and credit refunds are recorded against a prepayment payable GL account that you set up.

Prepayments

Staff can create prepayments received from constituents and later apply the prepayments to orders.

Paying with a Prepayment

When you create a prepayment, the following occurs:

• A new payment record is created with the Available Credit Balance equal to the amount of the prepayment and with the Is Credit selected.
• Two new transactions are created—one liability transaction for the prepayment payable and one payment transaction for the payment received.
• The Credit Balance on the constituent's account is increased by the amount of the prepayment. The Credit Balance is the total available prepayments for an account. The Credit Balance increases when prepayments are entered and decreases when prepayments are applied to orders or are refunded.

Refunding a Prepayment

When you apply a prepayment to an order, the following occurs:

• A new payment line record is created and linked to the prepayment's payment record.
• The Available Credit Balance on the payment is reduced by the amount applied to the order.
• New transactions are created. The debit side is a liability transaction reducing the prepayment payable. The credit side is a combination of transactions to reduce accounts receivable if the order was previously submitted and is now being paid; or one or more transactions crediting the revenue for the products purchased on the order.
• The Credit Balance on the constituent's account is decreased by the amount applied to the order.

Refunding a Prepayment

Constituents who have provided prepayments may later request that the prepayments be refunded. To refund a prepayment, in part or in the full, staff can enter a refund from the Prepayment tab.

To preserve the financial audit trail, prepayments cannot be edited or deleted once entered. Instead, staff enters a refund from the Prepayment page to reverse the prepayment fully or partially, as needed. Also, once a prepayment has been fully applied, it can no longer be refunded.

Note

We allow the staff users to select a new financial batch and refund the available balance from the Prepayment tab even after the original financial batch (the financial batch that was chosen while accepting prepayments) is closed. This enhancement provides greater flexibility and accuracy in managing and refunding customer funds.

Multi-Entity Support

Staff may enter prepayments for your default entity only. However, prepayments can be used foreorders that contain products from another entity and the necessary inter-entity transactions are automatically generated. The requirements for this multi-entity support are:

• You must first set up an entity crossover between your default entity and the secondary entity. 
• The order is entered using a batch from your default entity and contains a product from the secondary entity. Learn more.

Credit Refunds

Your association may wish to avoid processing refunds or may offer constituents the ability to keep pending refunds "held on account" for future orders as a convenience. By using credit refunds, staff can transfer a pending refund from the accounts receivable GL account to the prepayment payable GL account. The credit refunds can then be applied later to open orders.

Your credit refunds are tracked the same way as prepayments—a payment record will be created that has an Available Credit Balance and Is Credit is selected. The constituent's Credit Balance on their account also increases to reflect the credit refund.

Things to Keep in Mind

• Your prepayments can only be entered for your default entity.
• Prepayments in the form of cash or checks are currently supported. Prepayments from credit cards are not supported.
• A constituent's prepayments and credit refunds can only be applied to orders for that constituent. They cannot be used to pay the orders for another account.
• Prepayment is supported in Staff View, and not in Community Hub. Constituents cannot enter prepayments in Community Hub or use their available Credit Balance to pay orders they enter using Community Hub. However, administrators can configure Community Hub to display prepayment-related information for read-only viewing, such as an account's Credit Balance.

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