Sales, Invoicing & Accounts Receivable

1. How to Use This Guide

This guide is an internal playbook for Sales, Invoicing, and Accounts Receivable troubleshooting calls — AR/AP out-of-balance reports, negative AR balances, payment-timing issues, and Web Pay / Direct Pay / credit-card payment questions.

A note on sourcing: this guide is built from AccountEdge’s internal AR/AP/Bank-Rec knowledge base and the public AccountEdge Knowledge Base (helpjuice.com) — not from live CRM case data. Unlike the Bank Reconciliation and Inventory guides, this guide does not yet have a real, case-number-cited “Real-World Case Library.” The Common Patterns section below is clearly labeled as KB-sourced, not case-sourced, until real Sales/Invoicing/AR cases can be added.

Table of Contents

• 1. How to Use This Guide

• 2. Table of Contents

• 3. Support Mindset for Sales, Invoicing & AR Calls

• 4. The Four-Phase Sales/Invoicing/AR Investigation Framework

• 5. Sales/Invoicing/AR Baseline Discovery Checklist

• 6. Fast Triage Matrix: Symptoms, Causes, and First Checks

• 7. Deep-Dive Modules: How to Troubleshoot Sales/Invoicing/AR Issues

• 8. Common Patterns from Internal & Public KB

• 9. Escalation Standards and Supervisor Hand-Off Format

• 10. Customer Communication Scripts

• 11. Source Notes and KB Reference Links

3. Support Mindset for Sales, Invoicing & AR Calls

AR/AP support is different from a typical how-to call because the customer is usually looking at a dollar difference between two reports, not a specific broken feature. The rep’s job is to prove which two things are actually being compared before assuming anything is wrong.

What reps must assume at the start

Few things reps should not do

Do not suggest a blanket journal entry before running Find Transactions to isolate the specific entry causing the mismatch.

Do not delete an approved credit card payment without walking through the proper steps — AccountEdge blocks this by design, and deleting the payment record does not reverse the actual charge through Forte.

Do not treat every Web Pay / Direct Pay question as a Desktop question — invoices and payments created in AccountEdge Connect follow different edit and visibility rules than Desktop-created ones.

Do not modify a General Journal entry the customer’s accountant created without checking with them first.

Rep coaching point

“Let’s first confirm which two reports you’re comparing, then we’ll trace the specific transaction causing the difference before we talk about a journal entry.”

4. The Four-Phase Sales/Invoicing/AR Investigation Framework

All AR/AP and invoicing cases should move in this order: Discovery, Question Phase, Troubleshooting/Testing, and Implement Solution.

5. Sales/Invoicing/AR Baseline Discovery Checklist

Use this checklist before changing anything in a live file.

6. Fast Triage Matrix: Symptoms, Causes, and First Checks

7. Deep-Dive Modules: How to Troubleshoot Sales/Invoicing/AR Issues

Module A – AR Out of Balance: Diagnosis & Resolution

• Open Find (bottom left corner), click the Account tab, and select the Accounts Receivable account.

• Set the date range to 1/1/1990 through 12/31/9999 to see all transactions.

• Review the SRC column. Sales (SJ) and payments (CR) should be present; General Journal (GJ) and Cash Disbursement (CD) entries generally should not appear.

• Click the arrow next to any suspicious transaction to view it in full, then use Edit > Delete or Edit > Reverse to remove it, or change its allocation account.

• Speak with the customer’s accountant before modifying any General Journal entry they created.

• Helpful reports: Receivables Reconciliation Exception Report (Reports > Index to Reports > Accounts > Exceptions), Receivables Reconciliation, Account Transactions Report (filtered to AR, same date range), and Trial Balance Detail (filtered to AR). Historical Sales and Credit Memos legitimately debit/credit AR — don’t remove them.

Module B – AP Out of Balance: Diagnosis & Resolution

• Same approach as Module A, applied to the Accounts Payable account.

• Helpful reports: Payables Reconciliation Exception Report (Reports > Index to Reports > Accounts > Exceptions), Account Transactions Report filtered to AP, and Trial Balance Detail filtered to AP.

• Historical Purchases and Debit Memos legitimately debit/credit AP — don’t remove them.

Module C – Negative AR Balance from a Misallocated Income Account

• This happens when the Accounts Receivable account was used as the allocation account on a service or professional invoice instead of an income (4-nnnn) account. For item invoices, check the linked income account on the Item Information tab instead.

• Every erroneous sale debits and credits AR when recorded, so AR is understated and no income is being booked. When the customer later pays that invoice, the payment reduces AR even further (debit to cash/undeposited funds, credit to AR).

• If this happened only a couple of times: reverse the invoices and payments, then re-enter them correctly.

• If this has been happening for a long time and AR is a large negative number: correct it with a journal entry that debits AR to bring it to the right balance and credits the correct sales income account(s) — split across departments/jobs if needed. Use the Account Transaction Report for AR to find transactions where the same ID# appears as both a debit and a credit; that ID# pairing identifies the erroneous entries and their dollar amounts.

• If the invoice is closed, use that dollar value in the correcting journal entry. If it’s still open, correct the transaction directly and re-allocate it to the right income account (and fix the Item Information screen first, for item invoices).

Module D – Customer Prepayment / Payment-Before-Invoice Timing

• If a payment is dated before its invoice, it will show as an out-of-balance amount when reconciling as of the payment date.

• Test: run the Receivables Reconciliation Exceptions report for a date far in the future. If the out-of-balance disappears, a prepayment-date issue is the cause.

• Fix: correct the payment date to match or follow the invoice date.

Module E – Credit Card, Web Pay & Direct Pay Payment Issues

• Deleting an approved credit card payment (not normally possible or recommended): go to Setup > Credit Card Processing > Setup Credit Card Processing, uncheck “Credit Card Processing of Customer Payments,” delete the payment, then re-check the box to re-enable processing. This does not reverse the actual charge through Forte — it only removes the record from AccountEdge.

• Voiding a Connect payment: a payment processed through Web Pay or by a Connect user via Customer Payment can be voided. Once it has synced to AccountEdge, the void must be done from the Desktop app. A credit/refund can only be processed in Desktop, and only after the payment has synced from Connect.

• Web Pay invoice visibility: only invoices created in AccountEdge Connect show in full detail in the customer’s My Account page. Invoices created in AccountEdge Desktop show only a summary (sale date, due date, amount open, original amount, terms).

• Direct Pay is different from Web Pay: it emails the customer a single invoice they can pay without creating or logging into a My Account. Web Pay, by contrast, gives the customer a full account showing every open receivable.

• eCheck/ACH payments are supported through Web Pay (added in AccountEdge r34.x) at $1.99 per transaction (plus 1% on transactions over $5,000). ACH settlement is not instant — a failed settlement is retried automatically twice before the rep should reach out to the customer.

8. Common Patterns from Internal & Public KB

Important: unlike the Bank Reconciliation and Inventory guides, the patterns below are not sourced from cited CRM cases — there is no confirmed real-case library for Sales/Invoicing/AR on the hub yet. These are documented patterns from AccountEdge’s internal and public knowledge base only. Treat this as general guidance, not verified case history, until real case citations can be added.

9. Escalation Standards and Supervisor Hand-Off Format

A good escalation lets a senior reproduce the issue quickly.

Escalate when the rep cannot safely explain the mismatch after isolating non-SJ/PJ entries and checking date/allocation issues, or when a Web Pay/Connect sync or payment discrepancy needs backend investigation.

10. Customer Communication Scripts

Opening an AR/AP-out-of-balance call

“Let’s make sure we’re comparing your Balance Sheet against the Receivables [or Payables] Reconciliation report first, since that’s the one built to match it — then we’ll trace exactly which transaction is causing the difference.”

When the customer wants a quick journal entry

“A journal entry can force the balance to match, but I want to find the specific transaction causing this first so we’re not covering up a misallocated invoice or payment.”

When a credit card payment needs to come off the books

“AccountEdge won’t let us delete an approved card payment directly — that’s intentional, since removing the record here doesn’t reverse the actual charge. Let’s confirm whether you need it voided, refunded, or genuinely removed from the file.”

11. Source Notes and KB Reference Links

This guide was built from AccountEdge’s internal AR/AP/Bank-Rec knowledge base synthesis document and the public AccountEdge Knowledge Base. No CRM case data has been incorporated yet — see the note in the Common Patterns section above.

• AccountEdge Web Pay FAQs: https://accountedge.helpjuice.com/accountedge-web-pay-faqs

• Deleting an Approved Credit Card Payment: https://accountedge.helpjuice.com/deleting-an-approved-credit-card-payment

• Direct Deposit / Vendor Payment Setup: https://accountedge.helpjuice.com/direct-deposit---vendor-payment-setup

• FAQs – Accepting eCheck/ACH Payments: https://accountedge.helpjuice.com/faqs---accepting-echeck-ach-payments

• AccountEdge Knowledge Base: https://accountedge.helpjuice.com