Our client has asked us to modify the cash receipt journal posting routine to remove a restriction which prevents a payment from being applied to an invoice with a later date.
They receive some payments prior to invoicing. Therefore the date on the payment is earlier than the date on the invoice. However, they enter all payments at the end of the month in a batch. They use the ‘Applies-To Doc. No.’ field on the cash receipt journal line to apply the payments to their corresponding invoices. If the payment is dated earlier than the invoice, the system generates the following message
"You are not allowed to apply and post an entry to an entry with an earlier date. Instead, post Payment and then apply it to Invoice ".
If the client was prepared to enter the payments first (as pre-payments) then perhaps the problem could be avoided. Unfortunately they have recently migrated from a system which allowed them to do this (enter the payments at the end of the month) and they are very resistent to changing their operational procedures.
In fairness, I can see their point. I dont understand why Dynamics wont allow the application of payments to later invoices in the payment journal. If you post the payment unapplied you can immediately go to the application form and apply it to the invoice with no problem.
I feel I need to understand why this restriction exists before I think about removing it.
In a nutshell my question is “Why cant you apply the payment using the ‘Applies to Doc.’ on the journal line when you can apply the ledger entry once it has been posted ?”