Invoice a customer on account

Some payment methods don’t take any money. A customer on trade terms places an order against a purchase order, you ship it, and you bill them — the payment arrives weeks later, by cheque or transfer, outside your store entirely. TruSync can post those orders as invoices to that customer’s own QuickBooks record, with their purchase-order number on the invoice.

This is different from an order that simply hasn’t been paid yet. An unpaid card order is waiting for the same payment your store would have taken. A purchase-order customer was never going to pay through your store at all.

Mark the payment method as invoiced on terms

Open Settings → Payments and find the payment method your purchase-order customers use — on BigCommerce this is usually an offline method the store owner named themselves, like “Pay by PO”.

Next to it you’ll see How does this post?, with two choices:

• Money received — deposit it. The normal case, and what every payment method does today. TruSync records the money and you choose a Deposit To account for it.
• Invoiced on terms — no money received. The customer is on account. Deposit To switches off, because there is no account for money that hasn’t arrived.

You still pick a QuickBooks payment method for the row, because that’s what maps the method. It won’t appear on the invoice itself: a QuickBooks invoice doesn’t carry a payment method, and the payment is recorded against it later when your customer actually pays.

How does this post? only appears on stores whose platform can report a payment method of this kind. Today that is BigCommerce. On every other platform the step looks exactly as it did.

TruSync remembers which QuickBooks customer each company is

An ordinary web order posts to one generic customer, because thousands of one-time shoppers don’t belong in a QuickBooks customer list. A customer on terms is the opposite — they owe you money, and your A/R aging has to show who.

TruSync keeps a list: each billing company on your orders, paired with the QuickBooks customer you invoice it to. An order from a company on the list is invoiced to that customer with no one involved.

The first order from a company that isn’t on the list is held. TruSync posts nothing and raises an order exception labelled Customer Not Found. See Order Exceptions. Press Match customer on it and either:

• Choose an existing QuickBooks customer. Search your customer list. Customers whose name is exactly the billing company are shown first, with their payment terms, as suggestions. TruSync never applies one for you: two customers can share a name while only one is the account they really pay on, so you choose.
• Create a new customer. TruSync creates it from the order’s billing details — company, contact name, billing address, email and phone — and gives it your default payment terms. If a customer with that exact name already exists, TruSync won’t reuse it behind your back; choose it from the list instead, or give the new customer a different name.

Either way the answer is saved, the held order is invoiced, and so is every other held order from the same company. The next order from that company needs nothing from you.

You can also ask Trudy to do it. She names the company and any customers that carry exactly that name, with their payment terms, and links it or creates the customer once you’ve chosen. She checks the customer against your QuickBooks first, and won’t link one QuickBooks doesn’t hold or has made inactive.

You don’t need to rename anything in QuickBooks. The list stores the QuickBooks customer itself, not its name, so one customer can serve several spellings of a company (“SC Labs” and “SC Laboratories, Inc.” can both point to the same customer), and renaming a customer later changes nothing.

Customers on terms and ordinary shoppers are kept apart. The list is only read for orders on a payment method you’ve marked as invoiced on terms. If the same company also pays by card, those orders still post to your generic customer, as a paid sales receipt.

If a customer you matched is later made inactive or deleted in QuickBooks, the next order from that company is held again and you choose another.

See and correct which customer a company is invoiced to

Open Settings → Customers on Terms. It lists every company TruSync knows: the billing company as it appears on orders, the QuickBooks customer it’s invoiced to, where the answer came from, and when it last changed. The tab only appears on stores that can invoice on terms. On every other store it isn’t there.

Where an answer came from is one of three things: Chosen (you, or TruSync from the evidence in your orders and QuickBooks, picked an existing customer), Created by TruSync (you had TruSync create the customer), or Matched from your invoice history (TruSync read it off an invoice already in your books). Some of these were set up for you, so look them over. If one is wrong, change it.

• Change a company to a different QuickBooks customer. Search your customer list, choose one, and TruSync shows who it was invoiced to, who it will be, and what doesn’t change, before you press Save.
• Add a customer ahead of their first order, if you already know which one they are. Type the billing company exactly as it appears on their orders.
• Remove a company. Their next on-terms order is held as Customer Not Found and asks you again.

TruSync checks the customer against your QuickBooks before saving. It won’t save a customer QuickBooks doesn’t have, or one that’s been made inactive. Inactive customers show in the search marked as inactive, and can’t be chosen.

What a change does, and doesn’t.

• It applies to orders that sync from then on. Invoices and other documents already posted stay exactly as they are in QuickBooks. Correct those in QuickBooks.
• It only affects orders invoiced on terms. If the same company also pays by card, those orders still post to your generic customer, whatever this tab says.
• Saving does not release an order that is already waiting for that company. The row shows how many orders are waiting. Re-send them from Order Exceptions once you’ve saved. This is deliberate: releasing orders as a side effect of editing a list is how a document ends up written twice.

You can also ask Trudy: “Who do you invoice NV Cann Labs to?” or “Invoice NV Cann Labs to Nevada Cannabis Laboratories instead.” She lists them, and for a change she says who it is now and who it will be and asks you to confirm first. She checks the customer against your QuickBooks and won’t save one that QuickBooks doesn’t hold, holds inactive, or that two customers share the name of. In that case she lists the real options and you choose.

Payment terms come from the customer

QuickBooks already stores payment terms on each customer and applies them to that customer’s invoices. TruSync leaves those alone. If SC Labs is on Net 30 in QuickBooks, their invoices are due 30 days out, and a customer you’ve agreed Net 90 with keeps Net 90.

Your store’s default payment terms are used in only two places: on a customer TruSync creates for you, and on an invoice for a customer who has no terms set in QuickBooks at all. Without that default, QuickBooks makes such an invoice due the day it’s written.

Ask Trudy to “set my default payment terms to Net 30” and she’ll set it, choosing from the terms your QuickBooks company actually has.

Nothing is invoiced until the order ships

An invoice for a customer on terms is written the day the order ships, and dated that day. That’s when you’d bill them, and QuickBooks counts the payment terms from the invoice date — so an invoice written at order time would age the receivable before the goods had left and start the clock early.

An order that hasn’t shipped yet produces no invoice at all. It isn’t an error and it isn’t waiting on you: it won’t appear in Order Exceptions, won’t email anyone, and won’t count toward a stalled-sync warning. Your sync history shows it as skipped, with the reason. When you mark the order shipped, TruSync picks it up and writes the invoice then.

This is also why the option only appears on platforms that report a ship date. A platform that can’t tell TruSync when an order shipped could only ever invoice at the order date, which is the wrong answer rather than a slightly worse one — so the option isn’t offered there at all.

The customer’s purchase-order number

If your checkout collects a PO number, TruSync can put it on the invoice. It goes in two places: the message displayed on the invoice, which is what your customer’s accounts-payable department reads, and a QuickBooks custom field on your sales forms if you have one.

TruSync writes the number exactly as the customer typed it. If they entered “PO# 3948”, the invoice says “PO# 3948”.

Two things you tell TruSync once:

• Which checkout field holds it. TruSync won’t guess, because the field is yours and you named it. Ask Trudy to “read the PO number from the PO Number field”, using your own label for it.
• Which QuickBooks custom field to write it to, if you want it there as well. Ask Trudy to “put the PO number in the Reference Number field”. The custom fields are the ones your QuickBooks company has defined under Settings → Account and settings → Sales → Custom fields.

Leave either unset and nothing breaks — the invoice still goes to the right customer for the right amount, just without that reference.

The PO number also protects you from double invoices. If you used another connector before TruSync, it may have already invoiced the order under a document number TruSync can’t match to the order number. Before writing an invoice, TruSync looks for one in QuickBooks with the same PO number and the same total. If it finds exactly one that isn’t already linked to a different order, it links that invoice to the order instead of writing a second. An order with no PO number is never checked this way. See Order exceptions.

Orders you key in yourself

An order typed into your BigCommerce admin, rather than placed by a customer at checkout, carries no payment method, because nobody paid through the store. BigCommerce usually marks it paid anyway. That flag only records that someone typed the order in. It doesn’t say whether money arrived, so TruSync doesn’t use it. It would rather ask you than guess at a receivable, or at a bank account the money may never have gone into.

This is a change. Before it, an order keyed into your store’s admin with no payment method was handled by your store’s paid flag: if the store marked it paid, TruSync held it as No Payment Method; if it didn’t, TruSync posted it as an invoice to your generic customer without asking. Now neither happens. TruSync asks, for every such order with an amount owing. If an order like this used to go through on its own and now stops, that is why: nothing is broken, and it is waiting for your answer.

Instead TruSync holds the order as Invoice or Sales Receipt? and asks you. Press Choose document on the exception and answer one question, or two:

• Invoice on terms. The customer is on account and pays later. The order becomes an invoice to the customer’s own QuickBooks record, written when the order ships, exactly as above. Nothing is deposited.
• Sales receipt. The money is already in hand. TruSync then asks which account it landed in, because a sales receipt has to be deposited somewhere. TruSync never chooses that account for you, and it doesn’t fall back to a default.

Your answer is for that one order. It isn’t a rule, because these orders differ from one to the next.

To save you choosing the same way every time, the screen opens with your last answer already selected, and says so: for example, “Pre-selected because last time you chose a sales receipt deposited into Checking.” It is only a starting point. The order stays held, and nothing is recorded until you press the button. The last answer is remembered for your store as a whole, not per customer. If the account you used last time is no longer in QuickBooks, it isn’t pre-selected and you choose one.

If the customer’s message holds a purchase-order number, such as “PO# 4471”, TruSync writes it on whichever document you chose, exactly as typed. It looks only for a PO marker followed by a number. A message with no PO number, or with two different ones, gives no reference, and TruSync doesn’t guess. If the number is in the checkout field rather than the message, TruSync reads that instead when the message has none.

If you choose invoice and the company isn’t matched to a QuickBooks customer yet, the order is held again as Customer Not Found, and Match customer works as described above.

An order keyed in by hand that does carry a payment method is not asked about. Someone typed that method in on purpose, so TruSync treats it like any other order and posts it by your payment method mapping.

You can ask Trudy to do the same: she explains the held order, says what you chose last time, and records your answer.

When the customer pays

Nothing. The cheque arrives, and your bookkeeper applies it against the invoice in QuickBooks the way they would any receivable.

TruSync never sees that payment and doesn’t expect to. An open invoice on a customer’s account is a receivable, not a problem: it raises no exception, sends no alert, and never turns into a second document. If your store later marks the order as paid, TruSync still writes nothing further.

FAQ

An order I keyed in myself used to go through on its own, and now it’s stopped. Why? That is the change described above. An order entered in your store’s admin with no payment method now waits as Invoice or Sales Receipt? until you say which document it is. Orders that carry a payment method, orders placed at checkout and orders with nothing owing are unaffected. Press Choose document on the exception, or ask Trudy. See Order Exceptions.

Why does TruSync ask whether an order I keyed in myself is an invoice or a sales receipt? Your store marks an order you type in as paid even though no payment was taken, and it sends no payment method, so TruSync can’t tell which document it is. You choose once per order with Choose document, or ask Trudy. See Order Exceptions.

Why can’t I pick a deposit account for my purchase-order payment method? Because no money arrived in one. The order becomes an invoice, and an invoice has no deposit account — the money lands in your bank weeks later when the customer pays, and your bookkeeper records it against the invoice then. Previously TruSync asked you for an account it then ignored.

An order exception says Customer Not Found. What do I do? Press Match customer on the exception. Choose the QuickBooks customer this company is invoiced to, or create a new one from the order’s billing details. TruSync saves the answer, invoices the held order and every other held order from that company, and never asks again for that company. A customer shown as Parent:Child is a sub-customer. See Order Exceptions.

Why didn’t TruSync pick my customer “SC Laboratories” for the billing company “SC Labs” on its own? Deliberately. TruSync never chooses a customer from a name, not even an exact one, because a name match is how an invoice ends up on the wrong account — a customer with the same name can be an old duplicate with no invoices while the real account has another name. You choose once with Match customer, and TruSync remembers.

I think TruSync matched a company to the wrong QuickBooks customer. How do I fix it? Open Settings → Customers on Terms, press Change on that company and choose the right customer. Orders that sync from then on go to it. Invoices already posted stay as they are in QuickBooks, so correct those there. If an order from that company is already waiting, re-send it from Order Exceptions after you save: saving doesn’t release it.

Where can I see which customer each billing company is invoiced to? In Settings → Customers on Terms, or ask Trudy. The tab only appears on stores that can invoice on terms.

Do I need to rename my QuickBooks customers so they match the store? No. Match the billing company to the customer you want, whatever it is called. TruSync stores the customer, not its name.

Will this change my ordinary orders? No. Only orders on a payment method you’ve marked as invoiced on terms behave this way. Everything else posts exactly as before, to the generic customer.

Can I set different payment terms per customer? Yes, and you already do it in QuickBooks. Set the terms on the customer record there; TruSync doesn’t override them. The default in TruSync is only used for customers that have none.

My customer paid by cheque. Do I need to tell TruSync? No. Apply the payment against the invoice in QuickBooks as you would for any receivable. TruSync doesn’t track it and won’t flag the open invoice.

Which platforms support this? BigCommerce today, and only BigCommerce. The option needs two things from a platform: a payment method that can say no money was collected, and a reliable ship date. WooCommerce and Wix were both checked and have neither in the form this needs — their equivalent methods are “awaiting payment”, which is a different thing, and Wix reports an order as fulfilled without a shipping date. Amazon, eBay and Walmart collect payment themselves. On all of those, Settings → Payments is unchanged. See Sales Receipt vs. Invoice.

My order is on terms but hasn’t shipped. Where’s the invoice? There isn’t one yet, and that’s correct — TruSync invoices at shipment, the same as you would. Mark the order shipped in your store and the invoice is written then, dated that day. Nothing is held against you in the meantime: no exception, no email.