(MF-3) Working With Payments
So now let's look at the details of how to work with Payments!
Payment Creation
If your client makes a payment using a card, then the Payment item will be created automatically for you.
If a payment is made by any other method, then you will need to manually see that the money has been received and then create a Payment item in Workshop Angel to record the receipt of the money and make sure it is allocated to the correct invoice.
Adding a Payment From the Bookings - Payments Area
In most situations, the payment made will be in relation to attendance at an activity, and often the easiest way to record this is in the Bookings area
Adding a Payment From the Finances Area
The other location where you can add a payment is from the Finances Area.
Go to the Finances - Invoices & Payments area
On right-hand side (Payments side) click on [+ Add New Payment]
We HIGHLY recommend only adding payments when there is a specific invoice defined that the payment can be allocated to. If the payment is for a donation, then you will be best to create an invoice for that donation.
Payments created which are not allocated will result in the Payment Received message saying the payment is for "a currently unspecified purchase".
Filling in the Payments Window
The fields to fill in are as follows:
Paid By - start typing the name of the person who paid the money and their name will appear in a drop-down list. The person needs to have an existing entry in Contacts.
Payment Method - select how they paid. It is unlikely that you will manually choose Card Payment unless they paid via your own Stripe app rather than via Workshop Angel itself.
Payment Date - the date the payment was made (rather than the date you are recording it).
Amount Paid - the amount they paid in the currency of the activity itself.
(optional) Amount Received - if they paid in a foreign currency, then this is the amount you received in your own currency.
(optional) Fee - If you select Paypal or Card Payment, then enter here the amount you paid in transaction fees.
Notes - if there is something special to note about this payment you can type the details here.
Payment Allocation
Once the payment has been created, the window expands to show details about how it has been allocated to invoices that are outstanding from the same contact.
In most cases, this will be for the single outstanding invoice that was expected, and the payment will have been automatically allocated to that invoice.
Here is an example:
In the next lesson, we discuss all the options available around different payment allocation scenarios.
Sending of Payment Received Message
In most cases, when recording a new payment, you will want to send a message to your client telling them that you have received their payment. The final area of the Payment window allows you to manage this process.
If you do nothing, then the Payment Received message will be sent when you close the Payment window.
If you click on the the [(x) Do Not Send This Message] option, then the message will not be sent when you close the Payment window.
You can read about how to edit the contents of the Payment Received message in Chapter 5 of the documentation.
Locating Existing Payments
When you want to find a specific Payment that has already been recorded, you can do this in one of these locations:
Bookings Area
Payments Area
Go to Finances - Invoices & Payments area.
Use the search function to find the required Payment.
Click on the Payment title or the Edit Payment icon to open the Payment window.
Modifying an Existing Payment (1)
When you open an existing Payment, you will find that not all of the information you have entered can be modified. This is because through the process of allocating payments to invoices, changing certain information can render the allocation information incomplete or inaccurate, and the app is designed to make sure you cannot create such a scenario.
So... when you open an existing Payment using one of the methods listed above, you are presented with a window like this:
The greyed out fields indicate that you cannot change this information. We will discuss how to manage the process when this information needs to be changed in a moment.
So the information that you can immediately change is:
Payment Date or Notes
How the Payment is allocated. All the options for working with this are discussed in the next chapter, (MF-4) Payment Allocation.
Whether to re-send the Payment Received Message, which you can do by selecting the [Send The Message Again] option.
Modifying an Existing Payment (2)
So how can you modify all that greyed out information, should you have entered some information incorrectly?
To maintain the maximum integrity of the financial information, you can only do this by deleting the existing Payment and creating a new one with the correct information...
Deleting an Existing Payment
To delete an existing Payment, you need to first remove all of the Allocations the Payment has to Invoices:
The display should now show that the payment contains a credit equal to the value of the payment itself:
The Payment will now be listed in red to indicate the credit, and most importantly, with a deletion icon next to it:
The Payment will be deleted, and will disappear from the Payment list. If you deleted the payment because you entered some incorrect information about who made the payment or about the amounts, then you can now create a new payment with the correct information.
Note that you cannot delete a Payment that was created automatically by the app for a Card Payment. This is to prevent you accidentally creating an inconsistency between your card payments received and the data stored in the app.
How to Restore Accidentally Deleted Payments
The philosophy with Workshop Angel is that the process of deletion almost never actually deletes the item... it just marks that item as being deleted, allowing you to restore it if you made a mistake.
To restore an accidentally deleted Payment:
The Payment will be restored.
Please note that once restored, the Payment will not be allocated to any invoices until you open the payment window and perform a manual allocation to any existing unpaid invoices.
That's It...
So there you have all the tasks involved in generally working with Payments. We've looked at how to create them, how to find them, the different ways you need to work with modifying them, and how to delete and restore them.
The final details about working with Payments are to look at managing different scenarios where they are allocated in different ways, and to look at the management of payments which show a credit. These topics are discussed in the next two lessons...
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