Customer paying deposit even before an actual sales take place, is a normal business flow for certain industries. In SQL accounting system, there are 2 ways for us to do this transaction. Direct Customer Payment or using Customer Deposit Module. By using SQL Customer Deposit module, we are able to track, make payment, refund, or even forfeit a deposit easily.

First, let’s go to Customer Payment, create a customer payment as usual, and you will notice that there is no invoice to be knockoff. This is one way to do customer deposit where from accounting point of view, it treats us owing money to customer.

At the bottom of Sales Order, you can key in deposit as well, this is exactly is direct key as Customer Payment, there is no knockoff of transaction as Sales Order is not an accounting transaction.

The more advance way or proper way to do customer deposit is go to Customer->Customer Deposit, as with this way, we can systematically track the deposit usage.

Just key the details in Customer Deposit, and you will see that, the accounting entry is Credit Prepayment Account instead of Credit Customer. You will still be able to generate a receipt for customer.

Create a Sales Invoice as usual. When key in Customer Payment,instead of direct key the paid amount, select “From Deposit”, amend the amount you want to knock off , and knock off the Invoice.

When you go back to Customer Deposit, you will able to track the Deposit Balance that have not use, we call this unapplied amount for deposit.

You can refund to your customer by clicking the “+” Icon -> Deposit Refund. Key in accordingly. You may also print the Payment Voucher for Refund by double click the Refund details.

There is another possibility for Customer Deposit usage, which is you may forfeit the deposit. In this case, you need to click on the “+” icon,->Deposit Forfeit. Key in accordingly, most important is select the correct account, in this example, I use a Customer Deposit Forfeit Account which is under Other Income in Chart of Account.

So, now you will be able to track the usage of deposit, do payment with deposit, refund deposit and also forfeit deposit. This make it simple to know the unapplied amount for each customer deposit.

For certain industries, such as properties management, lawyer firm or others, which need to track customer deposit base on certain project or cases. User can just select the project next to the Received In field when keying in Customer deposit. You may maintain all the project in Tools->Maintain Project first, before you able to do the selection.

By doing this, you now can filter by Project in Customer Deposit browsing screen.

Please refer to the following tutorial video: