Receive a payment for related customer accounts

Use parent and child customer payment controls when several related customers are invoiced separately but a central office may send one payment. The accounts receivable team needs to identify the legal customer on each invoice and apply only the amounts actually covered by the remittance. Seeing child invoices together is a selection aid, not authority to settle every invoice in the group.

Set up the relationship before collecting

An administrator can enable Show Parent Customers Only And Show Children's Invoices in Settings → Setup → Feature Settings → Payment Receipts. On Receive Payment, this presents the parent customer with its child invoices for selection. Create and verify the customer relationships before using the grouped view, and confirm the payment's currency and payer information with the customer outside Versa.

Child Customers Share Parent Customer's Deposit Account under Customers is a different policy. It must be chosen before any parent-child customer relationships are created; the option becomes unavailable once such relationships exist. Finance should decide who owns deposits and how they may be applied before establishing the hierarchy. A shared deposit account does not by itself mark a child invoice paid.

Apply the received payment

1. Obtain the customer's remittance information and verify the actual payment amount, date, method, and reference. If the payer did not identify the covered invoices, clarify that with them before allocating the receipt.
2. Open Invoices → Receive Payment and select the parent customer when the grouped-invoice option is in use. Review the invoice numbers, outstanding amounts, and currency. Open an invoice from its number to confirm which customer it belongs to before applying a shared payment.
3. Select only the invoices covered by the payment. In Open Invoice Items, enter the Apply amount for the covered lines and check the total. If a balance is to remain as a deposit, follow the organization's deposit policy rather than applying it to an unrelated child invoice.
4. Post the receipt and compare it with the bank or payment-provider record. Review the individual customer invoice balances and any parent deposit balance.
5. If the payment was misapplied, follow the normal receipt reversal or correction process so the audit trail and customer balances remain understandable.

Check the result

The posted receipt accounts for the amount received, the intended invoices show the applied amounts, and any remaining balance or deposit is clear to AR. If a child invoice is absent, check the parent relationship, currency, invoice status, and the grouped-invoice setting before creating a duplicate receipt.

Related articles

• 12. How to Record a Payment For Invoice
• How to apply customer deposit or credits to invoices?