Reservation vs Customer Transactions

A common issue with transactions and balances is confusion between Reservation transactions and Customer transactions.  This is one reason we're constantly trying to emphasize the distinction between Reservations and Customers throughout Campground Master.  This is a very important difference, and yet often people use the general term "customer" or "guest" when they are really talking about their Reservation record, causing confusion.

There is a useful illustration of the way the different types of records are linked in the Database Organization topic.  The specific point is that Reservations and Customers are different things, and each one can have their own transactions.  In particular, any Transactions related to a specific stay, such as the rent charges for that stay and the payments for that rent, should be linked to the Reservation record -- that is, make sure you go through Reservation Transactions to enter them, not through Customer Transactions.  

One of the most common errors is due to entering a rent payment by using "Enter Customer Transactions" (instead of "Enter Reservation Transactions"), or opening Customer Details and then entering the payment through New/Edit Transactions there.  Even though there is always a huge warning when you try to enter Customer transactions, it seems to often be ignored.  Make sure you're opening the Reservation, not the Customer, when entering anything to do with a particular stay!

Usually this mistake is noticed when their reservation is checked out and it still shows a balance due.  Or, on the Reservation Details dialog, you will notice that the "Cust. Bal." is $0.00, but the "Reserv. Bal." is not.  This of course is why there are two separate balances on Reservation Details -- because they are for different purposes and coming from different places, and if they are different then that's often an indication of a problem.  However it may be legitimate -- e.g. they have another reservation with a balance, or have a legitimate customer-only balances such as a membership due.

Resolving Customer balances not matching Reservation balances

As mentioned above, these balances come from separate places, and sometimes they are different for a legitimate reason.  However if you believe there should not be a difference, here are some things to check:

1. The same customer may have more than one reservation, and the Customer balance is really coming from one of the other Reservations.  From Customer Details, check Reservation History to see if the balance is coming from other reservations.  If so, then there may not be any problem, or the problem may actually be coming from one of the other reservations (such as a canceled reservation still having a balance).

2. It may be due to a transaction that's on the Customer instead of the Reservation, as mentioned above.  Through Customer Details, go to Transaction History.  Scroll over to the "Reservation" column where it lists the date of each reservation.  If there's no date in this column for a transaction, then it was put on the Customer.  If it's a duplicate transaction (e.g. you also see it on properly on the Reservation), then you may need to delete it (understanding that this may affect reports).  If it needs to be moved to a Reservation, then go back to Customer Details, New / Edit Transactions and use Transfer Pmt (or Transfer Dep) to transfer it.

3. It might be due to a glitch in the database.  Go to Maintenance / Database Maintenance, and run all 3 "Report and repair...Orphaned..." functions.  If it reports any orphaned transactions, then you need to decide whether each one is a duplicate that should just be deleted, or whether it needs to be fixed (linked back to the customer or reservation it belongs to).  First Delete any that should not be fixed, and then use the "Fix" function to repair the linking for the remaining transactions.  Note that this is best done on the Master workstation if you're networked, followed by "Request a full database refresh" on each client computer to make sure they're in sync (orphans are most often caused by network synchronization problems, so any orphan probably indicates that the databases aren't synchronized).