Transferring Deposits and Payments

Payments and Deposits may be transferred in part or in full to any other reservation or customer.  In most respects this is identical to entering a negative payment in one place and a matching positive payment in another place.  For various reasons, however, it's better to use the Transfer functions.  

For one thing, negative payments are not possible by non-managers.  Also, the transfer function makes it relatively easy to move the money without mistakes (they will match automatically), and it provides an accounting "trail" of the transaction.  The Reference field of the transactions will contain information on where the money is transferred from and to.

When doing a transfer, you first need to select the appropriate type from the Transactions dialog.  Keep in mind that you can only transfer money that's "available" to transfer.  For instance, a Deposit Transfer can only be done up to the amount of the deposit balance (unapplied deposits).  If there were no deposits, or if all of the deposit has been Applied to charges already, then a deposit transfer cannot be done.  Applied deposits do count as payments, however, so a Payment transfer could be done to move deposit money that has already been applied.

The other factor in choosing the transfer type is the status of the destination.  If it's a pending reservation, you may want to only transfer a deposit to it, not a payment. (This depends on your accounting practices -- in some cases, it's not proper to have payments on future reservations.)

The program will decide how much is available to transfer -- Payments can be transferred up to the total amount of payments (and applied deposits) made, even if there are already charges.  It will suggest an amount that deducts the charges (assuming you want a zero balance after the transfer), but you can enter the full amount of payments if desired.  Deposits can be transferred up to the amount of unapplied deposits, as mentioned above.

Transfers must be entered as a positive amount, and cannot be made if there is not a positive amount available to transfer.  (If you mean to transfer the other way, change the "From" option to "To".)

Note: It's also possible to Move transactions completely from one reservation or customer to another.  However this should only be done when a known mistake was made, e.g. if a payment was entered the wrong place.  Moving transactions that were done on previous days will affect historical reporting, which is different than doing a Transfer of a payment that was initially made on a previous day.

Entering the Transfer Information

The dialog that appears for transfers will show the current reservation or customer information, and the amount available for transfer.  To complete the transfer, you need to do 3 things:

1. Select whether the money is going To or From the current reservation or customer (From is the default).

2. Select a reservation or customer for the other side of the transfer, using one of the Find functions.

3. Enter the amount to be transferred, and optionally change the description.

Finally, click Save to perform the transfer.

The Transactions dialog will show one side of the transfer.  If you click the Details box, you can see a reference to the other side in the Check # / Ref column.  This will show a record number and either a confirmation number or a customer name, depending on whether it was transferred to a reservation or a customer.

Note that if you Cancel the Transaction dialog, both sides of the transfer will be canceled.  However if you Delete a transfer transaction, it's possible to delete only one side of the transfer.  If it can locate the other side, it will ask if you want to delete the other side also -- you should always answer Yes so that an imbalance is not created.