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Merged account now has a credit/balance - the fix before the move
Merged account now has a credit/balance - the fix before the move

Edit the Payments before the move, it'll be a lot easier

Beau O'Hara avatar
Written by Beau O'Hara
Updated over a week ago

If at all possible, do these steps before the move. It'll be much easier than balancing the accounts after the move.

Summary

When you move a location from one account to another, the Invoices and Payments move with the location. A problem arises when a Payment pays multiple Invoices and not all of the Invoices move. In this scenario the original location will have negative balance and the new location will have a positive balance.

This article explains how to prepare a location for a move so that after it's moved balancing an account receiving the moved location is just a matter of applying Payments to the unpaid Invoices.

IMPORTANT Due to the differences in how Fieldwork and QuickBooks Online (QBO) handle customer data those of you using QBO cannot Move a location. This is to prevent accounting issues in your QBO. If you move a location after it has been synced with QBO, future invoice/payment syncing will not work. Keeping locations stationary is the only way to maintain an accurate history with QBO.

Note You cannot move a main location or a location in an account if it's the only location. For information on how to resolve this, see: Move a Location to another account.

Key Points

  • Take screen shots of both accounts involved in the move

  • Begin editing the Payments in the location to be moved

  • Move the location

  • Add Payments in the new location

We've found a common scenario occurs when taking a location owned by a realtor, for example, and moving it to a new account (the new owners of the house/location).

Both accounts might have a zero balance before the merge. After the merge the realtor will have a balance and the new account has a negative balance. 

This occurs when a payment paid multiple invoices across multiple locations (which realtors do) and some of those invoices moved over to the new account along with the payment, which is now split between two accounts causing the apparent chaos.

In this example, Carol Howard is a realtor and Melissa Russell just bought one of her homes.

Take screen shots

Open each account and click the Invoices tab. Take screen shots for each account to capture the unpaid invoices/unapplied payments/balance of each account. You'll want to know how each account looked before doing these steps.

Go to the location that is to be moved. Go to the Service History tab.


Begin editing the Payments

For the top completed Work Order in the service history (click View invoice, click Edit at the bottom right of the invoice).

Note the payment number, date(s), payment method, amount of payment, reference number and invoice number. You will replicate these when you create the new payment in the original account before the move.

Change or add a reference to explain what you're doing (60413 Location move to acct #21468: invoice 33199, $16.50).

Zero out the payment that paid the invoice. Note there is now an Unapplied amount equal to the amount of the invoice that you just zeroed out.

Subtract the unapplied amount from the payment. In this example 346.50 - 16.50 = 330. Put 330 in the amount column.

Click Save & Apply.

Repeat with each work order in Service History.  Notice the balance increases and the number of outstanding Invoices also increases. 

Move the Location

When all the invoices moving to this location have been zeroed out, click the Edit button at the top of the Location page, click the grey Move button and select the account to move it to. 

Note how the money information across the top of the account is still the same for Carol, but has changed for Melissa. 

Add Payments in the new Location

Open Melissa's account.

Click Create a new... and click Payment.

Recreate each payment with its respective date, amount of payment, payment number, payment type, reference number and invoice number (and explain what you're doing (60413 Location move from acct #21447: invoice 33199, $16.50). If one payment paid all the invoices that were moved, it might look something like this:

When all the payments are applied, the unpaid invoices/unapplied payments/balance should match what the account had before the move.


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