Sometimes the transaction that pays for an order or refund will appear in a different payout than the order itself.
This can happen for a number of reasons but here are a few of the most common ones:
The order is marked as paid after it is fulfilled. (eg. credit terms such as wholesale, cash on delivery)
The order is originally processed through one gateway, but then paid through another (eg. because a payment through the original gateway failed)
The order is left showing as unpaid in Shopify because the store has processed the payment using an offline gateway. Even though the order is now paid, Shopify thinks the order is unpaid as the final payment transaction has not been recorded
In these cases, A2X will add Pending Payment lines to a payout to account for money that is still owed for an order to recognize that this amount is owed to the business.
A2X will create different Pending Payment lines to account for when the order is placed and when it is paid for.
1. An order is placed but there is no payment transaction or the payment transactions do not cover the full amount.
The Payout for 19 Dec 2019 below shows an example of this. An order for $400 has been made, but the payment for the order has not been received.
Because the payment will happen in the future, it is not possible to tell through which gateway it will be processed, therefore A2X will simply list the outstanding amount as Pending Payment.
2. There is a payment transaction but the order is accounted for in a prior payout.
See the 21 Dec 2019 Payout below. The $400 pending payment from the previous payout has now been paid using the gateways 'cash' and 'external-debit'.
In this situation, the initial payout on the 19th of December would accrue $400 into the pending payment account and the subsequent payout on 21st of December would move the $400 balance from the pending payment account into the actual gateways the $400 was received from, once it was received.
This leaves no balance in the Pending Payment account and the expected balances are allocated to each of the two clearing accounts for the cash and external debit gateways.
Reconciling Pending Payments
If there is a pending payment created by A2X in your accounting system, that has not reversed itself at the end of an accounting period, it needs to be reconciled. The pending payment value on balance sheet should represent the fulfilled orders made by the store that are still owing as an accounts receivable balance.
The detail of each unpaid order should be documented by the business to support the pending payment balance as at the date of the balance sheet.
If all unpaid amounts are tracked by Shopify, the business may wish to generate a Shopify report of unpaid orders. This can be done by clicking on orders in Shopify | and then filtering on Unpaid. These orders can be exported and added in an application such as Excel.
If all unpaid orders are not tracked by Shopify, the business will have to use whatever system they have in place to track accounts receivable amounts in Shopify to ensure the ending balance in the accounting system is correct. This system may be the store's accounting system, such as Xero or QBO, it may be an inventory management system, or perhaps these orders are tracked on a spreadsheet.
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