Portal Payments
Customers can pay through the portal, or tell you they have paid by another means. Either way the payment appears here for somebody to confirm before it touches the ledger. That confirmation step is the point of the screen: the portal records an intention, and your accounts decide when money has actually arrived.
The list
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Payment | The reference. |
| Customer | Who paid. |
| Amount | What they paid. |
| Method | How — a gateway, or an offline method they declared. |
| Invoices | What the payment is against. |
| Paid on | The date they give. |
| Status | Awaiting gateway, Paid, Paid / posted, or Failed. |
Online and offline
| Kind | What happens |
|---|---|
| Gateway | The customer pays in the portal. The payment shows as Awaiting gateway until the gateway answers, then as paid or failed. |
| Offline | The customer declares a bank transfer, cheque or cash. Nothing has been verified — it is a statement of what they say they did. |
Confirming
Confirm — money received posts the payment and allocates it. The screen then confirms it has been applied. A rejection needs a note saying why, which the customer can see.
For offline payments, confirm only after the money is on your bank statement. It is the one place where the portal's convenience and your accounts' correctness pull against each other, and the accounts have to win.
When it cannot be matched
A payment that cannot be matched to invoices says so rather than guessing. That normally means the customer paid a different amount from the invoices they ticked, or paid against something already settled. Sort out which invoices it covers, then confirm.
Where it lands
A confirmed payment is an ordinary customer payment in the ERP, allocated to the invoices it covers. It appears on the customer's account, in banking and in your reports exactly as one entered by hand — the portal is the route it came in by, not a different kind of transaction.
The customer sees the status change. Confirming a payment tells them it landed; rejecting one with a clear note tells them what to do about it. Leaving payments sitting unconfirmed tells them nothing, and is the commonest complaint about portals generally.