Enter a Vendor Deposit or Prepayment

Related topics

Pay vendors or enter payments for purchases

Select vendors to pay

Select invoices to pay

Enter a payment for a manually written check

Enter a cash purchase and print the check

Record credit card purchases

Enter and apply a credit memo

Perform other accounts payable tasks

Read the payments overview

A deposit or prepayment is money you have already paid to the vendor and which is applied towards expenses. Later, you will apply it to a vendor purchase. Entering a deposit or prepayment is a two-part process:

  1. From the Tasks menu, do one of the following:
    • Select Payments.
    • Select Bills and then Pay Bills.
  2. Enter or select the vendor ID that you want to pay. To display a list of existing vendors, type ? in this field, or select the Lookup button.

  3. Select the Apply to Expenses tab. Then, select the Prepayment check box.

    When you select Prepayment, you can enter only a description, the G/L account, and an amount for payment. You cannot select an item ID or quantity. The G/L account will typically be a prepaid expenses account. When you enter a prepayment, you can only enter one line item.

  4. Save or Print the prepayment check.

Once you receive and enter the vendor's invoice, you need to apply the prepayment to the vendor's invoice to reflect the amount you have already paid the vendor for the invoice.

If you are using the batch method of posting, you must post the Cash Disbursements Journal using the Post option from the System menu before applying the prepayment to an invoice.

  1. To apply the prepayment, from the Tasks menu, select Payments.

  2. When you select the vendor ID, Sage 50 displays the prepayment in the Apply to Invoices list. Select the prepayment, and select the Pay check box.

    A negative (credit) amount appears in the check amount box.

  3. Select the invoice you want to apply this prepayment against. Enter the same, but positive, amount in the Amount Paid field.

    The check amount must be zero. You can also choose to pay the entire invoice.

  4. >Save the prepayment.
  5. If you selected to pay the entire invoice, you can print this disbursement check now by selecting the Print button. This posts or saves the check, too.

Note: Once you apply a prepayment to a purchase, you will not be able to drill down to get the prepayment from reports that display the transaction.

Also, when you select the Open toolbar button, the prepayment transaction will display with the words <Prepayment has payments> in the Reference field; you will not be able to select it. To delete or edit the actual prepayment, you must first delete the transaction you entered to apply the payment to the purchase.