If some of your customers have subcustomers, then you should definitely consider using Consolidated Payments in NetSuite. The NetSuite Consolidated Payments feature allows you to accept payments from either top level customers or from the individual subcustomers who incurred the invoice.
So what is this feature, and how does it work in a NetSuite account?
What Consolidated Payments Does NOT Do
Before getting too far into the weeds of Consolidated Payments, it’s important to understand that this feature is NOT called Consolidated Invoices. NetSuite doesn’t have a native way to do consolidated invoices. While some third-party options are available, NetSuite’s main workaround right now for consolidated invoices is a Consolidated Invoicing SuiteSolution.
And of course, NetSuite’s invoice groups may meet your needs if you’re just looking for a way to avoid sending a barrage of invoices to your customers. The Consolidated Payments feature is a way to consolidate your customers’ payments to you rather than consolidating your invoices to them.
Let’s take a closer look at this feature.
Setting Up Consolidated Payments
First, you need to make sure your NetSuite account is set up for Consolidated Payments.
Enable the Consolidated Payments Feature
You’ll need to enable the Consolidated Payments feature, which you can do under the Advanced Features section of the Accounting tab in Enable Features. If you already use a subcustomer hierarchy in your NetSuite account, then at this point you’re all set! You can head on to the next section of this blog.
But if you haven’t yet set up your subcustomers, you’ll need to do that next before Consolidated Payments will work the way you need it to.
Set Up Subcustomers in Your NetSuite Account
To create a subcustomer record in NetSuite, navigate to the list of customers (Lists > Relationships > Customers) and select View next to the customer, lead, or prospect record that will be the parent record. Then, on the parent record, choose New Subcustomer under the Create New menu.
Doing this will create an entirely new customer record that looks and acts much like a typical customer record. The main difference is that the Parent Company field will be populated with the name of the customer you created this record from.
Another way to create a subcustomer record is by opening a new customer record directly (Lists > Relationships > Customers > New) and selecting the appropriate parent customer in the Parent Company field.
Processing Consolidated Payments
Once you have the Consolidated Payments feature turned on and once you have all your subcustomers organized the way you need them to be, you’re ready to start processing those payments.
You would process consolidated payments in the same way you process your regular payments. Navigate to Transactions > Customers > Accept Customer Payments. On the payment page, select the select a parent customer in the Customer field.
Then, under the Apply > Invoices subtab, you’ll see a list of all that customer’s open invoices, as well as the invoices for any subcustomers. If an invoice does belong to a subcustomer, the subcustomer will be listed in the Project/Sub column.
Also, the Credits and Deposits subtabs will likewise display all the credits and deposits for both the top-level customer as well as the subcustomers, and these can be applied to any of their invoices.
Tracking Balances for Consolidated Payments
After the NetSuite Consolidated Payments feature has been enabled, several consolidated balance fields are added to the Financial subtab on customer records. These fields will help you keep track of the consolidated balances for your customers in addition to the balance each customer and subcustomer has individually. The consolidated balance fields appear next to their individual balance counterparts with the name “Consolidated.”
Conclusion
With Consolidated Payments in NetSuite set up, you are able to easily consolidate payments within customer hierarchical relationships.
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