Method CRM Help Center

Keeping track of payments that have been received in exchange for work done or products sold is, of course, integral to the functionality of any business and to maintaining the trail of breadcrumbs that illustrates your interactions with customers. Method allows you to do just that by way of a convenient grid that shows you all payments associated with every customer account in your Method CRM, as well as a detailed New/edit function that lets you create new payments and edit the details of existing ones. Thanks to Method's QuickBooks integration, all of these payments will be pushed to your QuickBooks account automatically! Let's take a look at how these functions work.

How to create a new customer payment

In your Method CRM, go to Customers > Receive payment. Alternatively, you can acces this screen in the Transactions sub-tab of both the Edit customer and Edit lead screens by clicking on New transaction > Receive payment. This will generate a screen with two parts: the Existing received payments grid on the left, and the New/edit customer payment screen on the right. (If you access the screen through the Edit customer or Edit lead screens, the fields on the right will be auto-filled with the details associated with that customer or lead, and you can skip to step 5).
In the Received from drop down menu, choose the customer from whom this payment is originating.
In the A/R account drop down menu, select the department relevant to your business' accounting (the Method out-of-box option is accounts receivable).
Enter an amount for the payment in the Amount field. This amount will auto-fill to the balance owing, so if the customer is not paying the full amount, make sure to change it to reflect the amount they wish to pay.
In the Date drop down menu, choose a date the payment was received.
Choose a Payment method from the associated drop down menu.
Choose an account into which the payment will be deposited from the Deposit to account drop down menu.

TIP: The rest of the fields are optional; for more information on them, please scroll down to the Screen overview section below.
Clicking on Email payment notification when saving will generate an email that will be sent to any contact associated with this customer account that has not opted out of billing on their contact screen.
Clicking on Wait for sync approval will stop this payment from being synced to your QuickBooks account until you uncheck this box.
Clicking on Auto apply payments will allow QuickBooks to automatically choose which invoice(s) this payment will apply to. If you click this option, you can skip to step 13.
From the invoice grid below, select the invoice(s) towards which the customer would like to apply the payment amount noted above. You can select multiple invoices, and you will be able to apply partial payments if necessary (see below).
Click Pay selected invoices. This will generate a third grid that will allow you to view all the invoices that are about to be paid and adjust the amount being paid on each by highlighting and typing directly into the "amount" field. This will allow full amounts or partial amounts to be paid off, depending on how the payment is distributed. Click update to update the total amounts with your changes.
Clicking on Process with payment gateway when saving will allow you to utilize any payment gateways you currently have set up. Method does not employ a payment gateway out of the box, so to set one up requires customization (which you can learn more about by contacting Professional Services).
Click Save & Email to save the payment and (if you have chosen to do so) email a confirmation to associated contacts. The payment is now considered Paid and will appear in your Existing received payments grid to the left, in the Transactions tab section of the associated customer, and in your QuickBooks tab group under either Recently posted QB transactions or, if you chose to Wait for sync approval, under Non posted transactions. Of course it will also show up on the invoice as paid, as well.

How to edit an existing customer payment

Follow step 1 from above.
Choose the payment you wish to edit from the Existing received payments grid and click select next to it. This will auto-fill the fields to the right with the information already associated with this payment.
Make whatever changes you desire to the existing information, then follow step 8 onward from the Create a new payment section.

Screen overview

The following is a breakdown of the New opportunity screen. We'll take a closer look at each element of the screen (drop down menus, buttons, etc.) so you know exactly what each element does. We hope this will be a useful "glossary" of sorts for new users!

Existing received payments

This grid functions the same way as all grids in Method do (see our article on Grid functionality for more information), and as usual there are some notable differences unique to this grid.

My non-posted payments: These are payments that have yet to be kicked over to QuickBooks.
My payments: This will show you all payments associated with your account on Method.
My payments from today: This will show you payments that list today's date in the Date field.
There are also shared versions of each of these views, which will show you the payments associated with the above denotations that you have been given permission to see on Method.

You can also search and sort the grid using the writable column headers.

Reference #: These numbers are generated within QuickBooks, but you can change them here as well by Editing that field in the New/edit screen. They are simply reference numbers that allow you to search for a payment by its specific numeric denotation.
Date: Sort and search based on the date of the transaction.
Customer:Job: You can also sort and search based on the customer and/or the job associated with this payment.

New/edit customer payment

This screen has six required fields and a host of additional optional information you can include. Let's take a closer look at each field now.

Received from: This required field generates a drop down list of all the customers and vendors associated with your Method account. Choosing one will auto-fill the Amount, A/R Account, and Date fields.
Amount: This is, naturally, the amount of the payment in dollars.
Payment gateway: If you happen to use Method for credit card or e-checking payments, choosing a payment gateway will allow you to process those payments automatically. Keep in mind that you can't add payment gateways from this screen: you'll have to go to the Customize tab to do so (feel free to contact a Business Solutions Specialist for more information).
Payment method: Credit cards, debit, e-checks, and more! This drop down list lets you choose which payment method your customer chose to pay with.
A/R account: The only choice out-of-the-box is Accounts Receivable, which is auto-filled from your QuickBooks account. If you have a different department associated with payments in QuickBooks, it will appear here as well.
Date: This is the date of the payment transaction.
Reference #: As referenced above, this number is usually provided by QuickBooks, but you can change it manually in this field.
Deposit to account: This is where the money goes! Again, this is auto-filled by QuickBooks depending on what financial institution or other location you deal with for accounts receivable.
Memo: This is a writable field that allows you to include any notes that are pertinent to this payment.

There are also a number of check boxes that will provide you with additional options.

Email payment notification when saving: When clicked, this will generate an email that will be sent to any contact associated with the chosen customer who has the "opt out of billing" check box unchecked. You can change that setting by Editing the contact.
Auto apply payments: Clicking this check box will allow your QuickBooks to automatically direct this payment to a given invoice.
Wait for sync approval: If you check this box, this payment will not be sent through to QuickBooks until it is unchecked.
Process with payment gateway when saving: If you have a payment gateway set up, clicking this check box will ask Method to process the payment via that particular gateway when you click Save.

Finally, unused credits will list any credit on the customer or vendor's account that has not been associated with an invoice, and unused payments will list any amount the customer has overpaid on his or her account.

Select invoice you wish to pay

This grid follows regular Method grid rules. The grid displays any unpaid invoices associated with this customer. You can sort and search the grid with the following column headers:

Date: This refers to the date of the invoice.
Number: This refers to the invoice number.
Original amount: This refers to the original total due on the invoice.
Applied: This refers to any amount of money that's been applied to this invoice so far.
Amount due: The amount due is generated by subtracting any Applied amount from the Original amount due.

Clicking on a check box next to an outstanding invoice will select it for payment. Clicking on the Pay selected invoice button will generate the secondary grid shown above.

From here, you can choose either to pay the full amount, adjust the Amount column to make a partial payment (in order to apply this change you will need to click update), or remove the invoice from the list which will cancel the pending payment you've started.

Clicking on Save & Email will pay the amount and update your Unused payment total to reflect the amount debited from there.

Buttons

As usual, you will find some familiar buttons at the bottom of this screen that offer you other options to be had. They are as follows:

More actions: This button will give you the option to choose an email template that will be sent to a customer if you've checked the Email payment notification when saving check box. It will open the Choose email template screen, which you can learn more about here. You can also Delete the current payment (which can't be undone) or Clear/New which will clear all fields without saving in preparation for a new payment.
Document: This button gives you the option to associate documents with this payment. Please see the Documents section of this documentation for more information!
Save & Email: This will save the current payment and send a confirmation email if applicable.

Created on	Sep-03-2013
Last modified on	Sep-17-2015