Reimburse customers

This article explains how to create reimbursement transactions for a group of customers. If a customer has a credit balance, you can reimburse the customer for the amount of the balance.

Note

To streamline the process of reimbursement and avoid manual, time-consuming methods, Microsoft has introduced a feature that allows for direct refunds to clients from the customer payments journal using the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 20022 credit transfer format. This feature generates payment files in the ISO 20022 credit transfer format for customers based on accounts receivable transactions. This functionality is particularly useful if you need to generate Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) or generic ISO 20022 payments. For more information, see Refund payment processing in Customer payment journal.

The following table shows the prerequisites that must be in place before you start.

Prerequisite	Description
Specify the minimum reimbursement amount for the legal entity.	On the Accounts receivable parameters page, in the General area, in the Minimum reimbursement field, enter the minimum amount that can be reimbursed for customer overpayments.
Optional: Add a vendor account to each customer that can be reimbursed.	On the Customers page, on the Miscellaneous details FastTab, in the Vendor account field, select the vendor account for the customer.

When you create reimbursement transactions, a vendor invoice is created for the amount of the credit balance. The reimbursement process removes the credit balance for the customer account and creates a balance due for the vendor account that corresponds to the customer.

1. In Accounts receivable, run the Reimbursement process (Accounts receivable > Periodic tasks > Reimbursement).

2. To group all transactions, regardless of ledger dimensions, set the Summarize customer option to Yes. To group only transactions that have similar ledger dimensions, set the option to No.

3. Select Include customers with outstanding debit transactions to select customers who have unsettled debit amounts.

4. To reimburse specific customer accounts, on the Records to include FastTab, select Filter, and then specify the customer accounts in the query.

   The credit amounts are transferred to the vendor accounts of the customers and are processed as ordinary payments. If a customer doesn't have a vendor account, a one-time vendor account is automatically created for the customer.

5. To view the reimbursement transactions that were created, use the Reimbursement report (Accounts Receivable > Inquiries and reports > Reimbursement report).

6. In Accounts payable, create a payment for the vendor invoices that were created by the reimbursement process. For information about how to pay vendors, see Vendor payment overview.