Record an online payment that isn't in your books

Sometimes your payment gateway takes a customer’s money but Bokeping cannot record it on its own. The invoice may have been deleted or voided after the customer paid, the invoice may not be found, or the payment arrived with no invoice number because it was taken directly in the gateway. Bokeping keeps these payments in a list so none of them is lost.

Find the payments waiting to be recorded

Open Sales & Receivables → Payments Received. When payments are waiting, a banner reads Online payments received but not recorded, with the count and total. Choose Review.

• Needs you: Bokeping will not retry these. Each one needs one of the actions below.
• Retrying automatically: a temporary error stopped the recording. There is nothing to do unless a payment stays here.

A payment marked Sandbox is a gateway test, not real money.

Choose what the payment was

What the payment was	Action	What Bokeping records
A payment for an invoice that is still open	Match to invoice	A payment received against that invoice. If it is more than the invoice’s balance, the rest stays as the customer’s prepayment.
Money paid ahead of an invoice that does not exist yet	Record as prepayment	A payment held as the customer’s unapplied payment. Apply it to the invoice later.
A sale or service that never had an invoice	Record as income	A posted sales receipt, dated the day the gateway took the money.
A sandbox test, a payment from another system, or one already recorded by hand	Ignore	Nothing. Your reason and your name are kept in the audit log.

Record as income is offered only when the invoice was deleted, voided, or cannot be found, or when the payment came with no invoice number. If recording was refused for another reason, such as a date in a closed period, the payment still belongs to its invoice: match it instead.

Record a payment as income

1. Choose Record as income.
2. Pick the customer who paid, or create one. Only customers billed in the payment’s currency are listed.
3. Pick the Income Account this sale belongs to.
4. If the amount included sales tax, choose the rate under Sales Tax. The tax is split out of the amount the customer paid, not added on top. Otherwise leave No tax.
5. Add a Description. It appears on the receipt.
6. Check the preview, then choose Record income.

For example, a customer paid $125 including 8.25% sales tax. The preview reads $115.47 income + $9.53 tax = $125.00 received, and the receipt records those amounts.

If the customer later gets a refund, or a bank returns an eCheck, Bokeping does not change the receipt automatically. It sends you a to-do to refund or void the receipt yourself.

Where the money sits until the payout

Like every payment your gateway takes, the payment or receipt is recorded in the gateway’s clearing account (Forte Clearing or Stripe Clearing), not in your bank. The gateway later pays several payments into your bank as one amount.

When that payout reaches your bank, record it as a bank deposit from the clearing account. Do not categorize the payout as income: each payment in it was already recorded, so the sales would be counted twice.

Check the result

• The payment no longer appears in the list.
• The invoice, the customer’s prepayment, or the new sales receipt shows the payment once.
• The clearing account holds the payment until you record the payout deposit.

Matching, prepayments, and ignoring need permission to create payments received. Recording as income needs permission to create sales receipts.