Bookkeep invoice deposits or prepayments

Create a deposit or prepayment account

Bookkeep a deposit or prepayment if you use Wave’s online payment feature

Bookkeep a deposit or prepayment received outside of Wave

Create a deposit or prepayment account

Whether you use Wave’s online payments feature or receive funds outside of Wave, you must create an account to bookkeep the money received as a deposit or prepayment for an invoice. You can create a single account to categorize all deposits you receive from customers or create a different account for each customer.

The Chart of Accounts page is only available in the web browser version of Wave.

1. On the left-side menu, select Accounting > Chart of Accounts.
2. Click Add an Account at the top right of the page.
3. For Account Type, select Customer Prepayments and Customer Credits.
4. Fill in the account name and details, then click Save.
5. To create an account for another customer, repeat steps 2 to 4.

Bookkeep a deposit or prepayment if you use Wave’s online payment feature

When you accept a payment using Wave’s online payments feature, the associated transactions cannot be edited. Learn more about this in Automated bookkeeping with Wave Payments.

To bookkeep the prepayment, record an adjusting journal transaction. Learn how to create a journal transaction in What are journal transactions and how to enter them in Wave.

Journal transactions are only available in the web browser version of Wave.

For this specific journal transaction, credit the customer prepayments liability account you created, and debit the income account you'd normally use for this sale.

When the work is completed, create a journal transaction to reverse the previous journal transaction created. In this reverse journal transaction, credit the income account you used, and debit the customer prepayments liability account. This will ensure the funds are accounted for as income for your business.

Bookkeep a deposit or prepayment received outside of Wave

The deposit or prepayment account created will act as the category for your
deposit transactions.

1. Open the Transactions page.
2. Find the deposit transaction or create a new income transaction, and enter the date, amount and account.
3. Categorize the transaction to the Customer Prepayments and Customer Credits account you created. This increases the prepayment account by the deposit amount.

If you created a single Customer Prepayments and Customer Credits account, add a customer to the transaction to show which customer this deposit is from.

To add a customer, open the transaction, select Add customer, then select a customer from the menu.

When the work has been completed, apply the deposit or prepayment to the invoice:

1. Open the Invoices page.
2. Find the invoice and record a payment.
3. Choose the method Other (payment method).
4. In the Account field, select the Customer Prepayments and Customer Credits account you created.

This reduces the Customer Prepayments and Customer Credits account selected and records the amount as income on the invoice.