Allocate Customer Receipts in Sage Accounting, Straight from the Remittance Advice

Use an app that reads the remittance advice for you, such as RemitClear. Sage Accounting's bank feed suggests matches from the bank line, largely from its amount and reference, so when one payment covers many invoices the advice is normally keyed in by hand on a Customer Receipt, ticking each invoice it lists. RemitClear reads the remittance advice your customer sent, whether it's a PDF, a spreadsheet, a CSV or the body of an email, extracts every invoice number and amount, matches them against the open sales invoices in your Sage Accounting business and, once you approve, records one customer receipt per customer, allocated across every invoice it covers. On Accounting Standard and Plus, existing credit notes are allocated first, and a short payment leaves the invoice part-paid for the balance.

In Sage Accounting, go to Create > Customer Receipt, choose the Customer and the Paid into Bank Account, enter the Date Received and Amount Received, then tick each invoice the payment covers, adjust any that were part-paid, and save. That's quick for three or four invoices. It slows down when one BACS payment covers dozens of invoices and the only list of them is the customer's remittance advice, because every line has to be found and ticked by hand. RemitClear reads the advice, matches every line to the customer's open sales invoices in Sage Accounting and, once you approve, records one customer receipt allocated across all of them, with the receipt total equal to the amount allocated.

Open the customer under Contacts > Customers, choose Manage, then Account Allocation. Tick the payment on account (shown as On Acct) and the invoice it should pay (Inv), use the pencil icon to change the Amount to Pay if only part of it applies, and save once Left to Allocate reads zero. A payment on account is usually created when a customer receipt is saved with money left over, often because nobody yet knew which invoices the payment covered. RemitClear records each receipt from the customer's remittance advice, allocated to the invoices the advice lists, with the receipt total equal to the amount allocated, so a receipt it posts never leaves a payment on account to clear up later.

One way to allocate a credit note is from the customer's record: open the customer under Contacts > Customers, choose Manage, then Account Allocation, tick the credit note (Crn) and the invoice it reduces (Inv), set the Amount to Pay with the pencil icon if only part of the credit applies, and save when Left to Allocate is zero. Credit notes are part of Sage Accounting Standard and Plus. When a customer's remittance advice nets a credit note off against their invoices, RemitClear does this step for you: it allocates the existing credit note to the right invoice before the receipt posts, whether the credit clears the invoice outright or only part of it is used, and any unused balance stays on the credit note. A credit that has already been spent is refused before anything is written, and a credit that belongs to a different customer is flagged for review.

RemitClear connects to Sage Accounting, Sage's cloud accounting software for small businesses, for UK businesses on Accounting Standard or Accounting Plus, working with your sales invoices, credit notes and customer receipts. A quick way to check: if you sign in to your accounts through a web browser and your subscription is called Accounting Standard or Accounting Plus, you're on Sage Accounting, and a demo will run RemitClear on your own remittance advices before we connect it to your business. Sage 50 Accounts, Sage 200 and Sage Intacct are separate Sage products with their own software, so if your books sit in one of those, book a demo and we'll talk through how your receivables are set up.

RemitClear connects through Sage's own sign-in. A Sage Accounting user with full access to sales, purchases and contacts, plus access to bank, logs in, chooses the business to connect and picks the bank account customer receipts should be paid into. From then on RemitClear reads the open sales invoices and credit notes in that business and records customer receipts into that bank account, and nothing is written until you approve an allocation or switch on auto-posting. Setup is done with you: book a demo, we'll show RemitClear reading your own remittance advices, and then we'll connect your Sage Accounting business together.

It's common when one payment covers several invoices. Sage Accounting's bank feed suggests matches between incoming bank lines and your invoices, working largely from what the bank line carries: the amount and the reference. When a payment settles a single invoice with its number in the reference, that's usually enough. When a customer pays twenty invoices in one BACS transfer, one of them short paid, the bank line typically carries one total and the customer's own payment run reference, and the list of invoices it covers arrives separately, in their remittance advice. RemitClear works from that document instead: it reads every invoice number and amount on the advice, matches them to your open sales invoices and records the customer receipt, so the allocation reflects exactly what the customer said they paid.

Customers often drop a prefix, add a space or quote only part of the number on a remittance advice. RemitClear matches exact, partial and prefix-based invoice numbers, and you can set your invoice prefixes so it knows the patterns your Sage Accounting invoices use, so a payer who reformats a number still lands on the right invoice. When a customer quotes their PO or order number instead, RemitClear checks the Reference field on your Sage invoices too. A match made through a reference is shown with the evidence and held for a one-click review, so a reference that only looks similar can never move money to the wrong invoice on its own. Anything the engine can't settle is flagged for review, with the extracted line next to the original document.

Yes. When the advice shows a customer paying less than an invoice's balance, whether for a promotional allowance, a pricing query or a disputed line, RemitClear posts what was actually paid and leaves the invoice part-paid in Sage Accounting for the rest, so the shortfall stays visible on the customer's account. When the deduction is listed as a line of its own, it's shown in review next to the invoice it came off, so you can set the amount paid on that invoice before anything posts. Credit notes already raised in Sage are allocated to the right invoice on Standard and Plus. During review you can change the amount on any matched invoice or remove a line, and RemitClear checks that your allocations balance to the remittance total before anything posts.

A customer receipt in Sage Accounting belongs to one customer, so a payment covering invoices on three accounts has to be recorded as three receipts, each allocated to its own invoices. This comes up with head offices, franchise groups and property managers who pay for several sites in one transfer, with each site set up as its own customer. RemitClear handles the split: it reads the whole remittance advice, works out which invoices belong to which customer, and records one customer receipt per customer, each allocated across that customer's matched invoices, so the ledger ends up as if every site had paid separately. Every allocation is shown for review, line by line, before anything posts.

With RemitClear you can work through a batch of remittance advices in one sitting. Upload up to 20 at once, or forward each one to your RemitClear address as it arrives. Every advice is read and matched against your open sales invoices in Sage Accounting, then queued for review, so you can work down a morning's remittances in one sitting, and each approval posts that advice's customer receipts, one per customer. Once you're comfortable with the matches on your own customers, you can switch on auto-posting, which records the receipt for perfect matches only, with no click needed. Anything short of a perfect match, including every match made through a reference rather than an invoice number, waits for review.

The simplest route is to forward them. A BACS or Faster Payments receipt reaches your bank as a single amount, and the detail arrives separately by email, either as a PDF or spreadsheet attachment or as invoice numbers typed into the body. Those emails tend to land wherever each customer has a contact on file, shared inboxes and personal ones alike. Set a forwarding rule in each inbox that receives them, pointed at your RemitClear address, and every remittance email is read and matched against your open sales invoices in Sage Accounting as it arrives, with nobody downloading attachments or retyping invoice numbers. RemitClear reads the attachment when there is one and the email body when there isn't. Scanned cheque remittance slips work the same way: forward the scan as a PDF, or set your scanner to email PDFs to the same address.