Hi,

I'm using MS Accounting Professional 2008 and I want to write off an unpaid portion of a customer invoice. The customer has paid most of it but there is £10 remaining which I will not receive. I want to write this payment off. When I open up the Invoice it show that the £10 is still due, so follwoing the help instructions, I goto 'Receive Payment' and the Customer Payment window opens. I select the invoice in the list which has the outstanding amount and then go to the 'Write Off' column. I click on this and in the Write-Off dialog box I enter the amount. The account showing is 'Write Off'. I click on Close.

The Invoice is selected, the Amount Due shows £10 and the Write-Off shows £10, the Payment Column shows £0. For some reason it requires that a Finance Account is selected. If the payment is written off then surely that amount will not be entering any finance account as it is not going to be received.

When I click on 'Save and Close' it brings up a message box that says 'There are no invoices associated with this payment, do you want to make it a VAT-Inclusive Pre-payment?'. I say 'no', but why does it say that there is not an invoice associated when is selected in the main window? It then says that 'The full payment has not been applied to the invoices. Do you want to save the payment?'. If I say yes, the £10 amount is deposited in the finance account that I've had to select.

Why does it require a finance account? The included help with Accounting 2008 is not thorough enough to detail each stage. Please could anyone give me some advice on how I can write off an outstanding invoice payment without it appearing in a finance account and ensuring that my customer accounts balance correctly?

Thanks and regards,
Glyn