Clearing the suspense account
Clearing the suspense account is an important task to ensure that your accounting reports remain accurate. Ideally, you should do this on a regular basis. This article provides suggestions for possible approaches. If your internal processes differ (for example regarding refunds or credits in case of cancellations), you can of course deviate from these suggestions. Make sure to coordinate with your colleagues in accounting about which accounts certain amounts should or should not be written off to, so they also understand what these entries represent.
Please note: as long as an order has an outstanding balance, all tickets in that order are not linked to their events for accounting purposes, not just the unpaid portion. For example, if an order contains 10 tickets, 9 of which have been paid and 1 of which has not, the entire order remains on the suspense account. This means that clearing the suspense account is worthwhile even when only a small amount remains outstanding.
More information about how the suspense account works can be found here: The suspense account
Payment status Overpaid
If an order has the payment status Overpaid, causing it to appear on the suspense account, it is important to determine exactly what caused this.
- Were any changes made to the tickets after payment (price type changed, tickets removed, etc.)?
- Was a change made that caused an order fee to be recalculated (for example, changing the delivery scenario from 'postal delivery' to 'email')?
- Was an incorrect amount registered as a payment at the box office?
- …
If this is due to a change to a (recent) order, you can refund the customer, issue a credit, or correct the order if it was an error. If an incorrect paid amount was registered, we recommend registering a refund for the overpaid amount using the same payment method as the original payment. If you cannot or do not want to issue a refund or credit (for example because the order is already too old), there are two options for correcting the order. Choose whichever option best suits your workflow.
Create a new manual order fee (via Settings), for example Overpaid. In the orders themselves, add an order fee:
- Click Actions.
- Click Order fees.
- Click Add.
- Select the Overpaid order fee.
- Enter the overpaid amount.
The order will now receive the payment status Fully paid and will be removed from the suspense account. At that point, the revenue will be allocated to the relevant events, vouchers, products or order fees in the financial overview.
Please note: is this an empty order? In that case, you cannot register an order fee. We recommend temporarily adding any ticket or product, registering the order fee, and then removing the ticket or product again.
Payment status Incomplete
Orders that already have a payment linked to them but have not yet been fully paid also appear on the suspense account. Orders without any payment do not.
Underpaid
This can occur when, for example, a change is made to the order after payment, such as adding an extra ticket, meaning the amount paid is no longer sufficient.
If this concerns a recent order, tickets for future events, or you expect another payment to be made anyway (for example for group reservations), make sure the customer completes the payment. If you do not expect the customer to make any further payment, or if the tickets are for events that took place some time ago, first check whether or not the ticket was used. Check the order log to see whether it was delivered and/or scanned. If not, you can remove the ticket.
If the ticket was used, you need to be able to indicate for accounting purposes that too little money was received. To do this, create a specific payment method (if one does not already exist), for example 'Correction (underpaid)'. Make sure it is clear to accounting that this represents money that you did not receive. Then add a payment for the remaining amount to the relevant order using this payment method:
- Click Add payment.
- Select the payment method you created for this purpose.
- Check the automatically entered amount (adjust it if necessary).
- Click Pay.
This will give the order the payment status Fully paid and remove it from the suspense account. At that point, the revenue will be allocated to the relevant events, vouchers, products or order fees in the financial overview.
Please note: Is there a delivery scenario linked to the order where the payment triggers the order email to be sent? In that case, an email will still be sent. Therefore, change the delivery scenario to a print delivery scenario.
Not on the suspense account, but still requires correction
Orders with an outstanding balance and no payments.
Unpaid tickets (that will no longer be paid for) do not appear on the suspense account, but to keep other reports accurate as well, we still recommend correcting them. First, check that the tickets have not been delivered or used (scanned). If not, you can simply remove them from the order so that the outstanding balance is €0. If they have been delivered or used, you should correct the order by adding a payment (using the 'Correction (underpaid)' payment method). You can also remove the tickets, but in that case your revenue will no longer correspond with, for example, your scan figures.
Impact of correcting orders on the suspense account
If you correct orders containing events and/or products from the previous (financial) year, these corrections will appear in the accounting reports as revenue/refunds. We therefore recommend choosing between two options before making corrections to older orders:
- clearly agree with accounting that you are going to make these corrections (and when, preferably all at once). Accounting can then decide whether to make corrections to the previous financial year or not to record the changes because that financial year has already been closed.
- leave these orders unchanged to avoid changes appearing for older events and/or products. In that case, there will always be an amount remaining on the suspense account that will not be written off.
💡 Tip: to avoid orders ending up on the suspense account, it is best practice, for example, to add extra tickets booked afterwards to a new order instead of adding them to an existing order. If an order contains tickets from both the current and the previous financial year and ends up on the suspense account, this results in accounting movements in a financial year that has already been closed. Starting a new order avoids this.