If you have a good relationship with a Client and you have an agreement with them about payment terms, you can ‘OPEN AN ACCOUNT’ for that Client on Benson.
It’s important to remember that Benson will not require all invoices on a Reservation to be paid in full if the Reservation is linked to a Client that has an Open Account. So only open an account for Clients that you are sure will pay you!
Once an Account has been opened for a Client, you can administer all their invoicing and payment requirements from the Account Details section on the Client. This does not change any accounting functionality on a Reservation linked to this Client but does allow for additional Client-specific functionality.
Often a larger Client, like a travel agent, may pay you for all Reservations in a particular month in one go. To capture the details of such a payment, click ‘ADD PAYMENT’ and capture the actual payment details, including the Payment Type and Amount. The next page will ask you to split that payment and allocate the amounts across the necessary invoices.
If a Client pays an incorrect amount, you can allocate the amounts across the known invoices and keep the rest unallocated so it can be used for future invoices.
Creating an invoice in this section means it will not be linked to a Reservation. This can be useful to manage staff accounts or ad hoc charges that do not relate to a stay or Reservation in any way.
You can draw a statement of account for a Client at any time by clicking ‘STATEMENT’. Select the date period and click ‘DRAW STATEMENT’. Once drawn, you have the option to send the statement via email or generate the statement in pdf format – both options allow you to explicitly attach all the invoices to the document or not.
In the event that your relationship changes with a Client, you have the option to click ‘CLOSE ACCOUNT’ which will prevent any future Reservations from being checked-out with unpaid invoices.