When you receive/deliver the corresponding goods or services, the down payment may no longer be shown as such in the balance sheet.

It must be treated as a payment. The receivables or payables are reduced/increased accordingly.

So that you can check whether you have a down payment to clear when you enter an invoice, the system issues a message if there are any down payments in the customer or vendor account that have not yet been cleared with an invoice. You then decide whether you need to clear the down payment with an invoice. The actual message depends on your system configuration.

You can process down payments as follows:

• Directly - that is, without first making a transfer posting to the payables or receivables account

• Indirectly - that is, after making a transfer posting from the down payments made account to the payables account.

These methods are both possible whether the invoice is paid manually or automatically.

When configuring your system, you specify whether down payment items are included in the payment program.