Understanding Payments in the Counter Sale Environment

PeopleSoft Order Management provides support for a counter sales environment where payment is accepted with an order and recorded in a cash drawer. The cash drawer functionality enables you to:

• Accept various methods of payment at the time of order entry, including "on account" payments, cash, check, credit cards, procurement cards, debit cards, and corporate vouchers.

  Note:

  Procurement cards behave exactly like normal credit cards. However, there are additional fields that are made available to provide additional transaction data to the purchaser and they are normally limited to certain purchases from an organization, either at a monetary limit per transaction, or by a validation against a list of approved product IDs. Because of this, procurement cards can be used only to pay for items that are picked up at the time the order is placed.

• Accept immediate payments on a single order using multiple payment methods, such as splitting an order across two credit cards, or paying cash for some portion of the order and using a debit card for the rest of the order.

• Accept a mix of immediate payment (using cash, credit, or debit) and "on account" payment.

• Accept deposits from customers for sales orders with special order items.

• Cancel an order and issue a refund of deposit to customers.

• Cancel an order but not issue a refund of deposit.

Outstanding Account Balances in the Counter Sale Environment

When entering counter sale orders, it is possible to have an outstanding balance for which PeopleSoft Billing will ultimately invoice the customer. This situation could occur if some or all items are backordered and less than a 100 percent deposit is taken, or if goods are picked up by the customer but are not paid for in full at the time of pick up. This remaining balance is referred to as the "on account" balance.

In these situations, Billing will use the payment method from the sales order header when invoicing the customer. If the sales order header payment method is credit card, the credit card indicated on the order header, rather than those entered on the record payments screen, will be used for the on account balance when invoiced by billing.

This credit card should be authorized either at the time the sales order is created or by the batch authorization process at some point after the order is created. When the user chooses to complete a counter sale order, if there is any on account balance which is to be paid on a credit card, the user will receive a warning message. The message will inform the user that the on account credit card should be authorized for the outstanding on account balance. The user will be given two options by this message.

• Option one, and the most preferable, is to authorize the credit card during the completion process.

  If you choose this option, the authorization will occur behind the scenes as part of the completion process, ensuring that the customer has credit available to cover the outstanding balance, and reserving that credit for future invoicing.

• Option two does not authorize the credit card.

  The order will be completed with the credit card authorization hold remaining active if one was applied. However, all downstream processing through inventory and billing will be allowed to continue regardless of the status of any credit card authorization holds, or whether the credit card is eventually authorized or not. Under this option, there is no guarantee that the credit card will ever be authorized prior to invoicing. The card can be authorized by returning to the sales order and clicking the Authorize Credit Card link on the Order Entry page, or by the batch credit card authorization job.

Note:

We recommend that order activity subject to an active credit card authorization hold be allowed to pass to the Unfulfilled state in Inventory. This will allow a counter sale order with an outstanding on account balance to be confirmed even though the credit card on the order header has yet to be authorized.

Recording Immediate Payment from a Sales Order

When you record an immediate payment, you typically do so during a face-to-face interaction. When you total the sales order, instead of the typical business process for billing "on account," you click the Record Payment button.

You can record payments using one of several payment methods:

• Cash: Sometimes the entire order is paid using the cash payment method.

• Check: The customer can pay by check.

• Credit Card: Occasionally the order is paid with a single credit card using the credit card payment method. The system also allows you to indicate multiple credit card payment amounts on an order, such as in the case where a customer wants to pay a portion of the order using one credit card and another portion using a different credit card.

• Mixed Payment Methods: The system enables you to log multiple payment methods, in a combination, against a single order, such as Cash, Credit Card, or Debit Card.

• Procurement Card: You cannot use any other form of payment with a procurement card. Procurement cards can be used only to pay for good that are taken with the customer.

• Corporate Vouchers: If a customer wants to pay for the order, or part of the order, with a corporate voucher, then you can select the Corporate Voucher payment method and enter the voucher amount in the Amount Tendered field.

  Voucher information is passed to Billing as a bill line to reduce the total invoice amount. The voucher distribution code that is defined on the Order Management business unit is used to create the invoice line in Billing.

  Note:

  PeopleSoft Order Management will not track the issuance of gift vouchers or track face value or amount paid for the voucher.

• Unknown Payment Method: The system provides a way for you to create and print a receipt when the payment method is unknown.

  This is typically used in instances when the delivery truck goes out and delivers to a customer without knowing how the sale is to be paid. In this scenario, you can generate a receipt from the sales order using the Record Payment page. You can then save the receipt in a hold status and print the receipt. After printing, instead of updating the status to printed, the receipt will remain in a hold status. These receipts are not included in the cash drawer reconciliation process until an actual payment method is recorded. When the driver returns and knows the actual method of payment, the receipt can be updated to reflect the actual method of payment.

Note:

After you click the Record Payment button, at any time you can save the receipt data from the sales order in a status of new. When you save this data, the system generates a receipt number to record the cash received. Receipts for payments reference the sales order to facilitate payment matching downstream in Accounts Receivable. An invoice number is preassigned for the goods taken. The receipt and invoice numbers are written back to the schedules.

Recording a Deposit with an Order

You can record a deposit for a sales order that contains an unfulfilled item, either from a back order or special order. The cashier can initiate recording of the deposit from the Order Entry page by clicking the Record Payment link. If an unfulfilled order is detected on the sales order and if a deposit has not been already taken for the schedules, then the Record Payment page appears with these fields:

• Deposit Required Amount

• Record Deposit link

• Deposit ID

The Deposit Required Amount will default to the amount of the deposit that should be collected for the current transaction. To edit the deposit required amount, the cashier can click the Change Deposit link. The deposit percentage and deposit amount is shown on the Change Deposit page. Users with appropriate security can update the deposit percentage and or the amount on this page. A separate invoice number will be preassigned for the deposit taken.

See Understanding Feature Function Security.

In most cases, the deposit is considered nonrefundable. However, if the deposit is refundable, you must select the Deposit Refundable check box.

When you collect a deposit and the lines do not ship all at once, rounding issues may occur. Because estimates are determined in PeopleSoft Order Management and variances in partial shipment quantity and prices could result in rounding discrepancies when partial shipment amounts are invoiced, the end result may not be the same as collected in the deposit. You may need to make an adjustment for any discrepancies in PeopleSoft Receivables.