Unapplied amounts
Unapplied amounts are payments, refunds or credit notes that have been issued, but have not yet been applied to an invoice. This can happen for a number of reasons, such as:
- The payment was received before the invoice was created
- An excess payment was received and not refunded
- A credit note was issued and will be applied to a future invoice
Outstanding amount is the total that is owed by your customers, so any unapplied amount will reduce the outstanding amount:
Benefits of reducing unapplied amounts
Unapplied amounts can have a number of impacts on your business, including:
- Improved cash flow forecast: Unapplied amounts can lead to incorrect analysis and forecast of your cash flow, making it more difficult to manage your business.
- Improved customer service: Unapplied amounts can lead to confusion and frustration for your customers. By reducing unapplied amounts, you can improve customer service and satisfaction.
- Reduced administrative costs: Unapplied amounts can increase your administrative costs, as you have to spend time tracking them down and applying them to invoices. Reducing unapplied amounts can reduce your administrative costs, freeing up your time and resources.
- Improved financial reporting: Unapplied amounts can make it difficult to get an accurate picture of your financial health. By reducing unapplied amounts, you can improve your financial reporting and make better decisions about your business.
Unapplied Amounts in Analytics
Historically in Upflow, unapplied amounts were not included in Analytics but were included in outstanding amounts calculations: for example on the homepage and customer list view. This led to inconsistencies between totals, underlying data, and analytics metrics such as the DSO.
Our latest logic aligns all calculations according to the definition: Outstanding = Due + Overdue - Unapplied.
| Upflow App | Include Unapplied | Comment |
| Homepage: Outstanding Amount | âś… | By definition: Outstanding = Due + Overdue - Unapplied A drilldown is available on unapplied amount |
| Homepage: DSO | âś… | Including unapplied in DSO calculation will reduce the DSO |
| Homepage: At-risk rate | ❌ | At risk is related to billing cohorts, which are based on invoices. These exclude unapplied amounts |
| Homepage: Aging Balance | âś… | Shows as striped bar charts |
| Analytics: DSO | âś… | Included in the outstanding amount used to calculate DSO |
| Analytics: Collection Effectiveness Index | âś… | Included in the outstanding amount used to calculate CEI |
| Analytics: Cash collection | âś… | Included as part of payments, credit notes and refunds |
| Analytics: Billing cohorts | ❌ | Billing cohorts are based on invoices and so exclude unapplied amounts |
| Analytics: Aging balance | âś… | Shows as striped bar charts |
| Analytics: Payment mix | âś… | Included in payments |
| Analytics: A/R Financials Summary | ✅ | Included in the “unapplied” column. |
Aging Balance and Unapplied Amounts
How are unapplied amounts associated to each bucket?
By definition, unapplied amounts are not associated to an invoice and so cannot be precisely aged. However, it is common across the ERP industry (Netsuite, QBO) to “assume” that the age of an unapplied amount is equal to the age of the underlying transaction, as of today.
In Upflow’s homepage this translates to a negative value in the aging balance bar chart, with a striped colour coding that helps identify it.
In the analytics reports, the historical aging balance widget also has a striped, negative unapplied amount for each month.
Unapplied amounts - globally in the Upflow app
You can have a quick view on unapplied amounts in:
The Customers list view
Add the Amount unapplied column to your default view or save it as a new one.
The Payments list view or Credit notes tab
Filter unapplied amounts or add it as a column:
The customer detail page
Hover your mouse over the tooltip next to the balance: