Receipts by Category report adjustments

We get a lot of questions about the amounts reported in the "Receipts by Category" report.  Sometimes the amounts in a particular category don't seem correct (e.g. a payment amount doesn't go into the category as expected), or an amount appears in "Uncategorized" and it's not clear why.  

Since this report uses "interpolated" amounts rather than raw transaction amounts, it will divide a payment proportionally into the Charge categories that need to be "paid", or accounted for, at the time of payment.  When a bill isn't paid in full, e.g. for long-term guests, this can cause confusion.  The other primary issue is when payments are entered before the charges to be paid, so that at the time of payment there are no categories to put the payment into (causing "Uncategorized" amounts).

Here are a few tips on resolving or at least understanding these issues...

The first thing to do when you see something unexpected in the report is to uncheck the "Summarize" box at the top.  This will switch to Details mode and show the individual "interpolated" transactions -- e.g. a single payment may be shown as several interpolated amounts into different categories.  These details are sorted by category so it should be easy to locate the problem area.  To further investigate an item, you can right-click on it and select Transactions as usual to get to that reservation's transaction details.  Here you may see that a payment is out of order, or that it wasn't paid in full at some point.

If a payment is out of order, probably causing Uncategorized amounts, you can correct that easily if you have version 3.6 or later.  First close the Reservation Transactions if that's still open, then right-click on the line again and go to Reservation Details.  From there click on Transaction History.  Select the payment and use the Move Up or Move Down buttons to put it in the right place (usually at the bottom, or at least below any Charges that it's paying for).  Note that this doesn't change the dates so it won't affect reporting by dates -- it will only affect the distribution of the payment in the Receipts by Category report.

By the way, if you normally receive a payment before charges can be added, e.g. before they arrive, then that really should be entered as a Deposit.  Once charges are added, then the money is "moved" from Deposits to the appropriate categories (this is one purpose of the "Dep Applied" transactions you see added automatically).

Assigning specific categories to a payment...

Sometimes you may receive a payment that you want to put in a specific category (or categories) instead of letting the program split it up.  For instance if the customer has a $50 balance due for rent, then you add an electric charge of $50 and they pay only the $50 for electric, the program would normally split the payment into $25 rent and $25 electric.

The only way to change this distribution is to use the new feature in version 4.0 to assign categories to Payments.  Once you have version 4.0 installed, you still need to enable this feature -- go to Maintenance / Program Options / Prompts, and check the box "Allow transaction categories to be selected for payments" (and click OK).

Now when you enter a payment, it will allow you to assign one or more categories to it.  You can also correct previous payments -- as in the example above, right-click on the transaction in the details list and select Transactions to get to the Reservation Transactions dialog.  Click on the Payment transaction to be categorized, and a button "Edit Category Allocation" will appear at the bottom.  Click that button and add one or more categories as needed.

Hopefully these tips will help you understand and correct any discrepancies in the reports.