Pre-dating transactions and previous customer balances

Q: We want to enter current reservations into the database that have pre-paid before we started using the software, and show that they are paid.  However when we put it in as a payment, it shows in the reports as new income.  How can we put in a previous balance without showing any transactions?

There are a couple ways you could carry over a payment/credit balance.  You still have to enter it as transactions, but you can keep those from showing on current reports.

One way would be to go ahead and enter it as a payment, but change the payment date (e.g. to last year) so it doesn't show on "current" transactions reports.  Likewise any previous charges you enter should be back-dated, so nothing will show on reports for this year.

To back-date transactions, see this previous newsletter article:

http://campgroundmaster.com/news/back-datingtransactions.html

The other option would be to use the "Credit" transaction type instead of Payment.  This won't show on reports for "Receipts", even if you don't back-date it (but it does show on some types of reports, so you may still want to back-date it to be safe).