What happens when an Interac payment arrives before the invoice or the client is created?

Who is this article for?

Your client sometimes pays by Interac e-Transfer before you have created the invoice, or even before you have created their client record. This article explains how Colib keeps these payments waiting and matches them as soon as the invoice or the client exists.

In short: a payment received before its invoice waits up to 30 days. It is applied to the next invoice of the client, whether you create it by hand, it is created automatically, or it leaves the draft status. A payment whose sender is not yet a client is compared again with your new clients for 10 days.

The payment waits for its invoice

When Colib finds the client but no invoice can receive the payment, the payment stays in the list of Interac payments with the status Client found, and you receive a notification. It remains waiting for 30 days after it was received.

1You create the invoice by hand

• Create the invoice of the client as usual. If a payment of this client is waiting and fits the invoice, the Status and payment panel shows Interac e-Transfer received, with the amount, the date, the sender and the Interac reference of each payment.
• The message This Interac e-Transfer will be applied to the invoice when you save it. reminds you what will happen: when you save, the payment is recorded on the invoice. If it covers the whole amount, the invoice becomes Paid and turns into a receipt.
• Several waiting payments can be offered together, as long as their total does not exceed the amount of the invoice.
• While an e-Transfer is applied, the client cannot be charged by card: the card charge option is turned off and the message The client cannot be charged by card while an Interac e-Transfer is applied to the invoice. is displayed.

This payment is not for this invoice? Turn on Do not match these Interac e-Transfers with this invoice before saving. Colib keeps your choice for this invoice: it will never be matched automatically with an e-Transfer, and the payment stays available for another invoice.

2The invoice is created automatically

When the invoice is created without you, for example when an appointment is marked Completed with automatic invoicing turned on, a waiting payment of the client is applied to it right away with the same rules. When the payment covers the whole amount:

• the invoice becomes Paid and the appointment is marked as paid;
• the client's card is not charged;
• the invoice is not emailed: the client receives the receipt instead, if the automatic receipt is turned on.

The same happens when an invoice leaves the Draft status from the list of invoices. In every other case, the next reconciliation (several times per day) looks for the waiting payments that fit an invoice and matches them.

3The client is created after the payment

When no client matches the sender, the payment gets the status No matching. During the next 10 days, each reconciliation compares the sender again with the clients created or modified recently. As soon as you create the client record (or correct the name of the client), the payment is linked to this client, then to their invoice with the rules above.

When the payment is not matched

Match the payment by hand from the list of Interac payments (please see the article titled "How to follow and match Interac payments by hand") when:

• the payment was received more than 30 days ago, or its sender is still not a client after 10 days;
• the sender's name is too different from the client record (after a manual match, Colib remembers it);
• the invoice is dated more than 6 months ago, is not in CAD, is addressed to a third-party payer, or you turned on Do not match these Interac e-Transfers with this invoice;
• the payment is higher than the balance of every invoice of the client.

Good to know

• Deleted invoice — when you delete an invoice paid by an e-Transfer, the payment goes back to Client found and can be matched with another invoice.
• A manual choice is never redone — a payment you matched, revoked or ignored by hand is not changed by the automatic matching.
• Only with the automation turned on — nothing is offered on the invoices when Interac automation is turned off.

Related articles

• How to set up Interac payment automation
• Please see the article titled "How are Interac payments matched with invoices?"
• Please see the article titled "How to follow and match Interac payments by hand".
• Please see the article titled "What happens after an Interac payment is matched?"
• Gmail / Google Workspace: How to automatically forward Interac notification emails in Gmail?
• Outlook / Microsoft 365: How to automatically forward Interac notification emails in Outlook / Microsoft 365?

Still have a question?

Write to us at support@colib.io, we will be happy to help.