In Odoo, a payment can either be linked directly to an invoice or be a stand-alone record for use on a later date:
* If a payment is linked to an invoice, it reduces the amount due of the invoice. You can have multiple payments linked to the same invoice.
* If a payment is not linked to an invoice, the customer has an outstanding credit with your company or your company as an outstanding balance with a vendor. You can use this outstanding credit/debit to pay the future invoices or bills.
Paying an invoice
If you register a payment on a customer invoice or a vendor bill, the payment is automatically reconciled with the invoice reducing the amount due.
Payments not tied to an invoice
Registering a payment
In the Accounting application, you can create a new payment from the Sales menu (register a customer payment) or the Purchases menu (pay a vendor). If you use these menus, the payment is not linked to an invoice, but can easily be reconciled on an invoice later on.
Reconciling invoice payments
The easiest way of reconciling a payment with an invoice is to do on the invoice directly.
When validating a new invoice, Odoo will warn you that an outstanding payment for this customer or vendor is available. In this case, you can reconcile this payment to the invoice near the totals at the bottom, under “Outstanding Payments”.
Reconciling all your outstanding payments and invoices
If you want to reconcile all outstanding payments and invoices at once (instead of doing so one by one), you can use the batch reconciliation feature within Odoo.
The batch reconciliation feature is available from the dashboard on the Customer Invoices card and the Vendor Bills card for reconciling Accounts Receivable and Payable, respectively.
The payments matching tool will open all unreconciled customers or vendors and will give you the opportunity to process them all one by one, doing the matching of all their payments and invoices at once.
During the reconciliation, if the sum of the debits and credits do not match, it means there is still a remaining balance that either needs to be reconciled at a later date or needs to be written off directly.