Prepayment allows a customer to deposit funds that are set aside for purchases to be made at a later date. The funds are kept separate from the customer's regular account and prepaid funds are used up as product is taken that qualifies as a prepayment purchase. Work orders can be created to help with planning and tracking prepaid purchases.
A customer will normally deposit funds in the fall to be spent in the spring: when they bring the funds in, that is a prepayment deposit. The customer might make one large deposit, or they may send in the funds in a few installments. Each time money is added to their prepayment account, it is a prepayment deposit.
Once there are funds in the customer's prepayment account, those funds can be used to pay for anything that customer purchases from you. You probably have business rules in place to limit what it is used for, though, and together with the customer, you have most likely set up some kind of plan that defines what they intend to do with those prepaid funds. This would be their prepaid work orders or prepayment plan.
It is important to remember that getting the funds into the customer's prepayment account (i.e. accepting the prepayment deposits) and setting up the customer's prepaid work orders are two separate activities: you can do them at the same time, but you don't have to.
When the customer takes products they have prebought, agrē keeps track of how much they have taken. When the quantity limit is reached (if you provided one on the work order), or the quantity taken meets or exceeds the quantity ordered, or the work order expires, the special prices you quoted no longer apply. However, as long as there are still funds in the prepayment account, though, those dollars can be used to pay for anything the customer purchases (at your discretion, of course), regardless of whether it was originally listed as a prepaid purchase or not. It is your choice, at invoice time, to allocate the prepayment funds to the various products on the invoice as you see fit.
When working with prepayments, you may need to do any of the following:
Define a 'prepaid price level': If you want to give consistent 'prepaid prices' for items purchased with prepayment dollars you can set up a Prepaid Price Level. If this has been set up, any purchase that is checked as prepaid at invoice time (and is not linked to a work order that specifies a price) will default to the price defined in the prepaid price level, rather than the price the customer would normally receive. This is Using a Prepaid Price Level.
Accept Prepayment Dollars: Your customer deposits funds that are to be set aside for prebought purchases. This is a Prepayment Deposit.
Document the Prepayment Plan for Purchases: You and your customer plan out prepay purchases, including discussion of products, special prices, quantities and quantity limits. This is Prepaid Items on Work Orders.
Spend Prepaid Dollars on Purchased Products: On invoices, any product can be paid for with prepayment dollars - though usually you are dealing with planned prepayment purchases. This is Purchasing Prepaid Items.
Edit, Delete, or Reverse Prepayment Deposits: If a mistake was made when accepting the prepayment deposit, some data fields can be edited. If you need to modify a data field that cannot be edited, the prepayment deposit can be deleted (deletions do not appear on the customer statement) then re-added with the correct information. If there was an issue with the funding the prepayment deposit (for example, the grower's cheque was returned NSF) or you want to retain an audit trail, prepayments can be reversed; reversals - including the reason for reversal - do appear on the customer statement.
Transfer Prepaid Dollars to the Customer's Regular Account: At the end of the season (or whenever it is needed) you may need to transfer prepaid dollars into the customer's regular account, and either refund the extra money or apply the credits to outstanding items on their account. If you need to transfer prepayment funds for multiple customers, you may prefer to use Prepayment Adjustments.