What are Manual Payment Overrides?

The Manual Payment Override facility allows you to post an adjustment to a supplier account, include this transaction in a payment run, and at the same time automatically reverse the adjustment off the supplier account to maintain the true account balance. For example, you could enter a manual payment override to record an invoice that needs to be paid urgently to ensure delivery but has been lost in the post.

The Manual Payment Override facility is only available if it has been enabled in Ledger Setup (LES) and can only be used by authorized users.

Recording the Manual Payment Override and Offset

A manual payment override transaction is entered for an account using a control desk processing option. The transaction itself is entered on the Ledger Entry input form, but this form is accessed via the control desk.

You only need to enter the manual payment override transaction for the selected supplier account. When you choose to post this transaction the balancing offset transaction is generated automatically. Both transactions are posted to the supplier account. This ensures the supplier account balance remains correct and double entry is maintained.

The manual payment override transaction is immediately available for payment. The offset transaction is automatically assigned an allocation marker of Withheld to ensure it cannot be selected for payment.

Paying the Manual Payment Override Transaction

A manual payment override transaction is included in a payment run for the supplier in the normal way. The offset transaction cannot be selected because it has an allocation marker of Withheld.

There are, however, some differences in the payment processing that takes place.

The payment transactions are not automatically matched against the transactions selected for payment. The matching must be performed manually using one of the matching functions of Account Allocations (ACA), Online Allocation or Transaction Matching (TRM).

Once the manual payment override transaction has been paid by the payment run, the Withheld allocation marker on the offset transaction is removed automatically.

The payment is generated normally but a normal remittance advice cannot be produced.

Temporary or Permanent Manual Payment Overrides

Manual payment override transactions can be generated as either permanent or temporary transactions to the supplier account. This determines whether or not the payment override transactions remain 'visible' on the supplier account once the payment has been generated. This choice is made in Ledger Setup.

If the transactions are treated as permanent, they will always be visible on the account.

If the transactions are treated as temporary, then when the override transaction has been included in a payment run both this transaction and its offset are assigned an allocation marker of Correction. Transactions with this marker are not included on management reports or inquiries and therefore become invisible.

Allocations markers are described in detail in 'What are Allocation Markers?' and 'What Allocation Markers are Available?'.

Recording the Actual Invoice

When the actual invoice or credit note is received, it is posted to the supplier account in the normal way. This transaction will be offset by the manual payment override offset transaction that remains outstanding on the supplier account.

When the next payment run is made for the account the offset transaction and the actual transaction will be selected for payment automatically and will cancel each other out, thus not affecting the next supplier payment.