Allocate customer payments¶

A customer payment rarely matches one invoice to the cent. It comes in a few Rappen short, it covers last month's shortfall too, or it arrives as an instalment with no invoice number on it. This page covers how quints import drafts those payments, how to confirm them, and how to fix an allocation after it was booked.

Applies if

Legal form: Einzelfirma, GmbH or AG. Same steps for all three.
VAT status and method: any, until a write-off. Then not VAT-registered and VAT-registered differ, see step 5. The effective method and the Saldosteuersatz book a write-off the same way.
Invoices: booked to Receivable:Trade with an invoice id (invoice: or a ^link), as quints invoice drafts them.
Period: any. Allocation is per payment, not per VAT period.

1. Import the statement¶

quints import ubs statements/ubs-2026.mt940

Each incoming payment from a customer with open invoices is drafted one of four ways:

The payment	Draft	Receivable legs
quotes an invoice and pays exactly what is open	`*`	one, `invoice:` on the transaction
quotes an invoice, pays more, and the extra is exactly the customer's other open invoices, oldest first	`!`	one per invoice, each with its own `invoice:`
quotes an invoice and pays any other amount	`!`	one, on the quoted invoice
quotes no invoice	`!`	one per invoice, oldest due first,² plus an untagged leg for what is left

Every ! draft carries a ; comment above it saying what was assumed:

; overpaid ACME202603 by 0.47 CHF — applied to older open ACME202602 0.47
2026-04-30 ! "Acme AG" "Rechnung ACME202603" ^ACME202602 ^ACME202603
  ubs_ref: "0130120TP1382853"
  Assets:CH:GmbH:Current:UBS:CHF    4075.84 CHF
  Assets:CH:GmbH:Receivable:Trade  -4075.37 CHF
    invoice: "ACME202603"
  Assets:CH:GmbH:Receivable:Trade     -0.47 CHF
    invoice: "ACME202602"

A payment that quotes an invoice stays on that invoice: the customer named the debt.¹ quints moves money to another invoice only when the difference matches that invoice to the cent. It never writes anything off.

2. Confirm each `!` draft¶

Read the comment, then check it against what the customer told you: a remittance advice, an email, the payment text.

The allocation is right: change ! to *, delete the comment line, and move the draft to books/<year>.bean.
It is wrong: edit the invoice: tags and amounts on the receivable legs before you move it. Their sum must still equal the payment.
A short payment: leave it on its invoice. Ask the customer for the rest, or write it off in step 5.
"left without an invoice": keep the untagged leg. quints receivables lists it below the table until you know which invoice it pays.

3. Check what is still open¶

quints receivables

An invoice with a negative open amount is marked overpaid.
An open invoice and an overpaid one of the same customer that net to zero (for example +0.47 and -0.47) get a one-line hint below the table. A payment went to the wrong invoice. Fix it in step 4.
Money on Receivable:Trade without an invoice id is listed below the table.

The report never moves money between invoices.

4. Move a booked payment to another invoice¶

Don't edit the original booking. Add a zero-sum relink entry: two receivable postings that cancel out, each tagged with the invoice it moves money to or from.

Here a payment of 4075.84 was booked in full to ACME202603, which was open for 4075.37. The extra 0.47 was ACME202602's shortfall:

2026-05-31 * "ACME" "Relink 0.47 from ACME202603 to ACME202602"
  Assets:CH:GmbH:Receivable:Trade   0.47 CHF
    invoice: "ACME202603"
  Assets:CH:GmbH:Receivable:Trade  -0.47 CHF
    invoice: "ACME202602"

A posting's invoice: overrides the transaction's invoice id. That is what lets one transaction touch several invoices. The account balance doesn't change, and both invoices close.

5. Write off what will never be paid¶

Some differences are never paid: a rounding difference, a bank fee the customer deducted, a discount you agreed to. Book them as a reduction of the price paid (Entgeltsminderung). The revenue goes down, and so does the output VAT if you charged any.³ quints doesn't book this for you.

Not VAT-registeredEffective methodSaldosteuersatz

2026-06-30 * "ACME" "ACME202602: 0.47 never paid"
  Income:CH:GmbH:Consulting:External:Domestic   0.47 CHF
  Assets:CH:GmbH:Receivable:Trade              -0.47 CHF
    invoice: "ACME202602"

Split the gross difference at the invoice's rate. At 8.1%, 0.47 holds 0.04 VAT. The mwst: "reduction" tag puts the net in Ziffer 235 of the return:⁴

2026-06-30 * "ACME" "ACME202602: 0.47 never paid"
  Income:CH:GmbH:Consulting:External:Domestic   0.43 CHF
    mwst: "reduction"
  Liabilities:CH:GmbH:Tax:OutputVAT              0.04 CHF
  Assets:CH:GmbH:Receivable:Trade              -0.47 CHF
    invoice: "ACME202602"

Sales carry the statutory VAT to OutputVAT under the Saldosteuersatz too, so the write-off is booked the same way. The mwst: "reduction" tag deducts it in Ziffer 235 of the return. There it counts gross (0.47), because the Saldosteuersatz applies to turnover including VAT:⁴

2026-06-30 * "ACME" "ACME202602: 0.47 never paid"
  Income:CH:GmbH:Consulting:External:Domestic   0.43 CHF
    mwst: "reduction"
  Liabilities:CH:GmbH:Tax:OutputVAT              0.04 CHF
  Assets:CH:GmbH:Receivable:Trade              -0.47 CHF
    invoice: "ACME202602"

Use your own legal form's accounts (Income:CH:Einzelfirma:… and so on).

What quints doesn't do here¶

Rank a debt under Betreibung first. Art. 87 Abs. 1 OR applies an unassigned payment to the debt the customer was first prosecuted for before it looks at due dates. quints doesn't know about Betreibungen. If one is running, edit the draft's invoice: tags by hand.
Apply a payment when nothing is due yet. In that case Art. 87 Abs. 3 OR picks the debt that is least secured for you. quints still orders by due date. Check the draft.
Know your due dates. quints invoice doesn't write a due: onto the invoice booking, so quints orders by invoice date and says so in the comment. Add due: YYYY-MM-DD to the invoice transaction to order by due date instead.
Book write-offs, Skonto or bad debts. Book them by hand as in step 5.
Allocate supplier payments by amount. quints import flags a payment that quotes a bill but doesn't pay its open amount (! with a comment). It doesn't split payments across bills. You choose what you pay, so tag the payment yourself, with a posting-level bill: per bill.

How it works

Open amounts come from quints receivables' own computation, at the day of the import. One payment in an import uses up what it allocates, so a later payment in the same statement can't settle the same invoice again.
An exact amount means within 0.005.
"Older open invoices" (row 2 of the table) are the other open invoices of the same payee and currency, oldest due first. quints adds them up one at a time and stops at the first sum that equals the extra. If none does, the whole payment stays on the quoted invoice.
A payment with no reference is matched to a customer the way supplier payments are: the payment's payee name contains the invoice's payee name, or the other way round. If invoices of more than one payee fit, nothing is allocated. A draft that a payee rule already sent to another account than Receivable:Trade is left as the rule drafted it.
Same-day debts share a payment that doesn't cover them all in proportion to what is open on each.² The last share absorbs the rounding, so the legs always add up to the payment.
What's left of an unreferenced payment after every open invoice is paid stays on an untagged receivable leg. The draft then gets no ^link, because a lone invoice link would claim that leg for its invoice.

Art. 86 Abs. 1 OR: the debtor "ist berechtigt, bei der Zahlung zu erklären, welche Schuld er tilgen will." SR 220, fedlex. ↩
Art. 87 OR: without a declaration "ist die Zahlung auf die fällige Schuld anzurechnen, unter mehreren fälligen auf diejenige Schuld, für die der Schuldner zuerst betrieben worden ist, und hat keine Betreibung stattgefunden, auf die früher verfallene" (Abs. 1). "Sind sie gleichzeitig verfallen, so findet eine verhältnismässige Anrechnung statt" (Abs. 2). With none due, the payment goes to the debt "die dem Gläubiger am wenigsten Sicherheit darbietet" (Abs. 3). SR 220, fedlex. quints encodes Abs. 1 and 2 in quints.importing._by_due_date. ↩↩
Art. 41 Abs. 1 MWSTG: "Wird das vom Leistungsempfänger oder der Leistungsempfängerin bezahlte oder mit ihm oder ihr vereinbarte Entgelt korrigiert, so ist im Zeitpunkt, in dem die Korrektur verbucht oder das korrigierte Entgelt vereinnahmt wird, eine Anpassung der Umsatzsteuerschuld vorzunehmen." SR 641.20, fedlex. ↩
Ziffer 235 of the VAT return (Entgeltsminderungen). How quints fills it: VAT rules. The ESTV's sample returns: effective method, Saldosteuersatz. ↩↩