The Accounting Dashboard

Most money problems in Suprata announce themselves loudly — a card declines and the customer is standing there. The dangerous ones are quiet. An ACH payment bounces four days after you marked the job complete. A recurring card expires and the retries run out while nobody's watching. Neither shows up anywhere you normally look, because both happen to an invoice that already says Paid.

The Accounting page is the one place those surface.

Where to find it

Accounting in the left sidebar. You also get a compact strip on your home dashboard that only appears with something on it — if there's nothing to chase, it says All clear and takes up one line.

The strip is the point. Nobody goes looking for a problem they don't know exists.

The seven blocks

1. Returned payments

Payments the bank took back — a bounced ACH or a returned check. The balance is already back on the invoice and the invoice has reopened, so the customer owes the money again whether or not anyone has told them.

Each row shows the return code (R01 insufficient funds, R02 account closed, and so on), what was taken, and what's still due on that invoice now. Click through to the invoice to chase it.

Worth knowing: this shows the amount originally charged, not the amount currently applied. A returned payment has nothing applied to the invoice any more — that's what "returned" means — so showing the applied figure would list every return as $0.00.

2. Failed payments

Cards and bank debits that were declined. Suprata retries automatically up to three times.

Most of these are not your problem, and the dashboard works that out for you:

• Cured — the invoice reached zero anyway. Somebody paid it another way: a second card, cash
  at the counter, account credit. This is by far the most common outcome, which is why an
  unfiltered list of failed payments is mostly noise.
• Needs action — the invoice still has a balance and nothing further will happen on its own.
• Dismissed — somebody looked at it and decided it needs no chasing.

The coloured bar at the top of the card shows the split at a glance. The tabs at the top of the
page switch between them; Needs action is the default, because that is the only one that is
work.

Each row shows when it failed and how long ago, not just how many attempts it used. A payment
that gave up yesterday and one that gave up in March look very different, and previously they did
not. A ~ next to the date means it was estimated from the last retry date — those are older
payments from before Suprata tracked the exact failure time.

Dismissing an alert changes nothing about the money. The payment record, the invoice and the
balance are all untouched — it only takes the row off the work list. You have to give a reason,
and it is written to the invoice audit trail so the next person can see who decided and why. You
can restore a dismissed alert at any time. Dismissing needs the Take Invoice Payments
permission.

3. Bank transfers not yet confirmed

This card appears while any bank transfers are waiting to be confirmed with your payment
processor, and it is the answer to "a payment bounced — why isn't it showing yet?"

Suprata confirms every bank transfer with your processor automatically, for the full 60 days a
payment can still be returned. The card shows how many are waiting and the date of the oldest.

If you don't want to wait, press Check now. Suprata asks your processor about each waiting
transfer straight away, shows its progress on the button, and updates the page in place when it's
done — any that had been returned move straight into Returned by the bank. There's also a
Check now button at the top of the page, beside the note saying when payments were last
checked. You need the Take Invoice Payments permission to use it.

4. Bank transfers still clearing

Money that shows as paid and isn't final yet.

ACH doesn't work like a card. A card either approves or declines in seconds. An ACH debit succeeds optimistically and can come back days later. This block is the answer to "how much of what we banked this week could still evaporate?"

It covers roughly the first six business days, which is standard clearing. A customer can still dispute a transfer for up to 60 days, so a bank transfer is never quite as final as a settled card — Suprata keeps checking them for that whole period, so you don't have to track it.

The practical rule: don't release expensive goods or close out a job on ACH alone until it's cleared this block.

5. Upcoming charges

Two lists, side by side, and they're deliberately kept apart:

• Scheduled charges — payment plans and subscriptions that will charge a saved card or bank account on a date. These are charges against invoices that already exist.
• Recurring invoices due to generate — invoices that don't exist yet. Shown 60 days ahead, because a monthly cycle can easily fall outside a 30-day view. Anything marked Overdue should already have generated and hasn't — that is worth reporting.

They're not added together. If they were, the total would double-count the moment a recurring invoice generates and its own scheduled payment appears alongside it.

6. Recent payments

Money actually taken, newest first. Every other block on this page is a problem or a projection,
and a dashboard made only of those reads as though nothing is working.

Returned payments appear here too, marked as such. They were genuinely collected and then taken
back, and hiding them would put this list at odds with your bank statement.

7. Receivables

What you're owed, bucketed by how late it is. Current, 1–30, 31–60, 61–90, over 90. There's a link to the full aging report for the per-customer breakdown.

Two things about the numbers here:

• Only locked or closed invoices count. An unlocked invoice is still being built — you haven't asked the customer for it yet. Counting drafts would inflate your receivables with money nobody's been billed for.
• Buckets are based on the due date, not the invoice date. A net-30 invoice raised today isn't overdue; it's current for thirty days.
• Customer credit on account is shown separately, not subtracted from what you're owed. It's money you're holding for customers. Netting the two would hide both figures.

This block needs the Revenue, Sales & Billing Reports permission. Without it you still get everything above — the part that needs chasing.

The bit at the top right

There's a small line reporting when bounced payments were last checked. Pay attention to it.

Suprata checks your payment processor for bounced bank payments several times a day. If that
check stops, nothing else on this page is trustworthy — bounced payments simply never
appear, and your invoices go on saying Paid. You would have no way of knowing.

So if it says "Bounced payments aren't being checked", or a last-checked date more than a day
old, that is the most important thing on the screen. It is not cosmetic. Send it to whoever
administers your Suprata installation.

Who sees what

The split is intentional. Chasing a bounced payment is front-desk work; total outstanding balances are a different kind of disclosure. Somebody can do the first job without seeing the second.

Common mistakes

• Treating the home strip as optional. It only shows when something needs doing. If it's showing a number, that number is somebody's job today.
• Ignoring the "last checked" line. It's the only signal that the safety net is working. A dead return-checker is silent in every other part of the product.
• Reading "Bank transfers still clearing" as a problem list. It isn't. Those payments are fine — they're just not final. It's a risk figure, not a to-do list.
• Assuming a failed payment will sort itself out. It will, twice. On the third failure it stops and waits for a human, and nothing tells you again.
• Comparing Receivables here against an accounting package. This counts locked and closed invoices with a balance. Your accountant may recognise revenue on a different basis. Use the aging report for reconciliation work.

Related articles

• When a payment bounces or lands on the wrong invoice
• Setting up ACH and when to prefer it
• Credits vs. refunds vs. voids
• Saved payment methods and when to use them