A/R Distribution Error - "Out of Balance"

Upon running the GL (AR) Distribution Report to post to G/L, I receive several errors stating, "Transaction Out of Balance."  Each error is in regard to an Apply Funds to AR transaction.  Upon opening the affected matters, it appears to have happened in those situations where funds were automatically applied to AR.  Upon further review of the affected matters, it appears the problem is that certain invoices to which the funds were automatically applied had a correct charge/allocation/balance, but upon opening the individual invoices, although a total charge was listed, there was no billing item included on the invoice.  In order to fix the errors I have had to delete the invoice and recreate.  This requires, unapplyng the deposit, deleting the "apply funds to AR" transaction, deleting the invoice.  After viewing the billing item after deletion of the invoice, it still denotes that the item has been billed and will not allow any changes.  I then have to delete the billing item.  Then I renter the billing item, re-create the bill and manually apply funds to A/R to correct the situation.  My questions are "What causes the invoice to not inherit the billing items listed?"  (so I can hopefully prevent future problems).  Next, is there a more streamlined way of fixing the problem short of having to delete the related transactions and re-entering.  The issue I run into is having to delete transactions not affected by the posting errors because those matters are included on a single Trust Account check after auto applying to AR.  Then I have to re-enter those matters as well.  Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

 

John K. Deaton; 323 N. Main St.; Troy, NC 27371; (910) 576-3999; johnkdeaton@embarqmail.com

The first thing I would check is how you are doing your billing allocations. This is setup under program level setup on the billing tab. Pay particular attention to the very bottom of the allocation area where it asks what codes to use for Flat fee items. If these are not filled in, please fill them in. These are used for adjustments or for flat fee bills where there are no billing items. If these are not filled in, completing them may resolve the issue.

If I understand this correctly, when you investigate the out of balance transactions, you find invoices with missing detail lines, but when you go to the matter, you see billing items that should have shown on the invoice.  If this is the case, then technical support may be able to help you.  I believe that have a utility that they can run to re-link the billing items to the invoice.  I know how to do this manually, but it's a "don't try this at home" kind of thing.

I think I've only seen this in version 7.  Is that what you're using?

Hello John,

As you may have figured out, the link between billing items and invoices is in the txhdr table (or txhdr2) in the TM data folder. Somehow this table will loose its way and be out of sync with the created invoices. In theory we can go into that program and look for missing data or corrupted fields, run TPSFix etc... More commonly, I have found the process of undoing the deposits, deleting the Apply Funds, unapply payments, deleting the invoice and then recreating the invoice to be the most effect solution. Don't let that message about the billing item already being billed bother you, I have not found that to have any impact at all.  Yes, if you posted to the GL, you will have to create reversing entries in order to access these transactions. Sorry for your troubles.