Deposits on Sales Order

Question

Hello,
Our customer requires 100% payment on a sales order prior to beginning production, and they accept multiple payments per order.  We have run into a few issues with this scenario. 
First, when we apply the deposits to the Sales Order, the Incoming Payments are not linked to the order except for the Remarks section, so it is difficult to determine if a sales order is fully "paid".
Secondly, the Incoming Payments are not reflected on the Customer Account Balance as a credit which they should be absent the invoice.  Instead, it appears that SAP creates an AR Invoice with Deposit document and applies the payment there.  In fact, any deposit should be retained on the customer's account as a credit balance.
Finally, and most problematically, we cannot copy a Sales Order to an AR Invoice and apply the full down payment.  When we try, we receive an error message that says "The total amount of the payments must be less than the amount of the invoice."  They want the final invoice to display a zero balance and to relieve inventory at that time.
Any advice or direction would be appreciated.
Mimi

Answer 1

Hello Marcella,
Thank you for the help.  I've actually figured out a workaround for our situation which was 100% down payment required before production.  When we tried to copy the Sales Order directly to an AR Invoice and apply all of the down payments (which are 100% of the balance), the system gave an error message that the down payment amount had to be less than the total invoice.  Thus we were stuck.
However, in further testing, I've found that if the Sales Order is copied to a Delivery first, and the Delivery is copied to the AR Invoice, the $0 balance doesn't matter.  The invoice will be created at $0, revenue will be booked correctly, deferred revenue is relieved and all is well!
Thanks again for the suggestion.
Mimi