Working with regular customers, selling goods on credit, shipping goods on consignment, or working on a prepayment basis — these are standard practices in modern retail that help increase customer loyalty and stimulate sales.
To conveniently control these financial processes, the inventory management software provides special operating modes. However, several practical questions arise during active daily sales:
"Why does the customer's total debt in the Balance with Partners form differ from the amount in the Mutual Settlements Card?",
"Where did the unexplained customer debts come from after old periods were deleted?",
"Why do the salesperson and the owner see completely different debt amounts for the same customer?", or
"Why does the list of unpaid goods include items that the customer has supposedly already paid for?".
To understand these issues, you need to know how the different reports work and how access rights, document chronology, and service operations affect them.
Differences between the main mutual settlement reports
Torgsoft uses three main tools to control settlements with counterparties, each with its own specific purpose:
1. Balance with Partners.
This is an overall snapshot of the financial position as of the current date or for a selected period. It shows the total amount: how much you owe or how much is owed to you. This is a general report generated from all inventory and financial documents, but it depends heavily on the selected filters and the user's access rights.
2. Mutual Settlements Card.
This is the most detailed and accurate report, showing how debt arises and is repaid over time. It chronologically displays every transaction: sale, stock receipt, cashless payment, bonus accrual, and so on. Specialists recommend using the Mutual Settlements Card to resolve any disputes or misunderstandings with customers, because the information in the transaction list is always displayed correctly and allows you to track debt changes step by step.
3. Unpaid Sales to VIP Customers.
This tool is used when strict payment control is required (the "Partial payment with itemized product details" operating mode). It shows not the overall financial position, but the specific goods or invoices for which payment has not yet been received.
Main reasons for discrepancies in reports
Business owners often find that the figures in these three places do not match. This is not a software error, but the result of certain inventory management actions or settings.
Different access rights (Owner and Salesperson)
Frequently asked question: why does the balance with a partner differ when viewed under the Owner account and under a restricted user account?
The reason is restricted access to accounting centers. A restricted user (salesperson) may not have access to all stores (accounting centers) in the retail chain. A customer's initial debt is always linked to the accounting center that was active when it was created. Accordingly, documents or initial debts associated with accounting centers hidden from the salesperson will not be included when calculating the salesperson's total debt amount.
Specifics of VIP customer payments (advance payments and receipt payments)
Discrepancies between the overall balance and the list of unpaid goods often arise from the way payments are recorded. For example, if a customer hands over money and the cashier clicks "Accept Money", the software records an advance payment (overpayment) — everything will be correct in the "Balance with Partners". However, the goods themselves will remain marked as "unpaid". If the cashier then clicks "Pay Receipt", the software will settle part of the receipt amount using the advance payment recorded earlier. In the "Partner Balance Breakdown", this transaction may be displayed with a minus sign (as an offset), which can sometimes confuse users. In addition, complex rounding to the nearest kopeck may result in items with an outstanding debt of exactly 1 kopeck remaining in the list of unpaid goods, even though the goods have effectively been paid for.
Document linking errors
If a payment was entered as a separate financial document, for example through a bank statement, and was not linked to a specific invoice or was linked to another counterparty, the overall balance as of a particular date may differ from the debt shown in the Mutual Settlements Card.
How product returns affect the balance
Product returns are another common cause of discrepancies, especially when the chronological order is disrupted.
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"Disruption of the space-time continuum". This occurs when the return document is created with a date and time earlier than the actual sale of the product. This is a serious inventory management error that disrupts subsequent cost calculations and may cause debts to be displayed incorrectly. It can only be corrected by changing the sale date or return date to the correct one.
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Changing modes "on the fly". If the VIP customer operating mode was changed in the store, for example from mode 1 to mode 3, and the software was not restarted at the checkout stations, payments for sales may lose their links to the financial documents. When attempting to return such a product, the refund amount will then be zero.
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Partial payments. If a product is returned from an invoice containing several items and mixed payment methods (cash/cashless), the amounts in the "Balance Breakdown" may be displayed disproportionately if the quantity of returned goods is not taken into account.
How deleting statistics for closed periods affects balances
Most questions such as "Where did this debt come from?" arise after using the service function for deleting statistics from old periods. This operation is required to clean up the database and improve its performance, but it has a major effect on the debt structure.
Generating initial debts
When periods are deleted, all inventory and financial documents for that time are physically erased, but the mutual settlement position is recorded. The software generates "Initial Debts" as of the end of the last deleted period. If the "Returned to Supplier" variable was not included in the total debt before the periods were deleted, these data are transferred to the initial debts after the statistics are deleted and begin to be included in calculations. This can significantly change the overall result. This is normal system behavior, although it may concern business owners.
The issue of manually entering an initial debt
If the "Initial Amount of My Debt, UAH" field in the counterparty card, on the "Additional" tab, was manually completed at some point, this may cause critical errors when statistics are deleted. When cleaning up the database, the software may use this field to recreate or duplicate these initial debts in all currencies, across all accounting centers and enterprises, even if the actual debt was settled long ago.
"Orphaned" payments
After periods are deleted, "unlinked" payments may suddenly appear in the balance. This happens when the sale falls within a period that was deleted, while the payment for that sale was recorded later — in a period that was not deleted. As a result, the invoice disappears while the payment remains "hanging" without a related document.
Summary
To avoid misunderstandings with customers and suppliers, business owners should regularly close periods without chronological errors and prohibit backdated sales. Any disputed debt situations should be investigated exclusively using the "Mutual Settlements Card" report, because it provides a detailed and reliable view of financial transactions. The "Balance with Partners" report is better suited for a quick overall assessment of the current situation.
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