Confirming a Payment Advice
A customer says they have paid you. Confirming is what turns that claim into settled cash.
A payment advice travels between two Trabalance businesses. One sends it — "we have paid you, and here is what it covers". The other confirms it. This page is the receiving half: what to do when an advice arrives addressed to you.
It matters because of one rule, enforced everywhere in the platform:
A payment advice is a notice that money is coming — not the money. Until you confirm it, it posts nothing to your books, settles no invoice, and moves no balance. Every engine that answers how much of this invoice is settled? checks for your confirmation first. Confirmation is a posted journal on your books; without it, there is no cash and no settlement, on any screen and in any report.
Finding It
An advice arrives as a document with the status Unconfirmed. On its detail page the primary button reads Confirm Payment.
You will also see a standing note on the document, and the journal panel will tell you plainly that the entries shown are not yet reflected in the ledger, and will become active once the payment advice is confirmed.
The Confirmation Screen
Three blocks, in order.
1. What the sender claims
The party name, the amount, the date and the payment details they supplied. If the advice was sent without an amount, it says so — this advice states no amount — and there is nothing to match against.
2. Which payment was this?
Trabalance lists the inflows sitting in your Uncategorized Income account and ranks them, best guesses first. The counter above the list reads either N of M match the amount or M uncategorised inflows · best guesses first.
Each row is selectable and shows the bank description, the date, the center, the amount, and a badge saying how well it fits. Rows that do not match exactly also state the gap — over by X or under by X.
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| No Uncategorized Income account | This business has no such account, so there is nothing to confirm against. Import or record the bank inflow first. |
| No uncategorised inflows | Nothing is sitting unclassified. Import the bank statement covering this payment, then come back. |
| Nothing matches that search | Your search term filtered everything out. Clear it. |
3. Attachments
Collapsed by default. Images preview inline with a lightbox, PDFs preview in place, and anything else downloads.
The Exact-Match Rule
You can select any row. Confirm payment stays disabled unless the inflow equals the advice, and the screen tells you why before you click rather than failing after:
This inflow is X more/less than the advice. A confirmation must equal the advice amount — edit the advice or record the difference separately.
Confirming is what re-classifies a real bank inflow as a settled receivable. Allowing a mismatch would let the confirmed figure drift from the money that actually arrived — and the settled amount would then disagree with the ledger. Where a genuine short payment has been made, the sender edits the advice down, or the difference is recorded on its own.
What Confirming Posts
Confirmation does not invent a payment. It transfers the inflow you picked out of Uncategorized Income and onto Accounts Receivable.
| Account | Debit | Credit | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uncategorized Income | 800.00 | — | The bank inflow leaves the holding account |
| Accounts Receivable | — | 800.00 | The receivable is settled — party carried on this line |
The advice's status flips to Confirmed, and the invoices it named show the amount as remitted.
Rejecting
Reject opens a short sub-screen with an optional Reason, recorded on the activity log. Rejecting posts nothing to your books, and the sender sees the advice as disputed.
Use it when no payment of that amount has reached your account.
Statuses
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Unconfirmed | Received and awaiting your decision. Posts nothing. Settles nothing. Cannot be edited by the sender while it sits here. |
| Confirmed | You matched it to a real inflow. The journal is posted on your books and the named invoices are settled. |
| Rejected | You disputed it. Nothing posted. The sender sees it as disputed. |
Confirming Several at Once
The Payment Advice list offers a Confirm action on selected rows. Only rows that are still unconfirmed can be processed — the rest are skipped and reported back to you.
The Sender's Side
Nothing posts on their books at any point — not when the advice is created, and not when you confirm it. The advice is a notice, not a payment document.
Your books post the transfer. Their advice reads Confirmed because your journal exists — the status is read from the recipient's business, never the sender's.
If you are the one paying, a payment advice tells the vendor what your transfer covers — it does not record the cash leaving your account. Record a payment voucher for that.
Related
- Sending one to a vendor: Payment advice.
- Recording the cash that actually left: Manual payment.
- Where uncategorised inflows come from: Uncategorized transactions.