Group entries for a single payment or refund

The "Group Payments" feature lets you merge / group multiple entries together.

This article covers the following topics:

• Use cases
• Grouping recorded entries
• Entries that haven't been recorded yet
• You're seeing an error message when grouping payments

Use cases

Recording a single payment for multiple purchases

A person wants to make a single payment to cover multiple purchases (memberships, donations, sales). To do this:

• First, record each purchase separately and check "Deferred Payment":

• Link each transaction to the Buyer (via "Link to a contact" during sign-up, or after the fact, through the transaction):

This will let you find the entries in your accounts payable and receivable (Accounting > Book Entry > Track your accounts payable and receivable) and group them to record a single shared payment, as explained here. Your entries will be settled and your books will accurately reflect what actually happened (one payment for multiple items).

To learn more, see the article Managing accounts payable and receivable.

Installment payment for multiple items (family example)

A person wants to pay for multiple purchases in installments. For example, a parent wants to register their three children for music lessons and qualifies for a family discount. If they completed this online, you just need to open the transaction details and record the new payments.

However, if you need to record this manually, it's best to register each child separately, linking them to the parent's profile (as explained in the first case above), and applying custom discounts that reflect the family rate. You can then group the entries (in your accounts payable and receivable) and enter the payment method.

More details on the process here.

Partial refund / Debt write-offs

A person owes you $100 (for an Event registration, for example) and has already paid $30, but refuses to pay the rest. Since that $70 will never be collected, you need to record it as a "loss" in your books:

• Go to Accounting > Book Entry > Expenditures;
• Select "Refund/credit note" as the first account category;
• Link the transaction to the person who registered and check "Deferred Payment";
• Then go to Accounts payable & receivable (via the Book Entry menu or the Dashboard) and group this new entry with the original registration entry.

Note: In the case of an overpayment, record a credit note the same way.
For more details, see the article Recording a refund or credit note entry.

Managing volunteer expense waivers

A volunteer or board member has covered expenses out of pocket. They'd rather not be reimbursed and want to convert that amount into a donation:

• Go to Accounting > Book Entry > Record new revenue;
• Record a donation and check "Deferred Payment";
• Then go to your Accounts payable & receivable (via the Book Entry menu or the Dashboard) and group the donation entry with the expenses the volunteer was reimbursed for.

Unsupported cases

The purpose of this feature is to group entries that share a common payment — not to group entries simply because they belong to the same category.

For example, if you've recorded several separate expenditures for an Event, there's no reason to group them — they aren't linked by a single payment. If you want to track spending by project, use Allocation management (Funds). The same applies to revenues: don't link revenue entries that aren't tied to the same payment.

Grouping recorded entries

To view the list of recorded entries to group, go to Accounting > Book Entry > Track your accounts payable and receivable:

On this page, enter your search criteria and click Search.

In this example, we want to group the payments for a $150 membership and a $30 T-shirt purchase.

To group the payments, select the relevant receivables (check the boxes on the left) then click the Group Payments button on the right.

A single line containing the grouped receivables then appears. The total amount shown is the sum of all entries ($150 + $30 = $180).

To add a payment, click the detail view (eye icon) then click Add a payment.

Fill in the payment details (Date, Amount, Payment method, Account) and click Save.

Note: You can ungroup entries afterward if needed. Click the line detail (eye icon) then click the Pay separately button. This restores the original state with two separate lines.

To link a receivable and a payable together, the payable must be a refund recorded through one of your ticketing forms. Example: a person was registered for an Event but no longer wants to attend — you can issue a refund directly from the Event.

Entries that haven't been recorded yet

If you want to group two entries that haven't been recorded yet, check the "Deferred payment" box (at the last step) when recording the sign-up — the payment will then appear in the list of receivables.

You're seeing an error message

"You cannot group expenditures and revenues together"

An expenditure is money going out; revenue is money coming in. Grouping them together doesn't make sense.

There is one exception allowed on the platform: linking an expenditure or revenue with an associated refund. This corresponds to the partial refund use case.

"Some entries are linked to a third party: make sure they are all linked to the same one."

Here we're referring to third parties other than users. You can group expenditures from multiple users.

Here's an example of when this error might appear:

• You owe $10 to Vendor A;
• You owe $20 to Vendor B.

By grouping these two entries, you'd be saying you owe $30... but to whom? Vendor A or B? That's ambiguous and could lead to errors. To group entries like these, make sure they're all associated with the same customer or vendor — this keeps your third-party account management clean and accurate.

"You are trying to group entries that are too different, which would cause accounting inconsistencies."

If this message appears, you're likely trying to use the feature in a way it wasn't intended for.

Note: You cannot group more than 20 entries (payables or receivables) at once.

"You cannot group online sales with other transactions."

One of your members partially paid their registration online (via an installment plan) but has since decided not to sign up. You want to clear the remaining balance on their receivable (and possibly refund any amounts already paid). You've stopped the installment plan and recorded a credit note entry to settle the remaining amount owed (as explained here).

However, when you try to group your offline credit note entry with the partial online payment, an error message appears. It is not possible to group online payment entries with offline entries.

To clear the online payment receivable, you will need to wait until you have closed your accounting period: the entry will then be converted into a carried forward (C/FWD) balance, at which point you can group it with the refund/credit note entry.

Since this involves a separate group of entries, the refund can be recorded in the books in parallel without waiting for the period close.

Accounting explanation (technical)

The platform was built to prevent inconsistencies in third-party accounts. That's why these error messages are platform-level blocks designed to avoid confusion.

The goal is to make sure the account is fully settled once payment is made. This means you should not mix multiple class 4 accounts (third-party accounts) — use a single third-party account for all related records.

To learn more: Enabling and using subsidiary ledgers and third-party accounts