Short pays and deductions for building-supply dealers.
Lunica finds out why the customer paid less, asks the person who knows, and drafts the answer.
Collections & ARUpdated Oct 202620 ERPs
See it work.
Click through the steps. Fictional data; the real thing runs on your ERP.
Inv 204317 $9,412.50, paid $9,000.00. Pricing on the 2x4 SPF, see quote Q-4471. Tom
Harbor Point paid 204317 $412.50 short. The stub says pricing.
The problem.
A check comes in for $320 less than the invoice, with “freight” written on the stub. The clerk applies it short, the difference sits on the customer file as an open balance, and the question of whether freight was billed in error goes to whoever answers the phone. Dispatch says ask sales, sales says ask credit, and the invoice shows past due on the aging report the whole time.
Nobody tracks what the deductions add up to. A builder who shorts every invoice by the fuel surcharge is teaching the counter a price nobody approved. The stubs that said “returned material” and “pricing” and “tax” are in a drawer, and the balance they add up to is written off at year end as uncollectable, when most of it was never in dispute.
How it works.
- 1
The deduction is read off the remittance
When a payment is applied short, Lunica reads the stub, the remittance email or the chargeback notice and names the reason: freight, pricing, returned material, tax, damage, or no reason given. The amount and the reason are logged against the invoice, not just the account.
- 2
Matched to the invoice line
The deduction is matched to the line it argues with: the freight line, the item whose price differs from the quote, the quantity that didn’t arrive. Lunica pulls what your ERP has for that line, the quote, the delivery ticket and the tax status, and says what it found.
- 3
Routed to the person who owns the answer
Freight goes to dispatch, pricing to the salesperson on the account, tax to the controller, returned material to the yard. Each gets the invoice line, the stub and a one-line question. Their answer comes back to the desk.
- 4
The reply or the credit is drafted, a person decides
If the customer is right, the credit memo is prepared for your ERP with the reason code. If the dealer is right, a short reply with the ticket or the quote attached. The credit desk sends the reply or posts the credit; the balance stays open until they do.
How it connects to your ERP.
Lunica reads your ERP’s open items, invoice lines, the customer file, quotes, and the delivery tickets in your document archive through its database or data warehouse, under an account that can only read. The remittance itself comes from the scanner, the lockbox file or the AR inbox, read for that payment only. Contract pricing and the tax status on the customer file are read as your ERP has them.
Nothing is posted to your ERP on its own and nothing is sent on its own. A credit memo, when the customer is right, goes back as an import file where your ERP takes one, or keyed by your team from what Lunica prepared, with the reason code your team uses, and a person posts it. A reply, when the dealer is right, is a draft until a person sends it. Lunica never writes a deduction off.
What a week looks like.
- Every short pay has a named reason by the end of the day it arrives.
- Freight, pricing and tax questions go to the person who can answer them, with the line in front of them.
- Credits for real errors posted with the right reason code; the rest answered with the ticket attached.
- A per-customer record of deductions, before the next credit review or the next contract price.
Questions
Does it post credit memos to your ERP?
No. It prepares the credit memo with the invoice, the line, the amount and the reason code, and a person posts it. Until then the short balance stays open.
Does it write off small balances?
No. A small-balance rule, if your policy has one, is a line in the batch your team accepts; Lunica never writes anything off on its own.
How does it know who owns the answer?
A rule your team sets: freight to dispatch, pricing to the account’s salesperson, tax to the controller, returns to the yard. The names come from the customer file and your team list.
What if the stub says nothing?
The deduction is logged as “no reason given” and a short note asking the customer is drafted for the desk to send.
Does it see the customer’s contract price?
It reads what your ERP has: the price on the invoice line and the contract or quote price if one exists. Where they differ, it says so and sends the question to sales.
Can we see deductions by customer?
Yes. Every deduction, reason and outcome on the account, and a book-wide view by reason.
Available for.
Each version is written in that system’s own terms: its screens, its files, its codes.
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