Customer Deposits

Customer Deposits

Hi,

Our company is required to close month end as part of our reporting processes. A major challenge we have is with constant shifting in AR and customer deposits. When we receive payments in advance of an invoice or without guidance to specifically which invoices the customers are paying, the payment sits under the customer's account as a "customer deposit." When the invoice is eventually generated (i.e. when work is complete) or customers specify which invoice they are paying, the deposit is applied to the new invoice but the change is done RETROACTIVELY.  When a balance sheet or customer deposits report its as if there was no deposit at the time because now payments have been applied to a specific invoice.

Example with dates:
Customer X pays a $100 deposit on January 1st and has several invoices outstanding for $200 but amounts have not been allocated to specific invoices. On January 31st month end there will be $100 in customer deposits and $200 in AR. 
On February 1st the customer wants to apply the payment to one of the invoices. There should be $100 in AR and 0 in deposits as of February 1st, but if you unlock an earlier month to apply the payment, it does so at the date the payment was received, not the date it was applied. Therefore it forever changes the prior period

Is there a way to have the shift in AR/customer deposits reflect the date payments were applied rather than date payment was received? It makes auditing earlier months impossible.