Customer Statement Showing Incorrect Negative Balance Due to Unused Advance

Customer Statement Showing Incorrect Negative Balance Due to Unused Advance

Dear Zoho Support Team,

We are facing an issue with the Customer Statement in Zoho Invoice related to customer advances/mobilization advances.

The issue is that when a customer has made an advance payment that has not yet been fully utilized against invoices, Zoho appears to treat the unused advance/available credit as a negative balance in the customer statement.

For example:

  • Total unpaid/outstanding invoices: QAR 4.8 million

  • Remaining unused advance/available credit: QAR 8.3 million

  • Customer statement therefore shows a net balance of approximately -QAR 3.5 million

This creates a serious problem when we need to share the customer statement with our clients.

In our construction business, the QAR 4.8 million represents the actual outstanding amount against invoices already raised, while the QAR 8.3 million is a mobilization/advance amount received from the client that is yet to be recovered/adjusted against future work and invoices.

These two amounts should be presented separately. The unused advance should not make the customer statement appear as though we currently owe the customer QAR 3.5 million.

Required Presentation

We would like the customer statement to clearly show, for example:

Outstanding Invoices: QAR 4.8M
Advance Received / Unadjusted Advance: QAR 8.3M
Net Advance Balance: QAR 8.3M

Or, at minimum, the statement should clearly distinguish between:

  1. Outstanding invoices / receivables

  2. Customer advances / credits received

  3. Amount of advance already adjusted against invoices

  4. Remaining advance balance

The current presentation is misleading and is not suitable for sending to our construction clients, as it gives the impression that the company owes money to the customer when, in reality, there are outstanding invoices of QAR 4.8 million and a separate unadjusted advance balance.

Could you please advise:

  1. Why Zoho is offsetting the unused customer advance against outstanding invoices in the statement summary?

  2. Whether there is a setting or configuration to prevent this offset in the customer statement?

  3. Whether Zoho can generate a customer statement showing outstanding invoices separately from customer advances/credits?

  4. If this is currently not possible, whether there is another Zoho report or statement format specifically designed for this scenario.

This is particularly important for construction companies where large mobilization advances are received and subsequently recovered progressively through certified invoices.

We would appreciate your guidance on the correct way to handle this in Zoho while ensuring that the customer-facing statement accurately reflects the actual outstanding receivables.

Kind regards,
Sreenath