Open accounts (Transitory payments) explained

1. Background
In general, we encourage clients not to leave accounts open overnight. All clients should have a check
in place during their cash up procedure to ensure no accounts have accidentally been left open.
However, in some specific cases (e.g. regular customer tabs) you may want to leave accounts open
overnight. In this case you will see ‘transitory payments’ in your fiscal/business reporting.

2. Checking for open accounts
There are 2 places you can check for open accounts:

a) In the orders section on your POS

b) On the end of day report print out (Functions (top right) > reporting > Report for period > print report).
(Note: All printed reports will have these open accounts highlighted)

3. Dealing with open accounts
There are generally three scenarios for open accounts that you identify during cash up:

• The account was paid for and just needs to be closed – Re-open the account through ‘tables’ > click
  ‘pay’ > select the correct payment method > close the account
• The account was incorrectly recorded and needs to be voided – Follow the above in (a) and select
  any payment method (that isn’t an integrated card machine) > go to receipts (bottom left) > select
  the receipt > press the green icon (bottom right) > select void receipt > select reason
• The account needs to be recorded as complimentary – Re-open the account through ‘tables’ > click ‘actions’ > select the appropriate discount > You should now have a £0 value account > click ‘pay’ > select the any payment method (that isn’t an integrated card machine) > close the account

4. Transitory payment explained
In an example where you have to have accounts open overnight you will see the below:
Day 1

• An account is opened with a sale for £2.19 and left open overnight.
• At the end of the business day (05:30 am the next day), Lightspeed will close this account with a
  transitory payment of £2.19. This creates a £2.19 ‘carried forward’ transitory payment.
• You will see the below in your business reporting:

Day 2

• At the start of the business day (05:30 am), Lightspeed will open a new account with exactly the same sales items in it as the account left open overnight and the same value of £2.19.
• Simultaneously Lightspeed will open and immediately close a negative version of exactly the same
  account. This has the same sales item but with a negative amount and a negative payment against
  it of -£2.19. This does two things; (a) it offsets the sales created for day 2 to give £0 sales, and (b) it
  creates a negative ‘carried over’ transitory payment of -£2.19.
• There are no sales or payments taken on this day and the account is left open overnight again.
• At the end of the business day (05:30 am the next day), Lightspeed will close the account it has created with a transitory payment of £2.19. This creates a £2.19 ‘carried forward’ transitory payment.
• This means that there is a -£2.19 ‘carried over’ transitory payment and a £2.19 ‘carried forward’
  transitory payment which balance to £0.
• As there are no sales or payments on this day, the business report will have £0 sales and £0 takings.
• You will see the below in the transitory payments of the business report:

Day 3

• At the start of the business day (05:30 am), Lightspeed will open a new account with exactly the same sales items in it and a value of £2.19.
• Simultaneously Lightspeed will open and immediately close a negative version of exactly the same
  account. This has the same sales item but with a negative amount and a negative payment against
  it of -£2.19. This does two things; (a) it offsets the sales created for day 3 to give £0 sales, and (b) it
  creates a negative ‘carried over’ transitory payment of -£2.19.
• No sales are made on this day, but the £2.19 account that was created on Day 1 is now paid off by
  the customer using card.
• This will record no sales for the day, but a payment of £2.19 and you will see the below in your
  business reporting:

• If you were to subsequently void this transaction because it was an incorrectly created account in
  the first place, then the report would show -£2.19 in sales and £0 in payments on Day 3. This would
  mean if you looked at a report across the 3-day period then the sales and takings figures would be
  correct. But if you looked at an individual day then you would see a higher than actual figure on Day 1 (by £2.19) and a lower than actual figure on Day 3 (by £2.19).