Clearing open items
- Peter Schöll
What is clearing?
"Clearing" means balancing open items against each other. Invoices and payments or correction invoices (credit notes) are assigned to each other. The remaining open items then form the basis for further work steps, e.g. reminders (debtors) or payment runs (creditors).
Sometimes receivables and payables cancel each other out completely, whereby several invoices can also be assigned to one incoming payment or vice versa. If a residual amount remains on one side, this is referred to as "partial clearing".
You can clear debtors and creditors during batch posting and in banking when you address a subledger account. After a posting, clearing can be carried out or canceled in the open item lists and in the G/L account reconciliation (for G/L account postings).
Recognize clearing status on the item
The status can be read visually via the icon on each item.
Display clearing history
If you move the mouse over the status icon, details of the item and any clearings already made are displayed.
Clearing details of an item
Click on the clearing icon or on the Details button to see the clearing information in a separate form.
Clear directly - completely or partially
Use the Clear directly function if an invoice and a payment balance each other out.
Select two or more items with CTRL+click
You can check the total of the selection at the bottom left.
Clear directly.
As soon as you have clicked the Clear directly button, the remaining amounts of the items change, the items with a remaining amount of zero are hidden depending on the setting of the Status field.
If the total of the selection was not zero, partial clearing takes place.
Cross-page clearing
Items that are displayed on two different pages cannot currently be cleared against each other. This restriction can be circumvented as follows:
You ungroup and sort by the Open amount column to display equal amounts adjacent to each other. Sorting by absolute amount is possible.
Use More actions (three dots in the top right corner) to display more lines per page.
The maximum number of scrollable lines is currently (as of 2024) 1,000.You are using the decimalization function (see below).
Quick clearing via keyboard shortcuts
You can clear your open items even faster by selecting them in the open items table using the space bar:
Select the first open item and press the space bar.
Use the arrow keys to select the next item and press the space bar again.
The items disappear from the list or are marked as cleared with a green tick.
Cancel clearing
If a mistake has been made during the clearing process, you can delete the corresponding Z and then click on Cancel clearing. In this way, incorrect assignments can be undone.
The clearing form
Sometimes you have to distribute the payment amount manually (e.g. according to the payer's specifications) to the corresponding invoices. In this case, click on the item that you want to split (in this case the payment) and select the Clear button.
Now click on Add to select the offsetting items. You can search for a specific invoice number or posting text by entering it in the selection help. You can use the Clearing amount field to determine the exact amount that you want to allocate to the selected open item. The remaining amount of the open item is automatically adjusted.
You can now select further offsetting items by clicking on Add again.
Select items that have been incorrectly assigned and then click on Remove.
Do not forget to save the clearing (via CTRL+S or the floppy disk symbol).