About Background Matching

If you want to automatically match cash entries (cash receipts and cash refunds), sales invoices and credit notes, and billing documents, you can use Background Matching. For example, you can automatically match cash entries that were generated from an imported file of credit card payments with sales invoices.

When you commit a background matching session, all cash entries, sales invoices and credit notes, and billing documents that meet the following conditions are matched:

• The transaction account lines for the cash entry A record of money received from, or refunded to, your customers, often in the form of cash or a check. Also used to record payments to and refunds from vendors., and sales invoice A commercial document issued by a seller to a buyer, indicating the products, quantities and agreed prices for goods or services that have already been provided. You issue sales invoices and receive payable/purchase invoices. or credit note or billing document have a matching status of "Available".
• The account In this context, accounts are organizations or people that you conduct business with, such as customers or vendors. Account is a standard Salesforce object. FinancialForce accounts can be any Account Record Type. on the cash entry account line is the same as the account on the invoice or credit note or billing document.
• The cash entry currency is the same as the invoice or credit note or billing document currency.
• The account reference on the cash entry account line is the same as either the Customer Reference on the invoice or credit note or billing document, or the Invoice Number. This comparison is case sensitive. You choose whether you want to match by Customer Reference or by Invoice Number when you start the background matching process.

The cash entry value does not need to exactly match the invoice or credit note or billing document value because you can choose to allow part payments, and you can add a condition to allow any available outstanding cash to be automatically matched to other invoices for the same account. See Background Matching Example for an illustration.

In order for matching to be carried out successfully, currency write-offs or settlement discounts may need to be posted to a general ledger account. If this is the case, the following general ledger accounts must be defined in your company information:

• Currency Write-off
• Settlement Discount

Note:

Note

When calculating any settlement discounts that may be applied, the cash entry date is used as the discount date. The resulting cash matching journals are posted to the same date and period as the background match session.

Match Statuses

A transaction line item can be in one of the following match statuses:

Match Status	Description
Available	Line is available for matching.
Matched	Line has been matched.
Not Matchable	Line is unsuitable for matching. An example of this is the tax line from an invoice.
Proposed	Line has been included in a payment proposal. It is not available for manual matching nor is it available for inclusion in subsequent payment proposals.

When the match status or outstanding value of a transaction account line is updated, the following related values are also updated:

• The account line summary on the transaction.
• The payment details on the related document.

Document Matching Scenarios

The following table lists a number of document matching scenarios and indicates which are currently supported in cash matching and background matching.

These scenarios apply to both sales documents and billing documents.

Document Matching Scenario	Supported By:
	Cash Matching	Background Matching
Invoice - Credit Note	Yes	No
Invoice - Cash Refund	Invalid The Commit button is disabled.	Invalid
Invoice - Cash Receipt	Yes	Yes
Credit Note - Cash Refund	Yes	Yes
Credit Note - Cash Receipt	Invalid The Commit button is disabled.	Invalid
Cash Refund - Cash Receipt	Yes	No
Invoice - Credit Note - Cash Receipt	Yes	Partially supported The Credit Note is ignored.
Invoice - Credit Note - Cash Refund	Yes	Partially supported The Invoice is ignored.
Invoice - Cash Receipt - Cash Refund	Yes	Partially supported The Cash Refund is ignored.
Credit Note - Cash Receipt - Cash Refund	Yes	Partially supported The Cash Receipt is ignored.
Invoice - Credit Note - Cash Receipt - Cash Refund	Yes	Yes The Invoice is matched to the Cash Receipt. The Credit Note is matched to the Cash Refund.