How payments post to the general ledger
The journal entry Drypowder writes when a payment settles, what moves in the AR sub-ledger, and how statement discounts, branches, and jobs are recorded.
This article explains how a settled payment is recorded in the Spruce general ledger once Drypowder posts it. It names the accounts that move, what happens on the receivables side, and how discounts, branches, and jobs are handled.
Drypowder posts to Spruce only after the funds have settled into the dealer's bank, so the cash is already in the bank before any ledger entry exists and nothing sits pending inside Spruce waiting to clear. For the full journey a payment takes before this point, see How payments flow from invoice to GL.
Watch the explainer
The article below covers the same ground in text.
The journal entry
Spruce records a Drypowder payment as an automated Bankcard transaction, written as a single AR payment document. The entry is straightforward:
| Side | Account | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Debit | Cash or bank account mapped to the bankcard type, or a bankcard clearing account if your setup uses one | Increases |
| Credit | Accounts Receivable control account mapped to the customer's AR class | Decreases |
| Credit | Finance Charge Income, only when the payment includes a finance charge | Increases |
The debit equals the credit, and both equal the full payment amount.
Both sides of the entry route to the branch where the original sale occurred. Spruce treats the online payment as a virtual point-of-sale transaction, identifies the branch tied to the invoice, and uses its branch mapping to send the cash debit and the AR credit to that branch's own GL accounts, so location-level reporting stays accurate. The accounts behind each side are defined in the GL account mapping.
What moves in the AR sub-ledger
At the same time, on the receivables side:
- Outstanding balance — the customer's balance drops by the payment amount.
- Invoice application — for open-item accounts, the payment applies against the specific invoices it covers, marking each one paid or partially paid.
- eCommerce cash drawer — the transaction records in a dedicated drawer, assigned per branch on the Ecommerce tab under Maintenance, Database, Branches, which keeps online payments out of your physical counter drawers.
- Job detail — for job-level billing accounts, the payment is pinned to the job number on the original invoice and reduces that job's balance, not just the parent account. In the AR Status viewer you can toggle between the Consolidated view and the Job view to see which job a payment paid down, and the AR posting document carries the job number in its detail.
Statement discounts
When a customer pays net of a statement discount, the invoice does not close short. Spruce recognizes that the balance has been cleared net of the discount by the discount date and generates a balancing entry on its own: it credits Accounts Receivable for the full discount value and debits a dedicated Discount Taken account, defined in your Receivables system journal. Your income statement then reflects the cost of the early-payment discount rather than simply showing lower revenue. Drypowder posts the payment, and Spruce's statement-discount logic produces the discount entry.
Where processing fees go
Processing fees never enter the payment posting, so they never touch your AR entry. How they reach you depends on one configuration choice:
- Facilitator pass-through — the fee is collected from the customer and routes to Drypowder's bank account. Your deposit equals the full payment applied to the invoice, so the deposit ties one-to-one to the sum of the Spruce postings behind it.
- Merchant-paid (default) — the fee is charged to you directly as its own item, which you book to a merchant-fee expense account on its own. The Spruce posting still reflects the full payment against the invoice.
Either way, the number Spruce records is the full payment, and the fee is accounted for outside Spruce.
Related
- Verify how a payment posted — Find the entry and tie a deposit back to it.
- GL account mapping — The accounts, sequence numbers, and setup screens.
- How payments flow from invoice to GL — The journey before posting.
- How Spruce integration keeps data in sync — What syncs and what posts back.