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How to read amounts and totals in the portal

On their customer portal, your customers will see diverse amounts and totals.
  1. The total amount of each open invoice
  2. Their total current balance with:
    • their outstanding balance
    • their due/overdue/unapplied balances
  3. Their Summary, including all selected invoices to pay and matching totals
(1) The listed invoices will display their billed currency. (2) The outstanding amount section currency display is conditional. It will show:
  • The customer billed currency if all invoices and unapplied transactions share the same currency
  • Your organization’s default currency only when there are multiple currencies or no amounts
(3) The Summary section will display the selected invoice(s) currency.

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Unapplied amounts

For each customer, if a payment, a refund or a credit note is not applied to another entity, it will be considered unapplied. You can see the total unapplied from your dashboard and drill down to get the details per credit notes or transactions: Your customers can also see their unapplied amounts in the customer portal. This article explains what that means, how it behaves with manual vs automatic payments, and how it works when multiple currencies are involved. Note that the unapplied amounts are not displayed on the mobile version of the portal to reduce clutter.

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Payments with unapplied amounts

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Manual payments in the portal

When a customer pays manually through the portal:
  • They can always pay outstanding invoices, even if there are unapplied amounts on their account.
  • We assume that when they initiate a manual payment, they know which invoices they want to settle.
  • Existing unapplied amounts are not automatically consumed or matched during that manual payment.
  • The unpaid invoice will be marked as paid by the new payment, and the previous unapplied amount will remain available to be:
    • Applied later.
    • Used for other invoices in the same currency.
    • Refunded if needed (by your accounting team).
This keeps a clear separation between what the customer decides to pay now and credits that already exist on their account.

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Automatic payments in the portal

When automatic payments are enabled via Autopay (learn more: Collecting automatically with Autopay), Upflow can attempt to debit outstanding invoices automatically (for example, at due date). However, if there are unapplied amounts on the customer’s account, we do not automatically debit new payments.

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Why?

  • We do not know which invoices might already be considered paid using those unapplied amounts in your accounting system.
  • Debiting again could result in double payment of the same invoices.

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In practice:

  • If unapplied amounts are detected for a customer, automatic debits will fail.
  • Your team is notified that we cannot debit the outstanding invoices because of existing unapplied amounts.
  • You can then:
    • Review the unapplied amounts.
    • Apply them to the right invoices or refund them.
    • Retry or re‑enable automatic payments once the situation is cleared.

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How unapplied amounts work with currencies

Depending on your business, invoices and payments can exist in multiple currencies. Unapplied amounts follow the same logic. Below, we’ll review what scenarios are possible based on your business currencies and customers’ situations.

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Base rule: unapplied amounts keep their currency

Each unapplied amount is stored in the currency in which it was created. For example:
  • A payment of 1,000 USD stays as an unapplied USD amount.
  • A credit note of 500 EUR stays as an unapplied EUR amount.
  • In the portal, these values are displayed in their original currency, clearly labeled.
Unapplied amounts are not automatically converted from one currency to another by Upflow.

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Unapplied currency scenarios in the customer portal

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Single‑currency customers

Scenario 1 – Single‑currency customers, same as organization
  • Organization default currency: USD
  • Customer invoices: USD only
In this case:
  • All invoices are in USD.
  • All payments, refunds, credit notes (and therefore unapplied amounts) are also typically in USD.
What the customer sees in the portal:
  • Outstanding: $1,000
  • Unapplied: $100
  • Total outstanding: $900
Everything is in the same currency, so there is no ambiguity in how it is displayed in their portal.

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Scenario 2 – Organization default currency USD, customer billed in EUR only

Example:
  • Organization default currency: USD
  • Customer invoices: EUR only
In this case:
  • All of this customer’s invoices are in EUR.
  • Payments, refunds, credit notes for this customer are also in EUR, so any unapplied amounts are EUR.
What appears in the portal for that customer:
  • In the invoice list and in the Summary, amounts are shown in EUR, because this is the only currency used for that customer.
  • Since all invoices and unapplied transactions are in EUR (single currency scenario), the outstanding amount section should display in EUR, not USD.
With unapplied amounts: Without unapplied amounts:

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Scenario 3 – Organization default currency USD, customer billed in USD and GBP

Example:
  • Organization default currency: USD
  • Customer invoices: GBP + USD
In this case:
  • The customer has one invoice in USD ($1,000) and one invoice in GBP (£1,000)
  • They also have an unapplied payment in GBP (£100)