Issue 1: No mechanism to clear residual rounding balances on Vendor Prepayments
Description:
When a Vendor Prepayment is paid and later applied against a Vendor Bill, any marginal rounding/currency difference between the prepayment amount and the applied amount (e.g., prepayment of 5,000.00 applied against a bill total of 4,999.99) leaves a permanent, unclearable residual balance of 0.01 (or similar) on the Vendor Prepayment record. Unlike standard Bill payments — which support discount/write-off tolerance to a rounding or gain/loss account — there is no equivalent write-off action available on the Vendor Prepayment record itself.
Business Impact:
These residual balances accumulate indefinitely across the ledger and distort Vendor Prepayment aging/open-balance reports, since the amounts are too small to bill or refund but remain technically "open." In our environment, this has already resulted in 38 open prepayment records carrying small unclearable residual balances that cannot be closed through any standard NetSuite workflow.
Steps to Reproduce:
- Create a Vendor Prepayment for a round amount (e.g., 12,000.00).
- Apply the prepayment against a Vendor Bill with a total that differs by a small rounding amount (e.g., 11,999.99).
- Observe that the Vendor Prepayment record retains an unapplied balance of 0.01 with no option to write it off.
Expected Behavior:
The system should provide a "Write Off Unapplied Balance" action on the Vendor Prepayment record (or within the Bill Apply subtab), allowing the residual amount to post to a designated rounding/gain-loss account, consistent with the discount/write-off tolerance functionality already available on standard Bill payments.
Issue 2: Vendor Prepayment application does not support combining multiple prepayments into one application
Description:
The "Apply" functionality on a Vendor Bill (and the resulting Vendor Prepayment Application record) only allows a single Vendor Prepayment to be applied per application action. There is no way to combine two or more separate, partial prepayments from the same vendor toward a single bill, or to apply one bill against multiple smaller prepayments in one transaction.
Business Impact:
In scenarios where a vendor has received multiple partial advances over time and a single consolidated bill is later issued, users are currently forced to either raise multiple bills artificially to match each prepayment, or manually post journal entries to reconcile the difference — both of which compromise the integrity of the Prepayment-to-Bill audit trail.
Steps to Reproduce:
- Create two or more separate Vendor Prepayments for the same vendor.
- Create a single Vendor Bill for that vendor.
- Attempt to apply both prepayments against the same bill within the Apply subtab.
- Observe that only one Vendor Prepayment can be selected/applied per application.
Expected Behavior:
The Bill Apply subtab (and the underlying Vendor Prepayment Application record) should allow selection and application of multiple open Vendor Prepayments from the same vendor within a single application action.
Issue 3: No native transaction type to record a Vendor Prepayment refund
Description:
When a vendor returns a previously paid advance (e.g., due to order cancellation or overpayment), there is no native NetSuite transaction to record this as a refund against the original Vendor Prepayment record. The only available workaround is to post a manual Journal Entry crediting the Prepayment asset account directly, which does not link back to the originating Vendor Prepayment transaction.
Business Impact:
Because manual journal entries do not update the applied/unapplied status or linkage of the original Vendor Prepayment record, the Prepayment remains flagged as open/outstanding in aging and reconciliation reports even after the funds have been physically returned by the vendor — creating a persistent reporting discrepancy and weakening the audit trail between the original advance and its return.
Steps to Reproduce:
- Create and pay a Vendor Prepayment.
- Have the vendor return the advance (e.g., order cancelled before any bill is raised).
- Attempt to record this refund against the Vendor Prepayment record.
- Observe that no refund transaction type exists; the only option is a manual Journal Entry with no system linkage to the original Vendor Prepayment.
Expected Behavior:
NetSuite should provide a native "Vendor Prepayment Refund" transaction type that links directly to the originating Vendor Prepayment record, reduces its open/unapplied balance accordingly, and posts through the standard AP/Bank flow — eliminating the need for a disconnected manual Journal Entry.
Requested Resolution:
Please confirm whether any of the above capabilities exist through configuration, a SuiteApp, or an alternate workflow we may have overlooked.
