Entering Customer Deposits and Payments
Some businesses want to make their customers pay for part of the sale in advance, and in these cases, we can use the NetSuite native transaction known as Customer Deposits.
This is what the default Customer Deposit screen looks like:
Figure 15.3 – A Customer Deposit with the default, native fields
These are just like Customer Payments, except they do not have an Apply list and they're usually tied to a single Sales Order. The system will automatically apply a deposit to an Invoice once that's generated if it was linked to a Sales Order. Deposits are frequently used for larger, more expensive items and for services work where the business stands to lose money if the customer changes their mind before the work is completed. We had a client once who sold high-end saunas to consumers and businesses and each cost more than 5,000 USD. The company required a 50% deposit to be made at the time of the sale...
