Overview
Music Monitor can generate invoices and record payments received against those invoices. See Process Payments for guidance.
*New in 2026!* It is now possible for you to import a batch of payments from a spreadsheet and apply them to the invoices in your system. Your spreadsheet needs to include:
Debtor ID
Payment Date
Payment Amount
(Optional) Payment receipt ID
Music Monitor will then apply the payments to the oldest unpaid invoice for the relevant debtors.
Initial Setup
Login Accounts
The payment upload process requires the user to have at minimum a "Finance –
Payments" privilege set. See Manage Login Accounts for guidance on setting this up.
If you use external authentication (eg. ‘Log in with Microsoft’), the user must also be added to the external authentication group. Your IT department can do this for you.
General Settings
To work with payments in Music Monitor, the following settings must be selected:
Home > Settings wheel > General Settings
Select Student Accounts and set the options as shown.
The first setting must be "NECOM".
Select "Invoices" or "Billing Statements" to suit your circumstances.
The main difference between the two is that the Billing Statement process includes a step to import/update debtor details from the Students file.
Billing Line Item description style can be either "NECOM" or "Other".
Most of our schools use "Other".
Billing Statement Setup
Go to Home > Accounts > Setup : Billing Statement Setup
You will come to the Billing Statement Setup screen
Edit this text as needed. You can generate a billing statement to see what it looks like and then come back here and edit further if needed.
You can also set up a link that will direct customers to a payment portal if you have one to direct them to. We can help you set up the URL calculation to pre-fill some fields based on the data in the billing statement.
Process for Importing Payments
First, of course, you must have already generated billing statements (or invoices). For guidance on this see:
Prepare the Upload File
Below is the sample file that was used to create this process. This sample file was
exported from another system.
Things that matter:
It must be a csv file.
The data must include the Date Paid, Debtor ID, and Amount Paid. In the example below, these are named submit_time, trans_amt, par_code. Optionally, it can include a reference number (receipt-num in the example below).
Things that don’t matter:
Column headings.
The file can have a header row, or no header row. The columns can be named anything.The number of columns.
If you have the essential 3 (optional 4), any additional columns don’t matter. None of the other data will be imported.The order of the columns.
The process works best with date paid in column 1, amount paid in column 2, reference/receipt in column 5, debtor ID in column 6, but that’s only because we have mapped the import using the example file. You can change the mapping during the process.File name.
It can be named anything.File location.
It can be saved anywhere you can navigate to during the upload.
Upload the File
Go to Home > Accounts > Upload Payments
Navigate to where the payments sheet is saved and select it.
You will then come to a field-mapping screen, where you match the fields you're importing with the fields in Music Monitor.
Make sure the data is mapped correctly.
You can change th etarget fields by clicking and selecting a new field.
You can scroll through the records to view the data using the forward / back arrows.
If your file doesn't have a header row, select the arrow to go back to the first row and change to use as "Data".
The cogs at the right of each row determine whether auto-enter options will be
performed on the data as it’s imported. Do not change these. IDDebtor should always
be greyed out for this process.
Select Import.
The script will:
Import payment lines
Apply each payment line to the oldest, unpaid invoice for each debtor
Navigate to related invoices (billing statements)
Note: If late fees and/or early payment discounts have been set up during the invoicing process, this upload will not automatically apply these fees/discounts.
The script finishes on the Invoices List screen.
Carry Forward Credit Balances
If any payments have resulted in a credit balance on an invoice, the list will show a Carry Balance Forward button next to these invoices.
Select this button to carry the balance forward as an unbilled payment. (You can then
apply this payment to a later invoice/billing statement if required. Go to the related
Debtor > Line Items > Add to Existing invoice.)
Receipts
See Produce a Receipt for guidance on this.
Payments imported using this process will all have the "Later" option selected for receipts.