Prepayment overpayment warning
When you add a prepayment to a purchase order from the PO Payments tab or from the Bills → Record Prepayment dialog, Luminous checks whether the amount you entered would push the total payments beyond what the purchase order is actually worth.
If it would, a warning dialog appears before anything is saved.
What the dialog shows
The dialog breaks down the figures so you can make an informed decision:
| Field | What it means |
|---|---|
| Purchase order total | The combined cost + shipping cost on the linked PO(s) |
| Already paid | All prepayments and payments already recorded against those POs |
| Remaining balance | What is still owed (purchase order total minus already paid) |
| This prepayment | The amount you just entered |
| Over by | How much your prepayment exceeds the remaining balance |
All figures are shown in the purchase order's currency.
Your options
Fix the amount — Click Cancel to return to the prepayment form and lower the amount to match the remaining balance.
Record it anyway — If the overpayment is intentional (for example, you are pre-funding future PO lines or the PO total will be updated), click Record anyway. The prepayment is saved exactly as entered.
When the warning does not appear
The guard is skipped in a few cases where there is nothing meaningful to compare against:
- The purchase order has no costs entered yet (a PO still at zero is not treated as a ceiling of zero — that would warn on every prepayment recorded before costs are keyed in).
- The prepayment is not linked to any purchase order (vendor-level prepayments have no PO total to measure against).
- The prepayment is submitted via the External API — integrations do not show dialogs, so the warning is suppressed for API callers.
Frequently asked questions
The warning fired but I know the PO total is higher than shown — why? The dialog computes the PO total from the costs already saved on the PO. If your PO's line costs have not been entered or updated yet, the total shown may be lower than expected. Enter the correct costs on the PO first, then record the prepayment.
Can I be blocked from recording a prepayment outright? No. The warning is advisory. You are always able to choose Record anyway and proceed.
Does this affect the Bills module "Record Prepayment" flow? Yes — the same warning appears when you record a prepayment from the Bills module, not only from the PO Payments tab.