# Investigate client balances

Client Balances helps you decide which records need investigation before or after a disbursement run. Select the Company, then filter the client or intended population. In our single-client example, Casey has two hundred dollars in payments, zero disbursements, and a two-hundred-dollar balance. The next disbursement amount is one hundred seventy seven dollars, while the next payment date is blank. Read these fields together: a positive balance does not fix a missing schedule.

Trace the balance back to the client's Accounting records. Cleared non-first payments contribute to available funds. Pending receipts do not. Disbursements normally reduce that amount even when their status is Pending, Transmitted, Hold, or Failed. Expired and Historical Failure are excluded from that subtraction. Read the linked payment or disbursement and its history before changing anything. A failed replacement and its historical original must be understood together so you do not allocate the same funds twice.

For a negative balance, compare the clearing history, disbursements, and any manual changes. For an unexpected positive balance, review account eligibility, holds, payment groups, fees, and extra-payment rules. Also check the filter dates; mismatched periods can make reports appear inconsistent. Write down the cause, the affected record IDs, and the person responsible for the correction. Do not create an offsetting payment or disbursement simply to make the displayed balance look right.

After an approved correction, reopen the affected records and run the balance report again with the same filters. Compare the before and after totals. A legitimate remaining balance may wait for the next eligible allocation or an approved refund; it does not have to be zero today. If the cause remains unresolved, keep the item in the exception workflow. Finish by recording what changed, why it changed, and the next action so another staff member can follow your reasoning.