Record a payment on an invoice

1. Go to Invoicing › Invoices and open the invoice.
2. Click Record payment.
3. Enter the amount, date, and method, then save.

The method is Manual (cash, a cheque or anything else), e-Transfer, Stripe or Square. A customer credit or a deposit the customer paid in advance is not recorded as a payment: use Apply credit or Apply deposit on the invoice instead, and HQ refuses a payment recorded as either one.

With Stripe, the form also asks for the Stripe payment reference. When your Stripe account is connected in Ledger › Setup, enter it: open the payment in your Stripe Dashboard under Payments and copy its ID, which starts with pi_. HQ ties the payment to that charge, so the Stripe payout that carries it books Stripe's fee rather than counting the same money again as a sale, and a refund or dispute of it comes back onto the invoice by itself. Enter the full amount the client paid, not what landed after Stripe's fee. Left blank, HQ looks for the payment itself, which finds one the client made from the invoice's own portal link. HQ refuses a Stripe payment it cannot tie to a charge, a different amount, and a payment Stripe does not show as completed yet; nothing is recorded, so you can add the reference and try again. On an invoice in another currency, HQ does not record a Stripe payment by hand at all: a card payment there is recorded from the client's payment link, at what Stripe converted it to, so confirm its pending payment on the invoice instead.

When your Stripe account is connected and HQ can see that the client already paid this invoice by card from its payment link, but that card payment is not recorded yet, Record payment by any other method is refused and names the amount Stripe shows. Confirm the card payment under Payments on the invoice (or record it with method Stripe) instead, so the money is counted once: Stripe also pays it out to you. A cheque or e-Transfer for the rest then records as usual. If Stripe can't be reached, HQ records your payment, and the Stripe payout that carries the card payment is held out of your books (Ledger › Health lists it) until the card payment is settled on the invoice. If the client really paid twice, refund the card payment from the Stripe dashboard and then Reject the pending payment on the invoice. Rejecting the card payment without refunding it would count the same money twice.

If the payment you recorded (e-Transfer or Manual, or Mark paid) was that card payment, open the invoice: under Payments, HQ names the card payment and offers This was the card payment beside your recorded payment. It first shows what it will do in figures, then takes your recorded payment back out of the books and records the card payment in its place, both dated today, so the Stripe payout posts and the money is counted once. A payment in a locked or filed period is never changed there: the correction is dated today. If the two amounts differ, the difference stays on the invoice: what is still owing, or money above what is owed kept as the client's credit. If your recorded payment was more than the invoice and HQ kept the rest as the client's credit, that credit is taken back with it. It can't be undone, and it needs full access to the books. HQ refuses it, and changes nothing, for a payment already matched to a bank deposit (that money reached your bank, so it isn't the card payment), a payment marked paid from a PayPal email (that money came through PayPal), a payment whose credit the client has since used, while today is in a locked period, and on an invoice in another currency, where you contact support instead.

The date is the day the money arrived, and it starts on today. It can be an earlier day, so a payment received last month lands in last month, but never a day after today: HQ refuses a future date, because money cannot have arrived yet. HQ goes by that date, not the day you recorded it, everywhere the payment is dated: the invoice's Payments section, the client's statement and payment history, and Paid · month to date on Invoicing › Overview.

The payment appears in the invoice's Payments section and reduces what the client still owes. When payments fully cover the invoice, it's marked paid. A partial payment leaves the balance outstanding so you can record the rest later.

Payments your client makes online from the invoice's portal link, through Stripe or Square, record themselves once the processor completes them. If one arrives for an invoice that is cancelled or already paid, HQ holds it as the client's customer credit instead and raises a card in Ledger › Health so you can apply it to another invoice or refund it from your bank account. If one of those could not be recorded, it waits as a pending payment with a card of its own: check it in Stripe or Square, refund it from their dashboard if it completed, and Reject the pending payment.

A cancelled invoice has nothing owing, so Record payment refuses it. If the customer paid a cancelled invoice anyway, record the money as a customer credit on the deposit in Banking.