Re: Is there a way to make partial payments towards an invoice?
Posted
05-28-2020
Hi there, @LiaJmt - thanks for adding your voice here and checking in on this feature! Good to hear from you. Same to you, @BIONICONE - welcome!
You may be looking specifically for our newly introduced Deposit Feature for Invoices. This will also allow you to create a single invoice to track multiple payments and reduce the amount of time you have to spend reconciling multiple payments (deposit, follow-up payments) to a single transaction or sale.
@MTW I completely respect your opinion and thoughts, and you should always do what's best for your business, however, please remain respectful of the sellers that are using Square.
We definitely understand the frustration around the lack of movement on this feature, but I need the conversation to stay productive.
For the record, I am a current square account holder, you did ask for my workaround, I gave you what works for me. If you don’t like my answer perhaps you shouldn’t have asked
papal is my work around, should this requested functionality be added after years of waiting for square, I may return to my square account.
I've been wanting to switch all my business to square from Quickbooks for a while but am hesitating because of the lack of taking partial payments which is necessary in my business. I invoice the customer for a total "package" price but ultimately take 3 payments:
Deposit
Frame Order Payment
Final Payment
I want to be able to have this all on one invoice so they can see what the total is and what payments have been applied to their invoice.
This is one of the most popular feature requests that we've received in the Community over the last 2 years, so while it's not available at the moment our Invoice team is working to evaluate and prioritize this as a product update.
Unfortunately I don't have anything new to report on this, nor can I provide a specific timeline on when it might become available, but we have an ongoing thread dating back to 2016 where our Invoices team actively posts updates.
Hey @toniacat, thanks for checking in here. We do not have any new developments that we can share about this request at this time. I would like to surface more information with our Product Liaison team on your behalf, though. Do you have more details on why it's important for your business to be able to take partial payments and what an ideal online payment option would look like? Appreciate your time. 🙂
If you and your team do not know why partial payments are important in an invoicing system, and you haven't read through the thread here to see why we'd be upset it's not even on the roadmap, I don't think Square is ready to be anything other than a payment processing platform.
No developments with over two years of requests? This is not the only thread that thoroughly details the reasons why square users need to be able to process partial payments.
One possible solution would be to allow us to split tickets but leave them open for as long as needed instead of forcing the transaction to be closed out at that exact moment- ultimately the ticket would be paid by the same customer but half as down payment and remainder for pick up/completion. Create a “store ticket” option after the first payment is entered.
I’ve been trying to transition fully to square and this lack of functionality is creating a lot of stutter starts for me as I try to envision how my client interactions will unfold moving forward.
Right now my options are to send clients 4 emails for an in person transaction - using the invoice duplicate and modify method. OR I can force them to pay in full for their work in advance or have them pay once the work is completed, which creates vulnerabilities for both of us, what if I never do the work, what if they never come pick it up? OR I can duplicate tickets in which case my records indicate I sold (i.e.) 2 items at $50 verse 1 item at $100.
I also think square is leaving money on the table on this one. It could be placed into a % + fee bracket of it’s own just like keyed transactions and invoices. The demand for this has been high and I for one would not mind having to absorb a little “more cost of business”, especially for the sake of being able to do business the way I need to.
I know this question is directed at the most recent comment, but I'd like to tell you the reasons we need this option. If a person brings a bike in to be repaired of which the replacement cost is deemed to be less than the repair, we take a downpayment. Also, sometimes people like to give partial payment ahead of time. Currently, we have to run it through as a separate item, and then refund the downpayment to apply it to the sale, otherwise it looks like our business made that amount twice. It is not good for accounting purposes. Also, sometimes one person will drop the bike off (parent or spouse) and pay the downpayment with their credit card. The person picking it up is not anticipating having to put the full amount on their card (which they would have to do if we refund that previous, unclassified amount).
Hey @Carrcomp, @Mingo, and @watbworks—thank you for taking the time to share today and I apologize for the frustration.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any updates that I can access right now. I’ll check in with our product team next week to see if there’s anything I can share out. In the meantime, our Invoices team did give some insight over in this thread: Is there a way to make partial payments towards an invoice?
In addition, if it is at all helpful—we've partnered with a handful of invoice services that may offer a solution. To have a look, head over to your App Marketplace > Invoicing & Services.
