Prepayment

[Sjoerd]

Occasionally I require a deposit to start an assignment. How can I subtract and specify such a deposit or prepayment from the total amount due using the invoice module?

[Adam]

While you cannot create the Invoice until you have item, you can enter the Payment.  You would just enter the payment as you normally would, but you would not do the second Apply step.  After you have done the work, then create the invoice.  Email it to yourself and mark as Billed.  Then you can apply the payment and generate the invoice again and it will show the amount minus the payment.  If you want, you can skip the step of emailing to yourself by going into the Manage Invoices, select the invoice and change the status from Pending to Billed and then apply the payment.

[Sjoerd]

I understand, but I would like to make the prepayment visible on the invoice. Also, if we for instance have to make a correction by subtracting an amount from (a next) invoice, we want to show that on the invoice.
In other words: it would be nice to enter a negative expense amount ("discount").

[Adam]

Payments do show on the invoice.  After you have "Applied" the payment, just regenerate the invoice and you will see it and the adjusted total.

We do have a "Discount" option on the Invoices as well.  In the Extra's section, just choose Discount and set the Discount Type (percentage or amount) and then enter the Amount.  One important note is that discounts are taken before Taxes, so if you are discounting your invoice, that is a good way to do it.

As far as payments go, you can Apply a payment to one or more invoices.  So it could pay two, three or more different invoices.

[pvollers]

 I use this app for my law firm billing and it would be much more helpful if a full prepayment (retainer) could be shown on the invoice in full regardless of the amount of work completed.  In other words, it would be great to be able to show a credit balance at the bottom by showing full payments with all of their information in the body of the invoice.   Right now, the only way I can do this is with the deposit function, but that only shows an aggregate credit in the totaling section at the bottom of the invoice rather than the particular date, amount and notes of the payment. 

In a nutshell, what would be great is to be able to apply ALL of any payment to the invoice, regardless of whether there are enough time entries to eat up the payment.  We should be able to just show a payment alone on an invoice with a full credit balance at the bottom if need be.

Thoughts?

[Adam]

You can do this.  If you have a payment amount that you are looking to "get rid of" (for lack of a better term).  What you do is create a "Debit" for whatever payment amount is left.  Apply that Debit to the Invoice and then you can apply the rest of the payment, thus making it zero.

We are also going to add an Unapplied Payments Amount to the Statements.  It sounds like this is something that a few people were looking for who either work with Retainers or Trust Funds, so they can know what Unapplied payment amounts are left.