How do you create an invoice with a zero balance?

[amjessey]

We have a need to issue Invoices with £0 value. We sometimes choose to give a product to a customer free of charge as a gesture of goodwill, or it free because of a promotion. In these scenarios we need to discount the invoice by 100%.

[tranguyen]

Hi @amjessey, thank you for sharing this! 

I don't have a timeline on when this will be available but I will be sure to follow-up once I have more information or if I find another workaround for this in the meantime. 

[amjessey]

Hi @tranguyen 

Has a decision been made as to when this issue will be fixed? 

Thank you

[tranguyen]

Hey @amjessey, thanks for checking in on this!

From looking on my end, I don't have any timeline to share right now as to when this will be available. I will definitely keep you posted when I have more information from the team. 

[amjessey]

Hi @tranguyen 

Can you think of a workaround?

I have just sent an invoice to a client showing £1 due and to be paid by him - so I have to tell him actually to ignore it and not to pay it and apologise for the confusion.

I then pay it with my own personal money so the money reconciles in the bank!

It would be good if we could avoid this bother. I hope there is a fix soon.

Thank you.

[tranguyen]

Hey @amjessey, I have been looking for another workaround but aside from creating a transaction on the Square Point of Sale app and comp the item, there doesn't seem to be another workaround for invoices at the moment. 

[Sam_400º]

It’s not really an invoice if there’s nothing to pay though right? 

Could you just do it as a sale, 100% discount and then send them the email receipt. There is then a record for you and paperwork for them too. 

[amjessey]

Hi @Sam_400º 

We make the products we sell and this takes about 10 weeks. At the start we create an Invoice with a payment schedule of 50% deposit and balance 10 weeks later. I think Invoices is the only way to do this. Even if we discount a product by 100% we still need to issue an invoice as per the above workflow as the goods will not be ready to 10 weeks and Invoices are a neat way of managing this schedule. We could run the sale in Square POS however we'd much rather have every sale as an Invoice rather than have some managed in POS and some in Invoices.   

[amjessey]

Hi @tranguyen 

We regularly create invoices which are then discounted 100%. Because the minimum we can reduce the invoice to is £1, this leads to confusion for our clients. This is because whenever they look at the invoice they see that £1 is owing when in fact it is not. We then tell him to ignore the request to pay; that it's something that is out of our control.

We still need to settle the £1 debt which we do using a Gift Card which i have issued myself. When the Gift Card is entered as payment, the client then receives a notification by email, "You made payment for an invoice!". We then have to tell him to ignore that too. 

The fix to this issue is to allow Invoices to be discounted by 100% to £0. We hope this is something that will be available soon. 

Thank you.

[amjessey]

Hello @tranguyen 

Any news?

This continues to confuse our clients and we will be forever spending time explaining this peculiarity unless there is a fix.

Thank you.

[tranguyen]

Hi @amjessey, thanks for checking up on this! Unfortunately I still don't have a date for when this feature will be rolled out I'm afraid. I'll keep an eye on this and share more when I have an update. 

[amjessey]

Hi @tranguyen 

We continue to explain to our clients (see below) why they are receiving payment receipts for £1 when they have made zero payment, having been previously told that the sale is discounted by 100%.

Some clients have been telling us they think these automated payment receipt emails are spam and sure enough have marked them so, which means subsequent payment receipts will be sent to their spam folder.

Hello,

I hope you are well.

You may have received a payment receipt like the one below in the last few minutes, which you can ignore. This is just to confirm that the sale was discounted by 100% and there was nothing to pay.

Kind regards,
Alex

Invoice Paid
£1.00
Paid on 26 August 2021
Complimentary Shirt
Invoice #000115
26 August 2021
Customer

[REDACTED]

Invoice summary
Shirt
£195.00
Discount
-£194.00

Subtotal £1.00
Included Tax (£0.17)

Total Paid £1.00
Square Gift Card 7854 26/08/21, 9:55

[tranguyen]

Hey @amjessey, thank you for sharing this! I know this feature has been asked for a long time and I appreciate your patience while we work on it. Our teams will be looking at features planned for next year soon, so I'll make sure to surface this with them again and try to get more updates. 

[amjessey]

Hi @tranguyen 

Can you share any information on when this feature might become available?

Thank you

[tranguyen]

Hey @amjessey! From chatting with the team, at the moment, there is no immediate plan to make this feature available but I'll definitely follow up on this thread when I have any update from them. 

[amjessey]

Related post: https://www.sellercommunity.com/t5/Questions-How-To/How-do-you-create-an-invoice-with-a-zero-balance...

[amjessey]

Related post: 

https://www.sellercommunity.com/t5/Questions-How-To/How-do-I-sell-an-item-for-0-00/m-p/40269/highlig... 

[amjessey]

Hi @tranguyen 

Similarly, we need a way of keeping an invoice, that is paid in full ahead of the balance due date, open so that other items can be added to it at a later date. Currently, this is not possible as once it's paid in full it becomes closed.

The workaround, which we don't want to be the permanent solution, is to add a £1 item called 'temp' so that when the invoice is paid in full there is actually £1 outstanding. 

Please forward this feedback to the relevant team.

Thank you.