How do I put a negative amount in an invoice to a customer?

[karenaa]

I need to take a deposit from my clients.  But when I try to put a negative amount on their invoice to reflect the deposit they have paid, it wont accept it.

How am I supposed to show this deposit payment on their invoice?

[Helen · Accepted solution]

 Thanks for your post @karenaa!

Update 2019: You can request deposits with Square Invoices! 🎉

If your customer has already paid their deposit, you could create a discount called 'Deposit paid'. That way you can you apply the discount to the invoice you send your customer for the remaining balance to be paid, the discount will appear as a separate line in your invoice showing that $50 has been deducted from the total. Specifically, the Invoice will say Deposit Paid $50.00 Off. 

If you want to send a customer an Invoice to confirm you received their deposit for $50 (completed outside of Square or by cash/check), you can send them the invoice and then mark it as paid from your Square Dashboard or from the app.

[karenaa]

I have put the deposit as a discount but then it doesnt show up on the sales report

[mike109]

Hi @Helen. I am running into this need as well, but specifically related to sales tax. We need to credit the customer for an item from a previous invoice (we would rather add a credit to the current invoice than issue a refund on the past invoice), but with adding it as a discount doesn't factor in the sales tax that was paid on the item correctly. Instead, it would be nice to enter a custom amount with a negative number, and have the sales tax refund calculated at the product level so it matches exactly the product and corresponding sales tax from the original invoice.

[Helen]

Hi again @mike109, thanks for your post. So I can surface this to the Invoices team, do you find that you need to credit an item often? @ACAcatering Do you have any workarounds to share for this use case in th meantime? (ACACatering is a Community SuperSeller that uses invoices!) 

Also quick update for @karenaa who created this thread - you can now request deposits with Square Invoices! 

[mike109]

Thanks @Helen. We credit customers for items on invoices occassionally, but I think for us it's just ensuring that we can keep our sales tax numbers accurate when we do credit a customer for items on their previous invoice. In terms of invoice credits, one other thing that I know we do run into a lot is that we have a lot of customers who like to over-pay their invoices, and then we credit any overpayment from the previous invoice on their new invoice. Having a way to track those credits at a customer level automatically would be a really nice feature to have (if it doesn't exist already). In the past we have had to track it all manually, which becomes pretty tedious and easy to miss. Thanks!

[ACAcatering]

Sorry it took me so long to respond.  This isn't something that I've had to deal with on my end.  I can't think of anyway to work around that.  Thanks for the tag though, Helen!  

[Poiema82]

We also run into this problem all the time. We are a business with stable monthly invoices to a stable group of customers. Ever now and then someone will pay us the wrong amount by accident. Instead of trying to collect on an old invoice, it's easier to just carry any balance forward to the new invoice. How do we cancel the remaining portion of the invoice or edit the invoice to show a Balance Carryover Adjustment. I tried to create an Item and put in a negative amount but that is not allowed.

[kmasher]

Hi Helen 

I know this is an old thread but we are experiencing the same issue as @mike109

A regular customer has overpaid and would like the credit to remain on account for future billings. How do we apply the payment to future billings until the credit has been exhausted?

This would be most helpful for better customer experience. 

My customer cannot understand (for obvious reasons) why I must refund, instead of leave on account.

The tax treatment is not correct if I add the credit to next invoice as a discount. Besides, my credit is larger than the next invoice so I would be carrying another credit amount.

The audit trail on customer's account is not clear without looking at each invoice.

Kind regards

Kirsteen

[Arie]

Hi @kmasher,

Thanks for writing in and re-surfacing this request. 

I understand your frustration not having the ability to record negative amounts on invoices at the moment. While I'm not aware of a workaround that would allow you to note this credit, I'll go ahead and highlight this request. We continue to advocate for all suggestions we receive in the community, and take the feedback we receive here into account when developing new features. If you haven't already, feel free to join our Beta Community, too, where we often reach out to sellers to try new features before they're released. 

[cj12345]

second, third and quadrouple this request. i need to apply a discount for  line item, for each of the same item. FOr example, someone buys 15-30 of something, and they are a non-profit, i give $40 off of EACH item, not $40 off of the total. I would like to not have to calculate this and i would like to be able to mark it "non-profit dicount" as opposed to needing to figure it out everytime and add it to the discount list just before going to the invoice so that the "discount" will have a title. It would be a really helpful workaround if you would allow negative line items, then i could just add the same number of items with the discount. 

ALso, i would like to be able to take deposits via ACH. If deposits are non-refundable, why can't i take ACH for them???

[Laurie_]

Hi @cj12345,

Thanks for adding your voice to the conversation! We hear you on this. I've gone ahead and sent your feedback directly to our product team. We'll be sure to share any updates as they become available.

By ACH payments, do you mean Automated Clearing House? If so, this is not something that is applicable here in Australia. This is the Australian Seller Community. You may want to jump onto the US Seller Community for localised information on this topic.

 

[sunkensilo]

I have the same problem.  I drop a keg of beer to a customer and charge a deposit on the invoice.  I don't write the invoice until after the delivery when I've collected kegs from previous purchases.  It would be helpful to be able to enter negative item quantities so that reports would net the deposits and show a current aggregate of deposits held which is helpful for accounting purposes and sales reporting.

[rseconnectuit]

Same here, I'd like to go to a customer, record a credit so the next time I got to invoice them this credit will come up for this customer and so I don't forget. thanks

[Laurie_]

@rseconnectuit thanks for reaching out!

We'll continue to track this with our Product Team and will be sure to share any updates here as they're received.