Why do you have to "add a customer" for a paid invoice?

[Clay]

Why do you have to "add a customer" for an invoice that has been paid.  If I send an invoice to a customer and then they pay it why do you have to click on the ... and then, click add customer, then search for the customer and the select the customer.  Shouldn't Square know that the customer that I sent the invoice to and has paid it should be automatically added to the sale?

[Solo]

im facing the same problem, i have recurring invoices set up, once the invoices shows as unpaid and the customer pay them using other payment method, i mark it as paid, but when i go to the transactions page and open the invoice as you pointed out there is no customer linked to that invoice, i do have the option to add it at the top right corner, but it isnt practical, sometimes i mark multiple invoices as paid before having the chance to go to the transactions page, so it will be hard to know which invoice belongs to each customer

[Clay]

That is basically the same issue but it happens even when the customer pays with their credit card as well.  It does not make sence to me that you can send an invoice to a customer and then it is paid (by any method) and then Square can not figure out what customer it belongs to even though that is the customer that you send the invoice to and has paid it.

It seems to be a bug or a flaw in the system.

[Solo]

this just happend to me...

a customer paid online via the pay now button on the invoice, when i checked the transaction the customer linked to it says unknown instead of the name of the customer. at the botton of the page it does say it was pay towards the invoice of the original client and i have a link to check the original invoice there, the problem with this is that if i want to know later on the activity of that client it wont show the payment of that invoince since it isnt linked to them, so i had to manually remove the unknown from the transaction and add the correct customer. unfortunetely i change the name of the customer before making a screenshot.

[Spenser]

Hmm, interesting, thanks for bringing this to my attention, @Clay and @Solo. Just wanted to comment that I'm going to look into this a bit more and will report back later. Thanks!

[Spenser]

I tried testing this out and was not able to reproduce the issue myself, @Clay @Solo.

I sent a couple invoices to others - creating a new customer for one and adding an existing one on another -  and once they were paid, the transactions appeared in the Customer Directory activity without further action on my part. 

In any case, it's strange that it would occur for both of you. Do you have a transaction in your activity that we can look at, and report, as an example? I won't ask for you to share account specific info here in the Community, but you can send me a private message with details, or contact us directly, and we can look into it further.

[Solo]

hi, thanks for the quick reply, right now i dont have any, but today i had to fix that problem more than 10 times, every invoice marked as paid resulted in not having the customer linked to it. tomorrow for sure i will have one for you to look at, just let me know what info do you need.

[Solo]

this is from today, this invoice was paid online with a credit card, now when you look at it in the transactions page, there is no customer linked to it. 

i expanded the option button on the top right so you  see that i can add a customer to it and at the bottom you can read "payment received via invoice XXXX to customer name" and you can view the original invoice. in which you can see the customer's name.

this happens every single time an invoice is paid or marked as paid. i hope this helps

[Spenser]

Thanks for the example, @Solo. So, two things: 

When I view your account, the transaction is linked to the customer, and in their history; have you since updated it? 

If not, then this might just be a browser issue. If so, can you let me know when you have another invoice, and hold off on updating it so I can show the example to others here? Appreciate the help!

[Solo]

i updated it after taking the screenshots, i will hold the next one so you can take a look, this should be in the next 5 hours. i'll let you know

[Solo]

hi @Spenser can you take a look to my account? i have an invoice there with the problem described earlier

update: now i have arround 5 invoices without the customers linked to them, they have been paid in cash, check, other. all resulting in no customer linked to them. only one went well, that invoice was paid with credit card trough the POS and then the invoice was marked as paid.

also i have noted that all invoices with the problem are colleted by an employee (in this case the owner)

[Clay]

hi @Spenser  Take a look at invoice #69 in my account.  I have linked most of the others by manual means but as you can see,  you can hit the "..." add customer even though it is sent to a Customer and paid by that customer.  you can see the customer a the bottom where the credit card information is.

[Dancer]

We have the same issue with Invoices and Customer account information not linking to each other. The activity or sales transactions have no identifying reference to the customer who paid on the invoice, nor does the activity show in the customer account. For our first go at sending invoices it has proven to be very unuseful. We'd tried Square first (better rate), but our other option looks more complete and polished.

Other than not receiving the funds, this is a pretty big reason to only use Square for POS.

[Spenser]

Thank you all for the examples and help with this! I'm going to pass it on to our Invoices team to take a look, and will update again when I know more.

[Dancer]

There is also a problem when viewing "Activity" in the Square POS app. Same issue where a paid invoice will show as a transaction without referencing the customer who paid, via invoice. Or any transaction you added a customer to. We spent a bit of time tracing a transaction from a paid invoice. Not worth the time to manually open each invoice to research. It needs to include any customer information in the summaries. I'd say look at any other invoice options (QuickBooks, PayPal, etc. to get an example of the best practice. 

[Solo]

Hi @Spenser any updates about this? 

for us this is a permanent problem, everytime we mark an invoice as paid we have to manually add the customer to it.

[Spenser]

Still waiting to hear myself, @Solo. Really sorry about the delay however, and will try to press for specifics myself. Thanks again!

[Solo]

hello @Spenser any news about this issue? we are still having the same problem

[Spenser]

Not the best of news, @Solo - at least for now, this will continue functioning in this way. After I reported it, it was brought to my attention that this has come up before and is on the Invoices' team's radar. With Invoices marked as paid (other tender) such as yours, the customer will have to be added by you manually unfortunately. 

Not the best outcome but if I hear otherwise and this changes, I'll let know. 

[cierrajoyner]

ok, I am havin a very similar problem, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to link my customers in my directory to my customers invoice. I created the customer first and then sent an invoice. I don't see anywhere to connect them. Please help. 

[Chad]

Hello @cierrajoyner, when creating your invoice if you add a customer as the recipient their profile will automatically be linked. Once your customer pays the amount will appear in the customer profile under activity. If the customer hasn't paid yet then there probably won't be any info there unless they are a returning customer. 

I hope this helps! Please let me know if you still have questions or want clarification on anything. 😀