How to take a paid customer invoice, apply a partial refund leaving a credit amount. Use credit towards a new invoice and show balance in credit to be used in the future

Hi there beatriz3,

Making sure your transactions are represented correctly is an important part of your bookkeeping. QuickBooks Online is a great tool that's able to help you keep track of your payables and receivables. I can point you in the right direction.

In order to make sure the transactions reflect your books correctly, I recommend speaking to your accountant. Their accounting knowledge and understanding of best business practices will be able to tell you how you should eliminate the original invoice, whether it's to void, delete or create a Journal Entry to reverse it. You can add your accountant to your QuickBooks account to give them access to your books by navigating to the My accountant tab. You can enter their contact info to send them an invitation by email. If you don't have an accountant and want to find one near you, you can click on the Find a pro to help button.

As for creating the partial refund for the overpayment, you can create a Cheque or Expense to apply to the payment by following the steps provided in this article on how to handle customer overpayments.

If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out here.

Hi Beatriz!

1. From your menu, go to Invoicing-> Products and Services.  Create a new item for Deposits linked to a short-term liability account on your balance sheet to represent the money customers have given you in advance of a project beeing completed.

2. Create an invoice for the first deposit payment, selecting the newly created deposit item above.  If applicable,additionally record the deposit to your bank account marking the deposit invoice paid.

3. Once paid, from your menu go to New-> Customers-> Delayed Credit, and create a credit for the amount of the deposit.  This will come off the final invoice upon the final bill.

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 as needed for any deposits prior to project completion.

5. Issue the final invoice, making sure to add any outstanding delayed credits to the invoice as well.  This will ensure the full tax and revenue for the project is correctly recorded in the period of project completion, and reduce the final bill (eliminating the liability) but the assigned credit notes.

Hope this helps!