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M
maxcharron
February 23, 2021
Question

What would be the best way to invoice for a 50% deposit? I'm trying to use the new feature but it also changes the quantity by 50% and not just the total amount due.

  • February 23, 2021
  • 2 replies
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2 replies

L
LauraAB
February 23, 2021

Hello maxcharron,

 

I can tell you're hard at work in QuickBooks Online today, and I'd be happy to go over how to record deposits for your customers in the program so that you can keep both the transaction and your books in balance.

 

Knowing which feature you're looking at that's reducing the quantity of your items by 50% would be helpful in guiding you with the steps you're taking with that. It sounds like you may be using a feature called Progress Invoicing, which gives you the opportunity to create an estimate and then create invoices, even only a portion of it, from the estimate. If you're using that and saying you want 50% of the estimate created, that's why it's also reducing the quantity of items as well. This method isn't quite effective for deposits, and I can highlight the way to handle deposits on invoices.

 

In QuickBooks Online's settings, there are a few fields you can toggle for sales forms, including Deposits. This feature works by adding an extra field where you can indicate a dollar amount of what the customer is paying you, which reduces the amount owed on the invoice without impacting the line items and quantities. Here's how you can toggle that option.

  1. Select the Gear icon.
  2. Choose Account and Settings.
  3. Click the Sales tab.
  4. Click the Sales form content section.
  5. Toggle the Deposits option.
  6. Click Save.

When you go back to or create new invoices now, you'll see that field in the subtotal section under the sales tax calculated. Here's a visual of what that looks like.

 

 

If you're looking to record a retainer or some other kind of deposit instead, I'd like to point you to the following article, which outlines steps you can take to do that: Record a retainer or deposit

 

I hope this has been helpful. Feel free to reply with further insight into your situation if I'm not quite landing on what you're looking for.

 

Enjoy your day.

    M
    maxcharronAuthor
    February 24, 2021

    Thank you very much for the quick response. 

     

    I've used that "Deposit" function in the past but it also records as received payment which is not quite true as we haven't received it yet.  Is there a way around that? 

     

    Thank you. 

    Rebecca R
    Rebecca R
    February 24, 2021

    Hi there @maxcharron,

     

    It sounds to me like you're looking to send your customer an Invoice in the amount of half of their total, to act as a deposit. Since you haven't received the payment yet, I can see how adding the Deposit field to the Invoice isn't quite what you're looking for. I believe the steps that'll help you out most can be found in the article that was shared above by @LauraAB. Let me give you a hand.

     

    The article goes over how to Record a retainer or deposit and highlights how you can set up set up a deposit that's treated as a liability. This shows that your business is holding the money and that it doesn't yet belong to you until it's been used to pay for services. It breaks down how to invoice customers for these deposits and how to turn the liability into income. 

     

    The article will have you set up a Liability account at first and then an item to act as your Deposit or Retainer. Step 4 gives you the options to record either a Sales Receipt or an Invoice for these Deposits. In your case, I believe entering an Invoice is the correct process. Step 5 breaks down how you can turn your deposits into credits so that when you've received payment towards them you can record it like a payment in the system. I won't go through all the steps here because it's all laid out very clearly and with thorough steps in the article that's linked above. Please give that a read through and test it out to see if it'll work for what your business needs.

     

    I'm here if you have follow-up questions on this. Have a great day!

    D
    DGInt
    April 4, 2022

    So ridiculous that it touches the quantity field at all. Otherwise the feature of being able to control by line what the deposit is required is something that is much needed. Everything else is a workaround and not a proper business process flow. May as well go back to using excel.

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