Deposits, instalments and final invoices

Most of the businesses OrderDen is built for do not sell on Net 30. They sell on half now, the rest when it goes in — because the timber has to be bought before the wardrobe can be fitted, and because a deposit is the only thing that turns a maybe into a booking.

Three things make that work here:

• Payment terms you name yourself, which can ask for a deposit.
• A deposit on a quote, invoiced the moment the client accepts.
• A payment schedule on a project: instalments or milestones, each becoming its own invoice when its moment comes.

Payment terms

Company Settings → Payment terms is the list every client, quote, order and invoice can point at. You start with the ones everybody has — Due on receipt, Net 15, Net 30, Net 60, Net 90 — plus two that matter more:

• 50% deposit, balance on delivery
• 30% deposit, balance Net 15

A term says two things. The deposit — a percentage of the project or a fixed amount, and how many days after acceptance it falls due (zero, usually). When the balance falls due — a number of days after the invoice, on receipt of it, on delivery, or on completion.

The last two are events rather than dates, and OrderDen treats them honestly: an invoice raised under them starts with no due date and gets one when the thing happens. That is deliberate — it is what stops the payment reminders chasing a balance nobody has agreed a day for.

What a term says in your own words goes in Printed on documents, and that is what appears on the quote and the invoice. Set one as the default and new clients and documents start on it; a client's own term (on their record) beats the workspace default.

Renaming or deleting a term never changes paperwork already written: documents keep the terms printed on them and simply stop pointing at the row.

Deposits on a quote

On the quote form, Ask for a deposit on acceptance — a percentage or a fixed amount. Picking a term that already asks for one fills it in for you.

The quote then shows, under its total:

The same three lines print on the PDF and appear on the client's share page, so nobody is surprised.

What acceptance does

The moment the quote is accepted — by the client on their share link, or by you on the quote page — OrderDen:

1. raises a deposit invoice for that amount, at the quote's own tax rate;
2. emails it with your Deposit request template, the PDF attached and a link to pay it;
3. records the lot in the quote's history.

With a payment account connected (see Getting paid online) the client can pay it there and then, which is the whole point: a deposit invoice raised on Tuesday and remembered on Friday is a deposit that gets paid next month.

Accepting twice — a double-click, a page reloaded — raises one deposit invoice. The second attempt finds the first.

Payment schedules

For a project that runs longer than one invoice, the Money tab on an order (and the same editor on a quote) holds a payment schedule: a list of stages, each a percentage of the contract or a fixed amount, each with a trigger.

Percentages must add up to 100%, and the last one absorbs the rounding, so three stages of 33.333% on a £1,000 project come to 333.33, 333.33 and 333.34 rather than losing a penny. Mixing a fixed first stage with percentage ones is fine: the percentages then share whatever the fixed stages have not claimed.

A schedule agreed on a quote travels with it when the quote converts to an order — the agreement about money exists exactly when it starts to matter.

Create invoice on a stage raises that stage's own invoice, one line, described as the stage. Once a stage has been invoiced it locks: an invoice points at it, and letting somebody re-price a stage they have already billed would leave the two disagreeing about a project that is half done.

Money paid on an order

A deposit is usually asked for on a quote. Sometimes the money arrives later and less formally: the customer looks at the order you sent them and pays for it, before anybody has raised a bill.

That works, and it works the same way. Pressing Pay on an order's share link raises a deposit invoice for what is left of the order, at the order's own tax rate, and takes the payment against it. From that point it is an ordinary deposit — it shows on the Money tab, it counts as paid on the project, and the final invoice deducts it exactly as it deducts a quote's deposit.

One invoice per order however many times the button is pressed, so a customer who starts a payment and comes back to it later does not end up with two.

Once an order has been invoiced, that invoice is what gets paid instead: at that point the debt exists and has its own document, and putting more money on account against it is how somebody pays twice.

The final invoice

Close the project out on the order's Money tab bills the whole contract and deducts everything already paid on it:

The deduction is a real line on the invoice, not a smaller number you are asked to trust. It is never taxed again — the tax went out with the deposit — and the deposit invoice plus the final invoice add up to the project exactly once, so your revenue figures are right whichever document you look at.

Only money that has actually arrived is deducted. A deposit raised and not paid is not a payment, and a final invoice that deducted it would ask the client for less than they owe. A part-paid deposit deducts what was part-paid.

Closing out a week at once. Tick the orders on the list and choose Raise invoices — each one closes out as its own draft invoice, with this same deduction applied. See Invoicing an order.

Where to see how a project stands

The Money tab on an order gives you four numbers and a bar:

• Contract — what the project is worth
• Invoiced — what has been billed (drafts excluded)
• Paid — what has arrived
• Left to invoice — contract less invoiced

Underneath, every deposit and progress payment already paid on the project, each linking to its invoice.

Two reports work across all of them:

• Reports → Cash flow forecast — what is expected in, week by week, for eight weeks: the invoices already raised (by their due date) and the instalments agreed but not yet invoiced, kept apart because one is a debt and the other is a plan. Anything already overdue sits in the first week, because it is expected now.
• The Deposits outstanding dashboard widget — deposit and progress invoices raised and not yet paid. A deposit that has been invoiced and forgotten is the most expensive paperwork a workshop keeps.

Through the API

• GET/POST /api/v1/payment-terms, GET/PUT/DELETE /api/v1/payment-terms/{id}
• Quotes accept paymentTermId, depositRequired, depositPercent, depositFixed
• GET/PUT /api/v1/orders/{id}/schedule and POST /api/v1/orders/{id}/schedule/{stepId}/invoice
• POST /api/v1/orders/{id}/prepayment-invoice — take money for an order before it has been billed
• POST /api/v1/orders/{id}/final-invoice
• POST /api/v1/orders/bulk with { "action": "invoice", "ids": [] } — close a week of orders out at once; add "payload": { "combine": true } for one bill per client
• POST /api/v1/invoices/combined with { "orderIds": [] } — one invoice for several of one client's orders
• Invoices expose kind (STANDARD / DEPOSIT / PROGRESS / FINAL), appliedDeposits, balance and billedOrders (each order on a combined invoice, with its share)
• GET /api/v1/reports/cash-flow-forecast