URGENT: Invoicing for partial payments

Hi JDB,

I appreciate the time you've taken to share the details about what's happening with your situation, and I see why this is a bit more complicated to handle. I note that you posted this question yesterday evening, but I'm hoping the information I'm about to share with you about invoicing in QuickBooks Desktop can still help for this situation or moving forward.

It's awesome to hear that you've been using progress invoicing with your customers, and I can explain why it's not quite working with the additional items that you've added to the invoice. Progress invoicing works off an estimate to create the partial invoices for your customers. It sounds to me like you've added the additional items to the invoice itself, and in this case, there isn't a way to only send out partial amounts of an invoice.

I recommending checking in with an accountant to see how to best handle this situation for your books, but I do have a few ideas. The first thing you can consider is adding the new items to your original estimate. Since you've already invoiced from the estimate, when you go to save, the program will prompt you with a couple messages about how this can impact how the estimate is tracking. Here's a peek at those.

With the changes to the estimate, you'll be able to invoice for the additional amounts, such as for a certain percentage. However, when you have parts of the estimate that have already been fully billed, you'll see this message.

What you can do here is click OK, and then on the invoice itself, delete the lines that don't need to be invoiced again. You can do this by selecting the line in question, going to the Edit menu in the uppermost menu of the program, and selecting Delete Line. Then you'll be left with only the amounts or items you want to invoice.

Another option you have is to manually create new invoices for the added amounts rather than adding them to the existing invoice or even the estimate. That way, you can invoice the amount you want without having to try to figure out how to send partial amounts.

The reason I recommend connecting with an accountant for these options is to verify their accounting integrity. One way may be more correct than the other for your books and to adhere to accounting practices. The accountant may even have other ideas of how to approach this. It's important to me that your books don't raise any unnecessary questions should you ever be audited or need to explain your figures. One may also simply afford better communication with your customers.

If you don't already have an accountant, check out the Find an Accountant page on our website. This leads you to our database of QuickBooks-certified professionals near you so you can get accounting advice from someone who knows the program.

I hope this has been helpful. Don't hesitate to ask more questions if you have them.