Need Help?/Official ShootQ Support/Knowledgebase
Invoice Changes
Justin Lund
posted this on September 07, 2011 08:06
Partial Payments
One of the most requested features is finally here! If you've got a merchant account, e.g. Authorize.Net, Beanstream, Skipjack, etc., your clients can now make partial payments.
Payment Details
- A minimum payment of $10.00 is required (unless the remaining balance is less).
- A partial payment cannot be made if the payment is overdue.
- A client can pay extra, in advance of the payment date.
Existing Orders
To implement this new feature, we had to change a few things under the hood. If you want to support partial payments for existing orders, you'll simply need to recreate the order.
Note: Partial payments are not available for Pictage P3 or Google Checkout merchant accounts.
Comments
Seriously? You are owned by Pictage and cannot find a way to make this work with P3? Why bother?
So it appears if the client is making the first payment (which I have designated as the retainer of $500.00) he/she can pay more or less, is this correct? Previously the client had to pay the amount specified which was nice because I can't reserve the date until the full $500 is paid. Have we lost that functionality?
Hey Robert,
There is a big difference between P3 and a traditional merchant account. With a traditional merchant account in ShootQ, your client is required to enter their credit card information each time they make payment. With P3, your client enters their credit card information one time and is charged based on the payment schedule you've defined. It doesn't make sense to have partial payments in P3 since it's a "set it and forget it service" for your client, so we didn't implement it.
Hi Ron,
This new change does affect the functionality of paying the first payment in full. We debated this exact point for some time and thought it best to allow partial payments on all payments, even the first.
The idea is that if the bride and groom and the parents of the bride want to split the retainer, they can now do so. The bride and groom choose the package and add ons, fill out their wedding day details, sign the contract then make the partial payment on the retainer. The bride's parents can then log in and pay the remaining balance of the retainer. Forcing full payment on the retainer didn't allow for this to happen before without a lot of manual credit card processing.
ShootQ still requires you to accept the booking before it is set on your calendar. I'd recommend that if your client doesn't pay the retainer in full then you reject the booking. After rejecting a booking, ShootQ automatically asks if you'd like to send the client an email where you can let them know you can't reserve the date without the full retainer paid.
Can we turn this feature off if we do not want it?
thanks.
Hi Justin
That was a pretty good answer, we didn't have to give up much for a much greater flexibility. I was slightly disappointed that you didn't change the payment structure to a suggestion I had made in another thread. When I heard that you all were going to update the invoice system I was very hopeful. Basically it's the method we have to use when determining how payments will be split up. When I present a proposal I usually present more than 1 package. I require the first payment of $500 as my retainer upon booking then I want to divide the total outstanding balance up into 2 equal payments (or more if the client requests) but as it stands right now, we have to divide the remaining payments up by a percentage of the total package price.
So right now I require them to pay the $500 retainer upon booking, then the 2nd payment is set up to be 40% of the total package price due 90 days prior, and the 3rd payment (and last payment) is the outstanding balance due 30 days prior. So the 2nd and 3rd payment are not equal, and I would prefer the payments to be the equally divided between the total outstanding balance after making the retainer payment. Is that as clear as mud?
I understand there is the option to split the outstanding balance up in an equal number of payments, depending upon how many payments you want them to make, but that also distributes those payment up in an equal amount of time-span before the wedding date, and I don't want that. I what the 2nd and 3rd payments to be due upon the dates I specify ( i.d. 2nd payment is due 90 days prior to the event date, and 3rd payment is due 30 days prior to the event date).
Would that be something that is easy to incorporate, or would it take an act of Congress?
We have been excited for this update, and are thrilled that it's here. Understandable that not everyone can be happy with one solution, but know that we are! You're right Justin, you can either reject the proposal, or not accept it until another payment reaching the minimum deposit amount has been made. It definitely does not add any steps for us, and makes it incredibly convenient for the bride - which we are all about!
Thank you ShootQ for continuing to develop!
(though I was disappointed when you merged with Pictage - at least I have not seen any quality in your customer service diminish to their level.)
@Adam - no, there is no integration for hardware peripherals like USB card readers. I'm unaware of anyone doing this in a web app right now. It's a neat idea, especially if you book a lot of events in-studio.
@Linda - There's no way to turn this new feature off right now. We initially considered this but thought this new feature would be globally useful. If we get a lot of feedback, we can look into disabling it.
@Ron - I understand what you're describing. That's more a feature for the creation of the payment schedule. I would think this would be easier to do with our new invoice system. We're working through a pretty big development queue but I'll be sure we investigate this further. My first thought is to split the balance and have the auto-calculated dates be editable.
@Elizabeth - Thanks for the lovin'! You may be surprised to hear that we've trained the support team at Pictage HQ and they've been handling ShootQ support for some time. They've been killing it!
Thanks Justin. I book almost everything in studio, and I do a lot of in-personal prints sales so a lot of awkward time is felt while I manually enter in CC info, address, phone number, etc. for each transaction. I use chase paymentech, and they have a very simply web terminal that works with any standard USB ready. I'll give you a big high five if you'd at least look into it for us all :) BTW, the card reader I use is made by Mag Tek.
So do I have this right - we cannot, NOT, have the "Payment Schedule" showing on the invoices?
Love that the payment schedule is listed on one invoice now!! However, I need to send an invoice reminder...how do I go about doing that now since the "send reminder now" link is no longer there? I would have send the client an email when the order was created however I needed to apply a discount and didn't want an invoice being sent without the discount having been applied. Please help!!! Thanks! :)
@Adam - we'll give it a look.
@Christine - The payment schedule will show on the invoice.
@Genya - That was an oversight and we're already working on adding it back in the next maintenance release. A short-term workaround is to go into the client area, view the invoice, copy the link and email it to your client. You can also include the client security code with a variable in a template.
Perfect!!! Thanks so much!
super happy with the updates! thank you guys so much for continually working to make shootq the best at working for us! :)
Where is the "Send a reminder" option in the invoice?
Hi Jennifer, Genya Garrett (@ 1638 today) had asked that same question. Justin answered her directly below her inquiry.
Many thanks Ron
"...@Genya - That was an oversight and we're already working on adding it back in the next maintenance release. A short-term workaround is to go into the client area, view the invoice, copy the link and email it to your client. You can also include the client security code with a variable in a template..."
Aaaaaand, I thought for sure when I saw that there were invoice updates that we would be able to send a "PAID" invoice or that one would automatically email to the client. I don't see anything about this. :(
Hi Angee
Why would that be needed? I mean when the client pays the invoice, it's instantly stamped paid at that time and all they have to do is print it, and or print it as a PDF. But I suppose your referring to times when they would send you a check and you mark their invoice paid. I can see where it would be slick to have the option to automatically email them a copy of the paid invoice versus them having to login to get it themselves.
'Zactly. I'm either getting payments by check or manually entering a credit card into my Paypal account and then manually entering the payment into ShootQ (ugh), so it would be great to have that function. There were a lot of voices about it on another thread, so I thought it might have been on the "to do" list. :)
Zactly... I looked that word up, it's not in the dictionary, I think you made it up.
Don't be alarmed. I have a poetic license.
Can you accept credit cards for some payments (i.e. retaners) but not others (i.e final balances)...or is it the same as before that once you set credit cards accepted they have to be accepted for all payments due?
I'm having a critical issue with invoices, payments, and sales tax.
We collect the sales tax on the full invoice at the last payment. For some reason that option has disappeared and it's splitting the sales taxes into the payments (30% retainer, 70% one month before the event). I really, really need it to go back to calculating it the way it always has and collecting the full amount of the sales tax only on the final payment and not with the retainer.
Agreed, Candice!
Hey everyone,
We've released a maintenance update this morning that reinstates manually sending payment reminders. I've attached a screen shot below. See the rest of the changes here - Maintenance Update 2011-09-28
@Candice this was a result of the new way we handle invoices and payments. With one invoice now, there is no "last invoice" onto which to apply the tax. Payments also have adjustable dates so we never know which is the last. That being said, we're working on some changes right now to recreate this functionality.
Is there a way we can undo this and switch back to the original invoice system? This new one doesn't show sales tax charged on individual payments, which is not only a violation of Texas law but also creates extra accounting work for me. I've already had complaints about it from customers.
I believe it's also a violation of Florida state law... considering that we're required to line item the sales tax on every invoice. My accountant is going to blow a gasket over this because it screws up our entire accrual accounting system or whatever it is she does because we don't claim the income (and therefore collect the tax) until the final payment which can be even a year or more after the retainer and legally I can't tax a retainer. If my client cancels their wedding I will then have to cut them a check for the illegally collected sales tax and then also get it back from the state, whereas before if they cancelled, all they had paid was the retainer which has no physical product and therefore no sales tax is to be collected (in FL). For now I'm manually setting up the payments to force the sales tax onto the last invoice, but Stacy's point is paramount in this situation.
Hey everyone,
First, I want to let you all know that I understand this is a departure from what you're used to. We are actively working on improving the tax settings for payments to give you more options.
While it doesn't look like it, this was a major change. There is now only one invoice. All taxes are shown as a line item on that invoice. Instead of having multiple invoices, one for each payment, it made sense to only make payments towards one invoice. This is why partial payments are now possible!
The side effect of this change was how to handle sales taxes. ShootQ is definitely not accounting software, so we thought it best to leave the tax collection up to you, your accountant, your CPA, etc. When you collect a payment, there is no sales tax listed on the payment - it's only on the one invoice for the order. Reporting and submitting sales tax are all based on local laws. It may be with each payment, when physical products are delivered, when complete payment is made, etc. Whether the payments you collect include sales tax is all a matter of how you're required to report it. Because of this, we decided that when you split the payments, to split the amount of the total invoice - the amount including sales tax.
I feel this is the crux of the issue. The splitting of payments isn't the way you'd like it. We're working on making it possible to change the payments so that it's possible to place the tax amount on the final payment. The final payment won't include a line item for the tax, remember, that's on the single invoice. I think this solves the problem most of you have with the changes we've made. Chime in and let me know!
" When you collect a payment, there is no sales tax listed on the payment"
This puts the majority of ShootQ users in violation of the law. Almost every state requires that sales tax be listed as a line item with each individual payment. Even if that weren't the case, as I stated before, it creates additional headache for ShootQ users in terms of accounting. It needs to be fixed ASAP. I can't collect any more payments via ShootQ untilt he invoices are adjusted to be in correspondence with the law.
Several months later and this is still not fixed, and ShootQ is still putting a lot of users in violation of the law, not to mention the accounting headache. Sales tax needs to be listed as a line item on each individual payment.