Recording a payment is for marking money you’ve already received (cash, check, card, transfer, and so on). It logs the payment for your records — it doesn’t charge the customer’s card.
If your workspace syncs payments with QuickBooks, you don’t need to record offline payments twice. A check, cash, or bank transfer payment recorded in QuickBooks against a linked invoice comes into Menaia on its own and updates the invoice balance. Card and online payments taken in QuickBooks aren’t brought in. See Payments recorded in QuickBooks.
Video: Managing Transactions (3:13)
Before you start
You can record a payment on any invoice that still has a balance owing — a sent invoice, or a Draft. Recording a payment on a draft finalizes it: the draft moves out of Draft and can no longer be edited or deleted, so you’ll be asked to confirm before the payment window opens. Because it can’t be undone, Record Payment stays turned off on a draft until you’ve saved your changes and added at least one line item; hover the button and it tells you what’s missing.Finalizing a draft this way records the money and takes the invoice out of Draft — it does not email the customer or count as sending the invoice. If you want the customer to get a copy, send the invoice as well.
Record a payment
1
Open the invoice
Go to Invoices from the main navigation and open the invoice the customer paid. (Need help finding it? See Browse invoices.)
2
Click Record Payment
Press the Record Payment button at the top of the invoice. You can also open it from the More options menu (the three-dots button) on the invoice.
3
Fill in the payment details
In the Record Payment window, enter:
- Payment Amount — how much the customer paid.
- Method — how they paid (the list comes from your branch’s payment methods).
- Reference # — an optional check number, transfer ID, or confirmation code.
- Payment Date — the day the payment was received (defaults to today).
- Internal Notes — an optional note for your team. This stays internal and isn’t shown to the customer.
4
Choose whether to send a receipt
Tick Send receipt to email the customer a receipt for this payment. If the customer doesn’t have an email on file, a Recipient Email box appears so you can type one in. Leave the box unticked to record the payment without sending anything.
5
Save the payment
Click Record Payment. The payment is logged, the invoice balance goes down, and the payment appears in the invoice’s Transaction History. If you chose to send a receipt, it’s emailed to the customer (delivery may take a moment).
See recorded payments
Every payment, credit, and refund for an invoice is listed in the Transaction History section on the invoice. Each row shows the Date, the Type (Payment, Refund, or Credit Note), the Method (payments taken online show the card or payment type with a Stripe badge), a Status badge, the Credit Reason for credits, a View Note link when there’s an internal note, the Amount, and the Invoice it applies to. Refund and credit amounts are shown as negative. This is your running record of what’s been collected and when. A refund row appears when you record a refund in Menaia, or automatically when an online payment is refunded in Stripe. Refund rows are a record only, with no actions menu of their own. To give money back on a payment, see Refund a customer. To take action on a payment or credit, use the More options (three-dots) button on that row.Edit a payment
Made a typo in the amount, picked the wrong method, or need to move a payment to a different date? You can correct a payment after it’s recorded.Editing only applies to payments you recorded manually. A payment taken online is managed by Stripe — its Edit Payment and Delete Payment options are disabled, and the row’s menu explains: “Managed by Stripe — edit & delete are disabled. Refund in your Stripe Dashboard instead,” with a link that opens your Stripe Dashboard.
1
Find the payment in Transaction History
On the invoice, scroll to Transaction History and find the payment you want to change.
2
Open Edit Payment
Click the More options (three-dots) button on that row and choose Edit Payment.
3
Update the details and save
Change the amount, method, reference, date, or notes, then click Save Changes. Balances update to match.
Delete a payment
If a manually recorded payment was entered by mistake, you can remove it. (Online payments can’t be deleted here — refund them from your Stripe Dashboard using the link in the row’s menu instead.)1
Open Delete Payment
In Transaction History, click the More options (three-dots) button on the payment and choose Delete Payment.
2
Confirm
Review the amount in the confirmation window and click Delete Payment. The invoice balance goes back up by that amount.
Deleting a payment can’t be undone. If the payment was split across more than one invoice, the window warns you which invoices are affected — deleting it reverses the payment on all of them.
Allocate one payment across several invoices
Sometimes a customer sends a single payment that covers more than one of their invoices — for example, one check that pays two outstanding invoices at once. The invoices don’t have to be on the same project: a payment settles the customer’s balance, so the list spans every open invoice the customer has in the branch, across all their projects. You can split that payment so each invoice gets the right share. This is called allocating the payment. You set allocations from the Edit Payment window, which shows every open invoice the customer has in the branch that can still take part of the payment. Each row names the project its invoice belongs to, so you can tell them apart.1
Record (or open) the payment
Record the payment as usual on one of the invoices, then reopen it from Transaction History with Edit Payment. (Allocation lives in the Edit Payment window.)
2
Go to Allocate to Invoices
In the Edit Payment window, scroll to the Allocate to Invoices section. Each of the customer’s invoices is listed with its number, the project it belongs to, its status, and how much it can still take (Available).
3
Enter an amount for each invoice
Type the portion of the payment that should go to each invoice. As you do, the Remaining figure at the top of the section counts down so you can see how much of the payment is still unassigned.
4
Balance the totals and save
Keep entering amounts until Remaining reaches zero — the amounts you assign must add up to the full payment amount. Then click Save Changes. Each invoice’s balance updates by the amount you gave it.
You can allocate across all of the customer’s open invoices in the branch, not just the ones on this project — each row names its project so you can tell them apart. The amount available on each invoice already accounts for anything this payment was previously assigned to it, so editing existing splits is safe.
Apply a credit instead
A payment records money received. A credit lowers what the customer owes without money changing hands — for example, a goodwill discount or a correction. If that’s what you need, use Add Credit rather than Record Payment. See Add a credit for the full walkthrough.Set up payment methods
The Method list in the Record Payment window comes from your branch’s payment methods. If the list is empty, you’ll need to add at least one before you can record a payment.1
Open payment method settings
Go to Settings, then to the payment methods area for your branch.
2
Add a method
Choose Create Payment Method, give it a name (such as Cash, Check, or Card), and save. It will then appear in the Method dropdown when you record a payment.
Payment methods are set per branch. If you work across branches, each one keeps its own list, so add the methods you need wherever you record payments.
What’s next
Add a credit
Reduce a customer’s balance without recording a payment — a discount, goodwill, or correction.
Send or resend an invoice
Email the invoice to the customer so they know what’s owed and how to pay.
Browse invoices
Find any invoice, check its status and balance, and open it to record a payment.
Void an invoice
Cancel an invoice that should no longer be collected.