You have sent an invoice to your client and now you’re holding the wad of cash that you’ve received as payment. You look at the wad of cash. Then at your monitor. Back at your wad. Then back at your monitor. You scratch your head.

“How do I enter this payment in FreshBooks?”

Here’s how:

1. Click on your Invoices tab.
2. Check on the check box(es) to the left of the invoice number(s) you want to enter a payment for.
3. Click on the Enter Payment button above the List of Invoices.You will be taken to the Enter Payments page seen here:
4. Once you are at the Enter Payments page, just choose the method used (cash, check, bank transfer, PayPal, etc.), enter the payment date, amount and any notes about the payment.
5. Remember to click Save when you’re done. 
6. Now if you look at that invoice from your invoice list, the status should be marked as paid.  Woot!

Partial Payments

If you are manually entering payments in your FreshBooks account (i.e. you didn’t receive payment through one of our integrated payment gateways), you are able to enter a payment for less than the total of the invoice.  You can do this in the same manner above.  When you enter a partial payment, the status of the invoice becomes partial on your invoice list.  Also, when you hover over the status with your mouse, the amount paid and outstanding appears.

Overpayments

If you enter a payment for more than the invoice total, the remaining portion of the payment will be added as credit for your client and you’ll see this fancy message on the next screen above your list of invoices:

You can check your client’s credit at anytime from your client’s information page.