Enable prepayment & deposit for clients

Let your clients pay in advance to get credit and have your invoices paid a moment after they were issued. Learn how to adjust payment settings and enable prepayment for your clients.

How prepayment & deposit works

Prepayments and deposits both add money to the client’s credit balance — funds that sit on the account as a credit until they’re used to pay invoices. The client can apply credit when paying an invoice, and a firm member can also pay an invoice on the client’s behalf using the credit.

There are two ways money lands on the credit balance.

Clients make a prepayment

Your clients can pay in advance from their portal at any time, without needing an invoice first. The amount they pay is added to their credit balance and stays there until it’s applied to an invoice. This works well when a client wants to fund their account ahead of upcoming work, or when you want clients to prepay before billing.

You request a deposit from a proposal

When you set up a proposal with a deposit requirement, the client pays the deposit when signing the proposal. The funds land on their credit balance the same way a prepayment does, and can be applied to invoices either automatically (if the proposal has Automatic invoice payment on) or manually. Learn more about deposits in proposals .

Prepayment vs Partial payment

There are the differences between partial payments and prepayments:

• Partial payments are enabled by default, while prepayments need to be set up. More about the client perspective on partial payments.

• Partial payments are convenient for those of your clients who have many invoices and need to pay a particular invoice. For example, if you provide several services. The benefit of prepayments, in this case, is that you don’t even have to issue an invoice to request them.

Enable prepayment & deposit

Adjust your payment settings before turning the prepayment on. This can be done only by a firm owner or admin .

Step 1. Check payment settings

Go to Settings > Integrations and make sure you set the following:

• Payment provider is connected
• A payment method is chosen. Select Credit or debit card, Bank debit or both.
• The Hide invoices from clients option is toggled off (this is the default state).

Step 2. Turn on prepayment

1. In the Settings > Integrations section, go to the Payments > Prepayment & deposit and toggle on the Accept prepayment & deposit.

2. Choose one of the available prepayment methods or both.

Note

If your firm has at least one proposal template with a deposit request enabled or an unsigned proposal with a deposit, you cannot turn off the Prepayment & deposit setting.

Client view

If the Prepayment feature is enabled, your clients see the Make prepayment link to the right of their to-do list on their dashboard.

Once clients click the Make prepayment link, they can type in the prepayment amount and Submit it. A payment window opens, and the client can proceed with the payment.

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