When a client pays your invoice online using our Stripe or Paypal integrations, there is not an option for them to make a partial payment—such as paying only a portion of the invoice or splitting the payment between two credit cards, for example.

If you’d like to allow your client to pay only a portion of your invoice, however, there are two options available:  split the invoice into two separate invoices or add a temporary discount to the invoice. 

Split the invoice into two separate invoices

Split payment for a free-form invoice

When creating a free-form invoice, you can manually split your line items into two invoices. Then send the client only one of the invoices for the first part of the payment. The second invoice can be saved as a draft and sent at a later time for the final portion of the payment.

Split payment for a time and materials invoice

When creating an invoice based on tracked time and expenses, you’ll want to set your invoice creation parameters to only include a portion of the time and expenses. For example, if you’re invoicing for the month of January, you can set your first invoice to pull time and expenses from January 1 to January 15. You’ll then be able to pull the time and expenses from January 16 to January 31 into your second invoice.

Alternatively, you could create an invoice for the entire month and then delete the line items you don't want to include on the first invoice. The deleted line items will remain uninvoiced, which will allow you to pull them onto a second invoice later.

Split payment for a fixed fee invoice

To invoice for a fixed fee, you can pull the entire fixed fee onto the invoice and then edit the Unit price to reduce the invoice total before saving or sending the invoice. For example, you can manually change a $1,000 fixed fee to $600. The remaining $400 of the fixed fee will be available to pull onto a separate invoice.

Apply a temporary discount to your invoice

For this option, you’ll apply a temporary discount or add a negative line item to your invoice to reduce its total.

When creating your invoice, you have the option to add a discount percentage in the Discount field. If you’d rather not add a discount percentage, you can instead add a new negative line item for the amount you’d like to remove from the initial invoice.

For example, if you have an invoice for $1,000 and would only like to collect a $600 payment initially, you can add a new line item for -$400. This will reduce the invoice total to $600, and you can send that invoice to your client for payment. Note the negative line item amount in this example:

Once the client has paid the initial invoice for the partial payment amount, you can edit the invoice to remove the discount or negative line item. The partial payment will still be applied, but the rest of the invoice balance will then show as being due. You can then resend the invoice to your client, and they'll be able to pay the balance.