Tracking Invoice Payments in ServiceTrade

One of the critical components of Invoice management in ServiceTrade is tracking payment status. This article will walk users through how to track the payment status of Invoices.

ServiceTrade offers two methods of Invoice payment tracking:

Invoice Payments

The most comprehensive way to track Invoice payments is through ServiceTrade's payment tracking feature.
Invoice Payments is the RECOMMENDED method for tracking Invoice payments in ServiceTrade.

To use this feature:

1. Click the green Add Payment button in the Act on this Invoice section on the right-hand side of the Invoice page.
   
2. Enter the details about the payment in the form that appears. This includes:
   • Reference number (check number, credit card authorization code, or another identifier)
   • Transaction Date
   • Paying Customer
   • Payment Method
   • Payment Amount
3. Click the green Save button.

This will update the Invoice display with the amount of the payment. If the Invoice is fully paid (that is, if the total of all payments on the Invoice is equal to the total amount of the Invoice), then the payment amount is shown in green with a green checkmark, and a green Paid badge is added to the Invoice.

Partially paid Invoices also show their paid amount, but in grey text to indicate that the Invoice has not yet been fully paid, as seen below.

Invoice 'Paid' Status

The simplest way to track whether an Invoice has been paid is to edit that Invoice and change its status to Paid:

There are several drawbacks to this approach:

• Partial payments cannot be tracked. Invoices are either fully paid (status = 'Paid'), or unpaid (status = anything else).
• Payment details, such as the method of payment, check number or other identifier, etc cannot be tracked.
• Payment lifecycles cannot be tracked; for instance, there is no mechanism for voiding or adjusting the amount of an already-received payment.
• Using the Invoice status to track Invoice payment prevents the Invoice status from being used for other purposes, such as tracking whether an Invoice created by a field technician has been reviewed by the office, or tracking whether the Invoice has been successfully synced to the accounting system.

For these reasons, tracking payments via the Invoice 'Paid' status is SUPPORTED, but no longer RECOMMENDED.

This will change the Invoice status to Paid, and apply a Paid badge to the Invoice header:

Finding Invoices by Paid Status

Regardless of which payment tracking method you choose, you can search the Invoice list to find Invoices based on their payment status. Use the 'Fully Paid' payment search to find Invoices that are paid (Invoice status = 'Paid', or a full payment record), or use the 'Unpaid' payment search to find Invoices that are not paid (Invoice status does not equal 'Paid', and there is not a full payment record).

If you use Invoice Payments, you can also search for Invoices that are Partially Paid.