Is there a way to invoice and record advance deposits / retainer deposits without QuickBooks including it as a sale to that customer? All of the procedures I've seen either result in the deposit being a "sale" amount when received as opposed to when it becomes income, or result in the deposit being counted in sales twice (once when received as an advance and again when applied as a payment to an invoice). Attributing the advance deposit to an "item" that is linked to a liability excludes it from income, sure, but not from sales. I should mention that all advance deposits are held in a separate bank account.

I usually just record it as a regular bank deposit (not linked to a sales receipt or invoice), and then receive it from the separate bank account via a sales receipt when it becomes income, which is an okay workaround some of the time. But if the client wants to pay using QuickBooks Payments (or whatever QuickBooks Desktop's ACH payment service is called), QuickBooks requires me to create an invoice, so the advance deposit is linked to that invoice and always recorded as a sale.