Hi cmay1,
I appreciate you outlining more of what you're looking for in relation to the original question. From the way you're describing the Receive Payment screen, it sounds like you may be using QuickBook Online as QuickBooks Desktop's Receive Payment screen doesn't have an "Amount received" box to the right.
If you're using QuickBooks Online's Payments service, it's possible to accept payments online. When your customer clicks Pay Now from the invoice, they're able to change the amount they're paying at that given time — meaning they can pay the full amount or a partial amount. For a partial amount, the customer will be able to make the remainder of the payment when they're ready to do so by clicking the Pay Now button again from the same invoice. The only caution I have is to watch for if the invoice gets marked as fully paid even though only a partial payment was made. The card will still only be charged for the partial amount. All you'd need to do then is re-invoice for the remaining amount so the customer could pay the rest. Feel free to chat with our Merchant Services team to learn more about this. They're available at 1-888-829-8589 from Monday to Friday between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. EST.
A few users had great suggestions above as well, namely using deposits or progress invoicing. Both of those are also available in QuickBooks Online. Read the following article to learn about progress invoicing: Set up and send progress invoices in QuickBooks Online
As for deposits, here's how you turn on that field of an invoice.
- Click the Gear icon in the upper right of the page.
- Choose Account and Settings.
- Click the Sales tab.
- Click the Sales form content section or the section's pencil icon to edit it.
- Check off the box for Deposit.
- Click Save.
- Click Done to exit.
If you do happen to be using QuickBooks Desktop, let me know and I'll go over the options for Desktop. I'm also happy to answer more QuickBooks Online questions. I've got you covered. :)
