How to provide a customer receipt before payment is recorded

There may be times you want to provide your customer with a receipt for their payment before that deposit appears on your Transactions page. Follow the steps below to manually mark the invoice as paid, send the receipt, and account for the payment when the deposit is imported to your Transactions page.

Mark the invoice as paid and send a receipt

To issue the receipt for an invoice, you first need to mark the invoice as paid. To do so, you’ll need an account to keep track of the undeposited funds. To create this account:

1. On the left navigation menu, click Accounting > Chart of Accounts.
2. In the top right corner, click Add a New Account.
3. Enter a name in the Account Name field like Undeposited Funds.
4. For the Account Type, select Money in Transit.
5. Click Save.

Once you’ve created this account, you can go ahead and mark the invoice as paid:

1. On the left navigation menu, click Sales & Payments > Invoices.
2. Find the invoice you want to mark as paid, then click on it to view the invoice.
3. In the Get paid section, click Record a payment.
4. Select your Undeposited Funds account as the Payment account.
5. Fill in the remaining details, then click Submit.

To send a receipt immediately, after clicking Submit to mark the invoice as paid, click Send a receipt in the pop-box. If you want to send the receipt later, follow the steps below.

Now you can send your customer a receipt, even though the deposit transaction hasn’t been recorded yet. To send a receipt:

1. Click Sales & Payments > Invoices.
2. Click on the invoice you want to issue a receipt for.
3. In the Get paid section, click Send a receipt.
4. The From email address section will be filled in automatically, as well as the To section, if you have saved an email address for the customer. Otherwise, enter an email into the To section.

   You can add multiple recipients for the receipt by clicking Add recipient, and entering their email address.

5. Click Send.

What to do when you receive the payment

When the funds are deposited, and the transaction imports into your Transactions page:

1. On the left navigation menu, click Accounting > Transactions.
2. Locate the income transaction, click the dropdown arrow to the right and select Edit more details.
3. In the Category dropdown, select Transfer from Bank, Credit Card, or Loan, and select the Undeposited Funds account.

Wave will automatically create the other side of the transfer transaction to represent the money movement from the Undeposited Funds account to the bank account where the funds were deposited.

This method will also work for lump sum payments for multiple invoices. This is as long as all of the invoices paid by the lump sum payment were marked as paid individually to the Undeposited Funds account, by following the steps above.