This article is the map. It follows one dollar from the rate card to your
bank and your books, says where each step lives in PortaPro, and points to
the full article for each step. The troubleshooting section at the end covers
the questions that come up most.
How money moves through PortaPro
(Customers → a customer → Sites → Rate Card). One-off work (a pump-out,
an event, a delivery fee) goes on an invoice you build yourself, or on a
quote that becomes an invoice.
end of each billing cycle, drafted for you to review. Everything else is a
hand-made invoice from the + button on Financials (Invoice) or from
a customer's Financial tab. See
Cycle-Close Invoicing Workflow and
Reviewing and Sending Cycle Drafts.
See Invoice Email Payment Options
and Printing and Mailing Invoices.
payment page, through the customer portal, by a card you keep on file, or
by check, cash or another method you record yourself. See
Recording Payments and Credits.
account credit and applied to the customer's next invoices.
part. A payment recorded by mistake can be reversed.
invoiced, collected, owed and spent on fees. An accounting connection
(QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, Xero or FreshBooks) receives
customers, invoices and payments.
Card and ACH payments go straight to your own Stripe account. Setting that up
is covered in Payments and Stripe.
Where payments live in the app
Financials has no separate Payments tab. Payments are found in two places:
Open, Partial, ACH Pending, Paid, Overdue). Open an
invoice, or use the ⋯ menu on its row, for Collect Payment,
Apply Credit and View payment. The A/R Aging view sits on the
same tab.
Quotes, Invoices, Payments and Expenses, plus the customer's credit on
file and statements.
Other Financials tabs that touch money: Banking (your bank feed and
reconciliation, see
Bank Feed and Reconciliation),
Expenses (processing fees land here, see
Receipts and Expenses), Rate Cards, and the
accounting connection tab.
Viewing a customer's payment history
Open the customer, go to the Financial tab and choose Payments.
At the top you'll find Payment Methods (cards on file, Add card on
file, Set Default, Remove) and the customer's due-date autopay
setting. Below that is the payment list.
Columns: Date, Amount, Status, Method, Reference
(check number or transaction id), Type, and Applied To (Invoice,
Quote, Quote (Deposit) or Unapplied). A payment applied to an invoice has a
Details button that opens the invoice, and a settled one has
Reverse.
Filters: status, date and amount, with Clear to reset. On a phone the
same filters are in the filter sheet.
Payment statuses you will see:
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Succeeded | A card or bank payment Stripe confirmed. |
| Completed | A payment you recorded (check, cash, bank transfer, other) or an applied credit. |
| Processing (ACH) | A bank transfer that is still clearing. Real money on its way. |
| Incomplete | A payment page was opened and never finished. No money moved. |
| Action Needed | The customer's bank or card needs one more step from them. |
| Failed | The charge didn't go through. |
| Refunded / Partial Refund | All or part of the payment went back to the customer. |
| Reversed | The payment was taken off the books. |
| Canceled | An old payment attempt that was closed out. Hidden unless you filter for it. |
The Financial tab's Billed & Collected (LTD) tile shows what the customer
was billed, what they paid, and, when card payments are involved, a
"net deposited · Stripe fees" line under it.
What "Incomplete" means
A payment row is created the moment a payment page or pay link is opened,
before anyone types a card number. If nobody finishes, the row stays as
Incomplete. It is an attempt, not a payment:
report.
and attempts left untouched for about a day are closed out automatically
(they become Canceled, which is hidden by default).
Your own abandoned Collect Payment clicks are the most common source.
PortaPro matches Stripe payments to invoices only by Stripe's payment id,
never by email or amount.
Credits and overpayments
When a customer pays more than an invoice asks for, the invoice is marked
paid and the extra is handled like this:
(chosen by default) or Keep $X as account credit.
and a message tells you how much was added.
Account credit shows as "$X credit on file" on the customer's Financial
tab and applies itself to the customer's next invoices as they are issued.
You can also use Apply Credit on a specific invoice, or Issue credit
from the Financial tab's ⋯ menu for a prepayment or a goodwill credit.
Details, including prepayments and write-offs, are in
Recording Payments and Credits.
If you run the Cash Discount Program, the payment method decides which price
the customer owes, so a check written for the card price is an overpayment.
Refunds and reversals
Open the payment (its Reverse button on the Payments list) to get the
refund window.
offered on card and bank payments taken through Stripe. Amount to refund
starts at the full payment; type a smaller number for a partial refund. A
reason is required.
Stripe. Use it for a payment recorded in error, or a check that bounced.
Check, cash and other recorded payments can only be reversed.
What a partial refund does. Say a customer paid $500 by card and you
refund $200. The original $500 payment is marked Partial Refund, and a
new $300 payment appears beside it, noted as kept after a partial refund. The
invoice shows $300 paid, so it owes $200 again. Refund more later and the
kept payment is replaced with the new remaining amount. Your accounting
connection receives the same picture: the original payment comes off and the
kept amount goes on as its own payment.
Refunding to a card takes an owner or admin. Reversing a payment can be done
by office staff (owner, admin or dispatcher). Neither can be undone.
Processing fees are not returned on a refund. See
Stripe Processing Fees for how fees work and
how they reach your expenses.
Payment reports
Reports (sidebar Reports, Growth plan) has a Receivables & Payments
group. Most sales reports also have an Invoiced / Collected switch:
Invoiced counts invoices by invoice date, Collected counts payments by the
date the money arrived.
| Report | What it answers |
|---|---|
| Payments Received | Every payment that settled in a period, totaled by how it was paid (or by customer, customer type or month). |
| Processing Fees | What card and ACH processing cost, by month and method, with PortaPro's share shown separately. |
| Customer Credits | Credits issued in a period (overpayments, prepayments, goodwill) and how much is still on account. |
| Open Invoices | Every unpaid invoice as of a date, with days past due. |
| Customer Balances | What each customer owes as of a date, net of credit on their account. |
| Collections | Past-due balances with the billing contact to call and the last reminder sent. |
| A/R Aging | Opens the A/R Aging view on Financials → Invoices. |
An applied credit is not counted as new money in Collected figures, because
that money was counted when it first arrived. The library reports export to
PDF, spreadsheet or CSV and can be emailed on a schedule; A/R Aging opens on
the Invoices tab instead.
Sending payments to your accounting software
PortaPro pushes customers, invoices and payments one way into your accounting
software. Only one accounting connection can be active at a time. Each has
its own article:
Xero and
Each night PortaPro also checks your book for billing mistakes (a credit
applied at the wrong price, an invoice whose total doesn't match its lines,
and so on) and lists them on Settings → Finance → Billing Health. See
Troubleshooting
A payment shows Incomplete. A payment page was opened and not finished.
Nothing was charged. Ask the customer to use the pay link again, or collect
another way. There is nothing to delete.
The customer paid by card but the invoice still says Open. Wait about 30
minutes. A check runs every 30 minutes, confirms payments directly with
Stripe and marks them paid. Do not record the payment by hand as a check or
cash, or it will be counted twice. If it still hasn't updated after half an
hour, contact support.
The Stripe fee on a new payment is blank. On Stripe accounts set up on
PortaPro processing pricing, Stripe attaches the fee a few seconds after the
payment, and PortaPro picks it up on its next 30-minute
check. A blank fee that lasts longer than an hour is not expected; contact
support.
I need to give back part of a payment. Use Refund to card and type
the amount in Amount to refund. The rest stays paid on the invoice as its
own payment, and the invoice owes the refunded amount again.
The customer paid twice, or paid too much. The extra is already account
credit (or, under $1.00 on a recorded payment, whatever you chose at
Collect Payment). Leave it to pay the next invoice, or if the customer
wants the money back, refund the card payment with Refund to card.
A check was written for the card price under the Cash Discount Program.
If it is exactly the card price, Collect Payment asks whether to
Accept $X as payment in full or Give the discount and keep $Y as
account credit. When older payments left that difference as credit, a
banner on Financials → Invoices says how many customers "paid the card price
by check or cash"; Review lets you settle them at the card price and
remove the credit.
The customer didn't get a receipt. Receipts are sent automatically only
for autopay and other charges made without the customer present. See
Payment Receipts.
An ACH payment failed. The invoice returns to Open or Overdue and an
ACH Failed marker appears in the invoice list. See
Online Payments, Fees, and Receipts.