How do I collect multiple payments for an invoice without creating invoices with the smaller dollar amount to make up the total invoice amount?

You may take lump sum payments from customers. In the past you may have created a single invoice and then asked the customer to pay bit by bit or created multiple single invoices for each part payment. There is a better way.

If you issue a single invoice from your accounting software (Xero, QuickBooks, MYOB, NetSuite, MYOB Acumatica) and then want to take partial payments for that invoice you can do this by following these steps.

If you want all invoices for this customer to be put into a payment plan, we recommend you turn OFF the auto-charge feature. You can follow the steps here: https://support.pencilpay.com/knowledge/how-to-disable-auto-charge-for-my-customer

If you want all future invoices to be auto-charged (eg. not added into a payment plan), then leave the setting as is.

Then you can go to Invoices and find one of the overdue invoices for this customer.
Under "Actions" click on the "Payment Plan Offer" icon (it looks like calendar with a + in the middle).
The invoice will be selected in the popup and if you want to include more than one invoice in the payment plan you can toggle on "Add more invoices?" and select all invoices you want to include in the payment plan.
Click on Next to continue to the next step.
In the next step you need to complete the following:
1. For Upfront Payment, enter what the minimum percentage you wish to collect to start the payment plan. The minimum amount is $5.
2. Select the "Payment Frequency" from the options: Daily, Weekly or Monthly.
3. Select the "Payment Duration"; which is how many days, weeks or months you wish to run the payment plan for. *Minimum recurring payment is $5.
4. For "Transaction Fee", you can select if you "On-Charge" or "Absorb" the transaction fee to your customer.
5. If the customer isn't signed up, you can toggle "Customer Registration Required?" ON and the system will ask the customer to sign up after they make the first payment.
6. Click Next.
If the customer hasn't signed up, you can send the customer an email (you can edit the content first) and click on "Submit" to send.
1. The customer will receive an email notification and they can review and complete their payment plan.
If the customer has signed up, you will see and can click on "Automatically enter your customer into the payment plan". Then you can select a saved payment method and submit.
Once a payment plan is set up you have options to make changes. You can follow these articles for more information: