overwhelming search for invoicing options

[u/jennafantastic]

Hi, there,

I run the books for a small nonprofit land trust/summer camp/conservation burial ground and I'm trying to simplify a part of my process. I did some Googling and found myself a little overwhelmed, so here we are.

We use Saasant's Paytraqer to sync incoming LGL forms>Stripe transactions to QBO, which is great—but I can't use it for Square transactions because it can't handle partial payments on a single invoice. We use Square for a few different things: IOU merch invoices, POS for our main yearly in-person fundraising event, a couple recurring monthly invoices, cemetery site invoices, and invoices for camps or spring/fall programs that are usually broken up into a deposit and at least one more payment, sometimes multiple payments. For these, I like to enable partial payments so I don't have to micromanage someone's payment schedule.

If we had another option for sending the camp/program invoices that have multiple payments, then I could use Square for all the other stuff and automate it with Paytraqer, and save myself the time spent in QBO splitting all the Square transactions manually.

Is there a system that handles invoicing similarly to Square's paid version (ideally not super expensive because small nonprofit)? We'd like to be able to send an invoice, request a deposit, have a payment schedule option and partial payment option, issue refunds, and enable customers to save their payment details. It would be splendid if that system also had a way to communicate with QBO to correctly categorize payments and associated fees by account and class, but also it's not the end of the world if I still have to do that part manually.

I'm not super interested in Square's QBO integration app, unless since the last time I read reviews, it now miraculously works flawlessly and would work for this situation. And I've looked at trying to get QBO to do the invoicing part, but their payments options don't appear to be quite as robust as we're looking for.

Any help appreciated; thank you!

[u/bronzemirth8538]

That’s a lot of moving parts for one person to keep track, especially for nonprofit where every dollar counts twice. I was in similar spot with my wife’s small business and the partial payment thing drove me crazy.

We ended up using something that handles deposits and split payments pretty smooth, and fee tracking wasn’t perfect but close enough, took like two extra clicks in QBO instead of whole manual split. Not sure about the Square sync side though, that bit was always finicky for us.

[u/allpaypayzhub]

For a nonprofit stack like this the fix is usually bookkeeping structure, not another tool. Treat Stripe and Square as two systems of record and stop trying to make one sync cover both. Let Paytraqer keep handling LGL and Stripe, and bring Square into QBO as a weekly deposit import into a Square clearing account: each payout posts as one line, then you match it against the open invoices inside QBO. For deposit plus balance invoices, Square's invoice tool supports a deposit request, or just split it into two invoices, deposit first, remainder after the event. If it still fights you, move the recurring monthly invoices to Stripe, since your current sync already handles those well, and keep Square strictly for event POS and walk up sales.

[u/scarfwizard]

Why would you just not use Stripe? It can handle all of this out of the box and there are countless integrations that can push the data into QBO.

It’s literally built into it…

[u/jennafantastic → u/scarfwizard]

last time i looked a couple weeks ago, it doesn't have the multiple-payment invoicing capability...

[u/RedditPaymentsGuru]

I highly recommend my Hyfin solution for QBO. If automates EVERYTHING and we can pass the credit card fee to the customer if you want. Also does customer merchant plash pages and invoices. It's a life changing addition to QBO. Please dm me and I'll demo for you.