Recording payments

A payment is a record that money came in from a customer, by some method, on some date, applied to an invoice. Payments arrive one of two ways: collected online through a gateway, or received outside yRecurring and recorded by hand.

Online

Money collected through a payment gateway. The customer pays with a card or a bank debit (card, ACH, SEPA, or BACS), and the gateway reports back what it charged. There is no method to pick here, because the gateway already knows what was used. This is how a customer pays from the hosted invoice page.

Offline

Money you received some other way and are writing down so your records match reality. When you record an offline payment you choose the method:

Method	For
Cash	Cash in hand.
Cheque	A cheque received.
Bank transfer	A transfer straight to your bank.
Wire	A wire transfer.
Card (charged on an external terminal)	A card you charged on your own terminal, outside yRecurring.
Other	Anything that does not fit the list.

These are all money already received elsewhere. Recording one just tells yRecurring the invoice was paid.

Running without a gateway

You do not have to connect a gateway at all. Turn on Offline payments under Settings, Payment gateways, and write your own payment instructions: your bank details, where to send a cheque, whatever fits how you collect. Buyers then see those instructions in place of a card form on your hosted checkout and invoice pages, and the checkout offers them an optional payment reference field for a deposit slip or cheque number.

The reference shows up on the invoice's activity timeline as a note from the buyer (for trial or future-start signups, on the subscription's timeline, since no invoice exists yet). It is a claim, not a payment: when the money actually arrives, record it here as usual and the invoice settles. Your instructions stay saved if you switch the setting off, so turning it back on later does not mean retyping them. The instructions apply to your whole organization, so if you bill from more than one entity, write them to cover all of them.

Partial and multiple payments

A payment does not have to cover the whole invoice. Pay part of an invoice and it stays open, with the remaining amount going down by what you paid. You can record more payments against the same invoice until it is fully covered, at which point it becomes paid.

A single payment cannot be for more than the invoice still owes. To apply more than one invoice's worth, record a payment against each.

Worked example

A customer owes $100.00 on an invoice.

Action	Invoice after
Record a $40.00 bank transfer	Open, $60.00 remaining
Record a $60.00 cheque	Paid

In the API

Record a payment against an invoice with the POST /v1/invoices/{id}/pay endpoint, giving the amount, method, and date. A customer paying from the hosted invoice page goes through the same path. See the API reference.

Edge cases

• A payment is tied to an invoice. Recording one applies it to that invoice's balance.
• You cannot overpay a single invoice. The amount is capped at what the invoice still owes.
• Online and offline can mix. An invoice partly paid online can be finished with an offline payment, or the reverse.