Overview
This guide explains how to record payments against invoices in Factory, including full and partial payments, mixed payment methods, and progress billing across multiple invoices. Payment recording is available to Administrators and Power Users.
This new feature is found in the side tab when clicking into a sales order:
Prerequisites
You must have Administrator or Power User access. Standard Users can view invoice and payment status but cannot record or delete payments.
The invoice must be generated and open before recording a payment against it.
To sync payments to your accounting package (Xero, MYOB, or QuickBooks), ensure the Sync Factory payments to your accounting package checkbox is enabled. Go to Settings → Sync to Accounting Package and confirm the box is ticked. Without this enabled, payments recorded in Factory will not be sent to your accounting package (see below)
1. Payment methods
Factory automatically calculates and updates the payment status on each invoice as payments are recorded:
Status | What it means |
Unpaid | Invoice generated; no payments recorded |
Partially Paid | One or more payments recorded; a balance remains outstanding |
Paid | All payments received; balance is $0.00 |
N/A | Order predates the payments feature; no payment status applies |
You can filter orders by payment status from the Sales Orders list using the Payment Status column.
Note: Standard Users do not have access to the Payments tab. They can see payment events (such as status changes) in the order Timeline, but without dollar amounts if they are on a No Pricing role.
Steps to record a payment against an invoice:
Open the relevant order in Factory.
Navigate to the Payments tab.
Click Save.
Note: The Record Payment button only appears once the order has been invoiced. If the button is missing, check that a full or partial invoice has been generated for the order first.
Complete the payment form:
Amount — pre-filled to the outstanding balance; adjust if recording a partial payment
Date — the date the payment was received; past and future dates are both accepted
Account — the account the payment was received into; this field only appears if you are connected to an accounting package (Xero, MYOB, or QuickBooks)
Method — Cash, Card, Bank Transfer, or Cheque
Reference — optional, but recommended for bank reconciliation
Click Save.
The invoice status updates immediately. A full payment moves the status to Paid and sets the balance to $0.00. The payment appears in the payment history with the date, amount, method, and reference.
Note: Factory will block overpayments. If the amount entered exceeds the outstanding balance, you will see the message "Payment amount exceeds balance due" and the payment will not be saved.
2. Partial payments and corrections
Recording instalments
You can record multiple payments against a single invoice. Each time a payment is saved, the outstanding balance and status recalculate automatically:
Unpaid → Partially Paid when the first installment is recorded
Partially Paid → Paid when the final payment brings the balance to $0.00
Using mixed payment methods
A single invoice can accept payments across different methods — for example, a deposit paid by bank transfer and a final payment by card. Each payment is recorded and itemised separately in the payment history.
Correcting or reversing a payment
If a payment needs to be removed:
Locate the payment in the Payments tab.
Click Delete on the relevant payment row.
The payment is reversed, the balance recalculates, and the status steps back accordingly (e.g. Paid → Partially Paid). The deleted row is retained in the payment history and marked Deleted — it is never silently removed, so there is always a complete audit trail.
Note: Deleting a payment in Factory does not issue a refund to the customer if the original payment was collected online. Refunds must be processed separately.
Note: Factory accepts a maximum of 50 individual payment records per order. If you approach that limit, consolidate smaller payments before recording.
3. Invoicing
For projects billed in stages — such as construction, consulting, or milestone-based work — Factory lets you split a single order into multiple invoices.
Creating a partial invoice
Open the order and navigate to the Invoices tab.
Select Create Partial Invoice.
Choose how to split the invoice:
By amount — enter a specific dollar value
By percentage — enter a percentage of the order total
By line items — select specific line items to include
Remaining balance — invoice everything not yet invoiced
Save the partial invoice.
Repeat this process to generate additional invoices as each stage is reached.
Note: Partial invoices can only be created while the order status is Unpaid or Partially Paid. Once the order is fully paid, no new partial invoices can be generated.
Recording payments against partial invoices
Payments are recorded per invoice. When you click Record Payment, select the invoice you want to pay against from the available tabs. Each invoice tracks its own balance and status independently.
Note: There is no bulk payment option. If a customer pays multiple invoices in one transaction, you will need to record a separate payment against each invoice.
How the order rolls up
The order-level view shows a summary at the top:
Total order value
Total invoiced
Total paid
Outstanding balance
Below the summary, each partial invoice has its own tab with its individual payment status (Paid / Unpaid) and payment history.
Fully paid orders are locked
Once the total payments across all invoices equal the full order value, the order is automatically locked. A locked order cannot be edited, split, deleted, converted to a quote, or have its customer changed.
If you need to make changes to a fully paid order, delete a payment to bring the total below the order value — the lock will lift automatically. An Order Locked notice will explain this if you attempt to edit a locked order.
Reach out to support@factory.app with any questions!