Payment schedules allow you to create and apply fully automated payment requests to invoices at a set cadence that you have identified. Payment schedules typically consist of an initial deposit request and can include any additional payment requests to follow.
Read more about creating payment schedules in the following help article:
When creating payment schedules, you have the ability to identify a flat rate that the client will pay for the deposit and then a series of payments consisting of a percentage of the overall total that that will be due.
An example payment schedule could be the following
Payment 1: Deposit payment of $500 due immediately
Payment 2: Remaining balance payment of 50% due 30 days before the event
Payment 3: Remaining balance payment of 50% due 10 days before the event
Deposit Payments
Deposits payments can be identified as a flat rate amount or a percentage amount. All other payment requests must be a percentage of the total amount.
Percentage Payments
Percentage Payment Setup
In your payment schedule, make sure that the sum of all percentage payments (including deposit percentage payments) add up to 100% to ensure that the entire invoice amount is accounted for.
Percentage Payment Calculations
Payment requests that are a percentage amount are automatically updated to reflect any adjustments to the invoice and take into consideration payments that have been made. Releventful's dynamic payment percentages always account for changes to an invoice to ensure that you are gathering the correct payment to align with the invoice balance.
Payments to Percentage Payments | How Percentage Payments are Calculated when Payments or Invoice Adjustments are Made
Adjustments to invoice when no payments have been made
If no payments have been made, any adjustments to the invoice will adjust the percentage payments where the exact percentage represented from the schedule is applied.
For example, 4 equal payments of 25% will all reflect 25% of the invoice total.
Adjustments when payments have been made and invoice total is the same
If payments have been made and the invoice stays the same, the percentage payments will automatically adjust based on the percentage represented from the schedule.
For example, 4 equal payments of 25% with one payment paid will still reflect 25% of the invoice total. Please see Example 1 below for more details.
Adjustments when payments have been made and invoice total is changed
If the invoice total is changed after the payment was made, the percentage payments will automatically adjust based on the percentage represented from the schedule and will also automatically apply the remaining balance based on the updated totals.
ℹ️ Note: balance adjustments will be applied to the last percentage payment in the payment series. Please see Example 2 below for more details on the invoice total changing after a payment has been made and how the payment schedules will update.
Payment Schedule Calculation Example Scenarios
Example 1: Payment Schedule with 1 Payment
In the following sample scenario, the invoice total is $1,000. A payment schedule has been applied to this invoice with 5 total payment requests. The first request is the initial deposit. The deposit request is a flat rate $500 fee to book the event. The remaining four payment requests are each identified as 25% requests. These four 25% requests add up to 100% of the total due.
ℹ️ Note: You always want the payment percentages to add up to 100% to ensure that the entire invoice amount is accounted for.
In this example, the client has made their deposit payment of $500 and now only owes a remaining $500 amount, which is spread evenly across the four 25% payment requests calculating to $125 each.
Example 2: Payment Schedule with 2 Payments & an Increase to the Invoice Total Amount
In this example, the client proceeds to pay the flat rate deposit and the second payment request (Payment 2), in the amount of $125 for 25% of the current balance due. After this payment is processed, the client wants to add additional add-ons to their invoice. Their invoice is then increased to a new higher price.
The original price has changed from $1,000 to a total of $1,500. Calculating in the previously paid amounts that the client has made, the new remaining balance has adjusted from $500 to $1,000 because of the add-ons that were added to the invoice.
Since the remaining balance has increased, so do the requested percentage payments. The remaining three 25% payments are now at a higher rate than before.
In the example above, you will see that there are three remaining payments that the client owes. All are set to 25% amounts, but now two match and one does not. The two matching requests are the new 25% amounts due from the current remaining balance.
The final payment request is a higher amount to incorporate any amount that was not previously captured in processed payments, the payment differential. Payment 2 was the original 25% percent of the original invoice total, $500. At the time the payment was created and made, 25% of the total due was $125. Since there was an increase to the invoice total after Payment 2 was made, there is a differential amount of $125 that still needs to be accounted for. The final payment request is the new 25% amount set at $250 PLUS the remaining $125 amount from Payment 2 that was not accounted for before the invoice increased in price.
The final payment will always incorporate any unpaid amounts to align with the invoice total and ensure that the remaining balance is paid for in full.
Editing an Applied Payment Schedule Within an Invoice
After a payment schedule has been applied to an invoice, the individual payment amounts will reflect based on the calculations as they are established through the payment schedule settings. You do have the ability to change any of the requested amounts in the list, however, if a payment amount is manually edited, you will be removing the overall payment schedule from the event's invoice.
To edit a payment request amount, open the request by selecting it from the payment list. You have the ability to change the total requested amount, the due date, etc. If you choose to change the total of a payment request that has been populated by a payment schedule, you will see the following pop-up message from the system notifying you that you are removing the payment schedule based on your recent update:
"A payment schedule is currently managing this payment, do you want to remove the payment schedule?"
This message indicates that the payment schedule, and all percentage based calculations, will be removed from all payment requests for the invoice. Once saved, all payment amounts that were requested will become static requested amounts.
ℹ️ Note: When a payment schedule is removed based on a manual change as described above, the payment requests will no longer adjust based on changes to the invoice. If the invoice total changes, the payment requests will need to be manually updated to align with the new invoice total.
Additional Resources
For more information on payment schedules, please refer to the Creating a Payment Schedule Tutorial.