Matching payments to invoices

Matching depends on how the payment arrived:

• Pay by card on an invoice: the payment is applied to that invoice directly. No guessing is needed.
• Forwarded e-Transfers and other charges on your connected Stripe account: Biller checks the payment against your open invoices once, when the payment is first recorded.
• Payments you add manually: these are never matched to invoices.

Matching only happens at the moment a payment is recorded. It doesn't run again later, so a payment won't be applied to an invoice you create afterwards, or after you edit the payment or the invoice.

Biller only compares a payment with open invoices (invoices with no payment date) in the same business. It then works through these rules in order:

1. Reference number. If the payment's reference number matches the Reference number field on exactly one open invoice, the payment is applied to that invoice.
2. Amount, currency, and client. If the payment's amount and currency exactly equal an open invoice's total (including tax), and the payment is linked to that invoice's client, and only one invoice fits, the payment is applied to that invoice.
3. Amount only. If the amount and currency match one or more open invoices but the client doesn't settle it, Biller doesn't apply the payment. It flags the payment for review instead.
4. Nothing else. If no open invoice has that exact amount and currency, the payment stays unmatched.

For an e-Transfer, the reference number is the Interac reference number from the notification email. Interac creates it when the transfer is sent, so it will rarely match an invoice's Reference number field. In practice, e-Transfers get matched by rule 2: exact amount plus the right client.

• The payment is applied to the invoice, up to the invoice's outstanding balance.
• Once the invoice is fully covered, Biller sets its payment date to the payment's date, and the invoice shows as paid.
• The payment's page lists the invoice under Applied to invoices, and the invoice's page lists the payment, followed by Paid in full or the amount still Outstanding.

There's no screen for removing a payment from an invoice. Deleting the payment doesn't reopen the invoice either.

Biller has no screen for applying a payment to an invoice by hand. When a payment isn't matched, including every payment you add manually, the payment stays on your Payments list and the invoice stays open.

If a payment was flagged for review under rule 3, your dashboard shows it under Needs attention as "payments to review". There isn't yet a way to confirm the suggested match, or to filter the Payments list to those payments.

To close the invoice yourself, mark it paid:

1. Go to Invoices and open the invoice
2. Click Edit. Biller shows an Edit with caution notice first, because invoices are legal documents. Tick the checkbox and click Proceed to edit
3. Under Invoice details, set the Payment date. You can also fill in Payment method (for example, Interac e-Transfer or Cash)
4. Click Update Invoice

Setting a payment date marks the invoice paid. It's removed from your outstanding and overdue totals, and your client sees "Paid on" with that date on the invoice page. The payment and the invoice aren't linked, though, so the payment won't appear on the invoice and the invoice won't appear on the payment.

Because e-Transfers match on exact amount plus client, these habits help:

• Ask for the exact invoice total. A partial payment, a rounded amount, or two invoices paid in one transfer won't match.
• Keep client names the same as the sender name. e-Transfers link to a client by the sender's name, then by email. If your client record uses a different name than the transfer shows, Biller creates a second client, and the payment won't match the invoice under the original client. Rename the client to match, or merge the duplicates before the next payment arrives. See How clients are created.
• Avoid identical open invoices for the same client. If a client has two open invoices with the same total, Biller can't tell which one a payment is for, so it flags the payment for review instead.
• Create the invoice before the money arrives. Matching only looks at invoices that already exist when the payment is recorded.

Card payments made with an invoice's Pay by card button always match. Other Stripe charges don't carry a client or a reference number, so they're never applied automatically. At most, they're flagged for review.