Recording payments in Billkeep

Marking one paid

Open the invoice and press They paid me. The sheet asks for:

How much — pre-filled with what is still due, so the common case is one tap.
When — today by default. Use the date the money actually arrived if it matters for your records.
How — bank transfer, card, cash, or whatever you use. Free text; it is a note to yourself.

The button stays dead until the amount is a real figure, and the sheet says what is still outstanding while you type.

Part payments

Record less than the total and the invoice becomes part-paid rather than paid. From then on:

the invoice shows its balance, not its original total;
“you're owed” counts the balance;
the ageing report counts the balance, not the full amount;
a statement of account shows it as the balance too.

Record as many payments as you like. They add up, and the invoice settles itself when they reach the total.

Nothing about “paid” is stored twice

Late, part-paid and outstanding are all worked out from the payments you recorded and today's date, every time they are shown. Nothing is cached, so nothing can go stale or disagree with anything else.

Correcting a mistake

Payments are listed on the invoice, and each can be removed. Billkeep asks first, deliberately — that action puts an invoice back into “still owed”, which is the one thing on the screen that moves money. There is no other confirmation dialogue in the app for something this small, and it is here on purpose.

Marking a document as sent

Separate from paying, and worth doing. I've sent it stamps the date the customer's clock started. It is recorded once — sending again does not move it, because that would erase when they first got it — while a reminder updates its own, separate date every time.

If a document shows nothing either way, that means no record, not “not sent”. An invoice you handed over on paper can be marked with the same button, so the question is always answerable rather than nagging forever.

Chasing a late one

When an invoice is past its due date, Write a reminder appears. It composes a message you read before it goes anywhere, and it is written to three rules:

It never asserts they have not paid. Billkeep cannot see a payment, so it genuinely does not know — the message states the invoice, the amount and the date, and asks.
It threatens nothing. We do not know your contract, and inventing a consequence could be both wrong and unenforceable.
It re-checks the payment link before including it. A message is the riskiest place a bad link could land.

You send it yourself, from your own mail or chat app. Billkeep still transmits nothing.

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