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Recording Client Payments

Record money received from clients against their invoices under Documents > Payments, including part payments.

ConsultantConsultant AdminSuper AdminLast reviewed 03 Aug 2026

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Recording a client payment is how you tell TravelFlow that money has arrived against one of your invoices. It settles the invoice balance and posts the matching entry to the accounts in the same operation. This is money paid to you by a client — money going out to a hotel or airline is a supplier payment request, which is a completely different screen and workflow.

It is not on the invoice any more. Client payments are recorded from Documents > Payments. The invoice detail page has no Record Payment, Pay Online or Payment Link button — those were removed. From an invoice you can only Send, Resend, Preview and Download.

The Payment Management Screen

Documents > Payments opens Payment Management. Four tiles sit at the top — Total Payments, Total Received, Completed and Pending — followed by the payment table with a Record Payment button above it.

You can search by payment number, customer name, invoice number or payment reference, and filter by status (Cleared, Pending, Bounced, Void) and by method (Card, EFT, Cash, Cheque, PayPal). The table shows Payment #, Date, Customer, Invoice, Method, Amount and Status, with a View link on each row.

Do not use this list as your record of payment: it queries payments tagged with your consultant ID and organisation, but payments created by the Record Payment form are not written with those tags. The list therefore stays empty even after you have successfully recorded a payment, and the four tiles stay at zero. Confirm the payment landed by reopening the invoice — its status and outstanding balance are the reliable record. The View link on a row also leads to a page that does not exist.

Recording a Payment

  1. From Documents > Payments click Record Payment.
  2. Under Select Invoice, choose the invoice from the dropdown. It lists your own invoices that are Sent or Overdue, or that still have an amount due, each shown as invoice number – customer – outstanding amount. Nothing else on the form appears until you pick one.
  3. Check the blue confirmation block that appears — customer, email, invoice number and outstanding amount. If the customer is wrong, you have the wrong invoice.
  4. In Payment Details, adjust the Payment Amount. It is pre-filled with the full outstanding balance; overwrite it for a part payment.
  5. Set the Payment Date (defaults to today) and the Payment Method — EFT / Bank Transfer, Credit/Debit Card, Cash or Cheque.
  6. Enter the Payment Reference, for example the EFT reference off the bank statement. It is optional, but if you leave it blank the system stores an auto-generated reference instead, which makes reconciliation harder later.
  7. Click Record Payment. A confirmation dialog shows the amount, the customer and the invoice number. Confirm it to write the payment.
Two things on this form do not do what they look like: the Notes box is captured but is not saved with the payment, so put anything that matters into the Payment Reference instead. And in the Payment Summary card, “Invoice Total” repeats your payment amount and “Remaining Balance” always reads R 0 regardless of what you typed. Work off the outstanding amount shown in the blue block under Select Invoice.

What Happens When You Confirm

Three records are written together in one atomic batch — either all of them save or none of them do:

  • A payment record, numbered PAY-followed by a timestamp, with status Cleared. Payments are treated as cleared the moment you record them — nothing in the consultant portal ever sets Pending, Bounced or Void, so only record a payment once the money has actually reflected.
  • A posted journal entry that debits the bank account and credits Accounts Receivable for the payment amount.
  • The updated invoice. Amount paid goes up, amount due comes down, and the status moves to Partial, or to Paid with a paid date once the balance reaches zero.

You get a confirmation message naming the invoice and telling you whether it is now fully or partially paid, and you are returned to Payment Management. If the invoice is linked to a customer account, that customer also receives a Payment Received in-app notification showing the amount and the remaining balance.

Part Payments

Type a smaller figure in Payment Amount and record it. The invoice moves to Partial and its outstanding balance drops by what you recorded. When the rest arrives, start a new payment against the same invoice — it will still be in the dropdown, now showing the reduced balance, and the amount field pre-fills with what is left.

What Can Go Wrong

  • “Payment amount cannot exceed outstanding balance of R…” — you cannot overpay an invoice. Record the invoiced amount, and handle any genuine overpayment outside this screen.
  • The invoice dropdown is empty — you only see invoices you created, within your organisation, that are Sent or Overdue or still carry a balance. A Draft invoice will not appear until it has been sent, and an invoice raised by a colleague will never appear for you.
  • “Failed to record payment. Please try again.” — the batch was rolled back, so nothing was written. The invoice is untouched and you can safely retry.
  • There is no undo. Nothing in the consultant portal reverses, edits or voids a recorded payment. If you record the wrong amount or hit the wrong invoice, escalate to your accounting team — the correction has to happen there.