Using Ignition to Bill Half the Payment Up Front, Half Upon Completion

Are your payment terms for all your client proposals based on an initial deposit amount and then the remainder payable upon completion of the work?

If you do and still want to use Ignition to engage with all of your clients (not just those who you have on annual/fixed price agreements), there’s certainly a way to handle it in Ignition.

Splitting Up

All you need to do is create another service in your service library. You can do this two ways, either create a service entitled for example “Final 50% Payment” or “Initial 50% Deposit Payment”, you might like to add a description in their also explaining the service is in relation to the initial quoted amount and is the initial deposit/final payment.

When you create a proposal for the client, select the service you are completing for them, for example it might be “Company Tax Return”. Then select the additional service being either “Final 50% Payment” or “Initial 50% Deposit Payment”. If you choose “Final 50% Payment” then the “Company Tax Return” would be half of the final amount and you select UPFRONT as the payment type.

Tthe “Final 50% Payment” would be the other half of the total amount also, and the payment type would be ON COMPLETION. If you choose to use “Initial 50% Deposit Payment”, then you simply reverse the payment types in the example just given.

After you have sent this off to the client and they accept the proposal, if you are using the payments feature, I advise you to then make “payment required” which ensures you actually receive the initial payment up front and you can start the work immediately. Once you have completed the work for the client, remember to come back into the proposal and select the “Invoice on Completion” button to invoice the final portion.

... and Loving it!

Now you can put every client proposal through PI, you’ll be compliant, your clients will know exactly what work is being completed for them and your cash flow position will improve because you are receiving your part payment up front. Are there any other billing methods that you use, which you aren’t sure of how to do through Ignition? Let us know here.