Sprout Invoices: WordPress Payments Options, Deposits, Checks and Authorizations

As discussed in What Sprout Invoices Sets To Solve the estimate process will be a streamlined process, reducing common hurdles found in the popular online accounting services. Getting paid via Sprout Invoices also involves a unique process that is setup to help your client make secure payments and deposits for your work.

Typical Payment Limitations

The typical payment process below shows the problem of limited payment options resulting in a payment that’s not supported by the service and manual record keeping within the service. Even payments via check places the burden on the admin, regardless if the clients wants to enter that they’ve paid.

Notice that the entire process is repeated for each payment. If you’re using a task where you don’t need to create a new invoice for every payment (e.g. using the negative line-item hack), it will not be as streamlined as simply: entering the next payment amount and clicking a send button.

SI Payment Options for WordPress

This type of resistance in accepting payments is something Sprout Invoices wants to fix. Below you’ll see the payment process having more options and less limitations for your client. Including a way for them to enter payment information for the check that is being snail-mailed.

The client paying on your site can select from multiple payment options, even when the payment isn’t made online they can still enter the payment information; improving both your communication and workflow.

Authorizations > Deposits

Unlike any other invoicing software that we know of: payments can be authorized and captured at a later time. In the case when a businesses doesn’t want to accept a deposit on a short term project they can have the full payment held  ¹. Manually capturing the payment within your site when the project is complete. Clients love this option when paying via credit card and the project permits.

Milestones

For Sprout Invoices, we aim to be the best WordPress invoicing plugin, we want to offer this entire process on your own terms. Imagine a system that notifies your clients when a milestone payment needs to be made, that way you can focus on developing/designing/engineering/gaming/creating while Sprout Apps helps grows the business side for you. That is what we believe an invoice plugin should do!