How to Log a Payment

Record a payment you collected outside MonuDesk - cash, check, bank transfer, ACH or a card run elsewhere - so the order balance, the receipt and your QuickBooks books all stay right.

Written By Dennis Rodin

Last updated 15 days ago

To log a payment, open any order and click the Log Payment button below the order details pricing card.

Note: This screen records payments you collected outside of MonuDesk (cash, check, bank transfer, ACH, or a card you ran elsewhere). Payments taken through MonuPay in the Customer Portal land here automatically as a logged payment with its own receipt — there is nothing to key in afterwards.

Filling in the payment

Amount Received is where you type the payment amount. You can type it manually or use the slider to adjust. Below the field you'll see quick buttons for 10% down, 20% down, 25% down, 50% down, or Full Balance.

Payment Method offers six choices, in this order:

  • Cash

  • Check

  • Bank Transfer

  • ACH

  • Credit Card

  • Debit Card

When you select Check, a Check # field appears and the Receipt Note (Optional) box opens on its own so you can add the memo line.

Date Received lets you select the date the payment was received.

Payer shows who made the payment. The default value is the customer name.

Receipt Note (Optional) lets you note details like "customer paid cash on-site at the cemetery." This note is shown in the order overview and on the Receipt PDF.

The MonuPay prompt on card payments

Pick Credit Card or Debit Card and a short blue note appears under the form. Recording a card by hand means the card was run through some other processor, so MonuDesk points out that it could have taken it:

  • If MonuPay is already connected: "Take card payments in MonuDesk" — cards charged through MonuPay record the payment, receipt and QuickBooks entry on their own, so there is nothing to enter here afterwards.

  • If MonuPay is not connected: the same point plus the rate, stated up front — 2.99% per transaction — and a Set up MonuPay link.

The prompt is silent for cash, check, bank transfer and ACH, because no card processor could have taken those and nagging about them would be noise. It never blocks anything; the payment saves exactly the same either way.

"I already entered this in QuickBooks"

At the bottom of the form there is a checkbox reading I already entered this in QuickBooks. Tick it when you have keyed that check or cash into QuickBooks yourself.

It changes exactly one thing, and it is worth being precise about which:

  • The order balance still counts it. The payment reduces the balance due in MonuDesk exactly like any other payment, and it appears on the order and on the receipt as normal.

  • The QuickBooks sync leaves it out. MonuDesk will not push it, so the same money is not posted to your books twice.

Leave it unticked for anything you have not already entered — that is the normal case, and MonuDesk will sync it for you. How to Connect QuickBooks Online

Payment summary

On the right side you'll see a live Payment Summary that updates as you fill in the fields:

  • Order Total is the full price of the order.

  • Balance Due is what's currently owed.

  • This Payment shows what this specific payment will be.

  • New Total Paid shows the updated total after this payment.

  • Balance Remaining shows what will still be owed after this payment.

While your payment saves

When you click Save Payment, the dialog locks while it records. You can't close it with the X, the Esc key, a click outside, or the Cancel button, and the footer shows a spinner that reads "Recording your payment…" and then "Almost there…" a moment later. This is intentional. It stops a second click from logging the same payment twice. The dialog unlocks on its own as soon as the payment is saved.

After saving

After you save the payment, the paid amount and balance due on the order automatically update. A receipt is automatically generated and saved under Notes & Files in the Financial Document category.

Each receipt also captures its own billing snapshot: the "Bill To" details at the moment that payment was made. So if a customer updates their billing info while paying from the portal, that change shows on that one receipt only, not on the client record or on your other receipts.

Note: Every payment you log, edit, or delete shows in the order's Activity Timeline, so you always have a time-stamped history of what changed. How the Activity Timeline Works

Scheduled payments and deposits

When you set up billing on an order, you can split the sale into three scheduled payments (for example, a 34 / 33 / 33 split) instead of a single deposit and balance. Each scheduled payment is logged here as it comes in, just like any other payment.

You can also record a deposit the customer already paid outside MonuDesk at the moment you create the order. MonuDesk counts that deposit once — it lowers the balance due without being double-counted against the payments you log afterward.

An order can also carry payment terms with no payment behind them. If it was saved as a quote with a non-zero split and Link a payment record with the order creation turned off on the billing step, the 50/50 or 30/70 terms are on the order but no payment record was created, so the full amount still shows as balance due. Log the deposit here when the money actually arrives.

Editing or deleting a logged payment

You can edit or delete a logged payment, including a deposit logged during order creation. Open the order and go to the Activity Timeline tab, between Order Details and Notes & Files. It lists every event on the order, including each payment. Find the payment, then edit it to fix the date, amount, method, or note, or delete it if you logged it on the wrong order. The order balance recalculates instantly either way.

The edit picker offers two extra methods the record screen does not: MonuDesk and Other. MonuDesk is what a portal card payment is stamped as, and Other is a fallback — both are there so a method set wrongly can be corrected back to what it actually was.

Who can do this. Edit and Delete are permission-gated. A team member without them does not see greyed-out buttons — the buttons are not there at all, so nobody is left clicking something that will never work. Grant them under the financial-documents permissions for that role.

A deleted payment is not silent. Deleting one writes an entry on the order's Activity Timeline recording the amount and the method that was removed, so money never disappears from an order without an explanation of where it went.

Learn more: What's on the Receipt PDF

Tip: To see every order with a balance still owed across your whole business, open the Open Balances Insights page. It shows aging (how overdue each balance is), total accounts receivable, and a clickable table so you can jump straight into the right order. To chase a balance, open the order from that table and contact the customer from there. How to Use Open Balances

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