How to Correct or Remove a Payment

Money gets logged wrong. A check gets typed as $1,500 instead of $150, a payment gets dated the day you found the envelope instead of the day it arrived, or the whole thing lands on the wrong order. You can fix all three yourself, and the order's balance due recalculates the instant you save.

Corrections are not undone quietly. Deleting a payment writes a line onto the order's Activity Timeline showing the amount and the method that was removed, so there is always a record of what happened.

Where corrections happen

Not on the pricing card, and not through Log Payment — that button only ever adds a new payment.

Open the order and click Activity Timeline in the left rail of the order window. The rail runs Order Details, Scheduling, Activity Timeline, Purchase Orders, Notes & Files.

Click the Payments chip at the top of the timeline to filter down to money. Every payment on the order appears as a Payment received row with its amount in green, its method as a small grey chip, the date, and who logged it. Hover a row and two small icons appear on the right: a pencil (Edit payment) and a trash can (Delete payment).

Fix a payment

1. Open the order, go to Activity Timeline, and filter to Payments.

2. Hover the payment and click the pencil. The row turns into a small edit form.

3. Change the date (a calendar opens; future dates are blocked), the amount, and the payment method.

4. Click Save. The row goes back to normal with the new values, and the order's paid total and balance due update straight away. Cancel backs out with nothing changed.

The method list here is wider than the one in the Record Payment window. On top of Cash, Check, Bank Transfer, ACH, Credit Card and Debit Card, editing also offers MonuDesk and Other. That is deliberate: those two are written by the system rather than chosen by hand, so the only way to set a payment back to what it really was is from this edit form.

Delete a payment

Delete when the payment does not belong on this order at all — it was logged on the wrong family's order, or entered twice. If the payment is real and just wrong, edit it instead.

1. Hover the payment row and click the trash can.

2. A Delete Payment confirmation names the amount, the method, the date, and tells you exactly how much the balance will go back up, for example "The balance due will increase by $2,500.00."

3. Click Delete Payment to confirm.

What it leaves behind: a Payment deleted entry on the timeline carrying the amount and method of what was removed. That entry is filed under the Documents chip, not Payments, because the payment itself no longer exists. If you are looking for proof that a payment was removed, use the All filter.

Deposits taken during order creation

A deposit you recorded as already received while building the quote is a normal payment. It shows in the Payments filter and you edit or delete it exactly like any other.

There is one row you cannot touch: Initial deposit received with the chip Recorded on order creation. That is a deposit the customer paid through MonuDesk's own checkout at creation time, and it has no editable payment behind it, so it shows no pencil and no trash can.

Why you cannot see Edit and Delete

These controls are permission-gated, and when your role lacks the permission they are removed entirely rather than greyed out. Nothing hovers into view, so there is nothing to hover over and no tooltip to explain it. That is why a shop or field user opening the same order sees a plain read-only list.

Three toggles decide it, all set by the company owner in Settings → Team Members → Permissions:

• Can see prices — off means the role sees no dollar amounts anywhere, and both payment controls disappear with them.

• Edit financial documents — controls the pencil.

• Delete financial documents — controls the trash can.

Ask your company owner to turn on the ones you need. How Roles and Permissions Work

What a correction does not touch

• The receipt already generated for that payment. Every receipt is a snapshot of the moment it was created, and correcting the payment does not rewrite it. If the customer needs paperwork that matches the corrected figure, generate a fresh one from the order's Document Generation menu with Generate Receipt. The old receipt stays in Notes & Files under Financial Document until you delete it.

• QuickBooks. Editing or deleting a payment in MonuDesk does not reach back into anything already sent to QuickBooks. Fix the matching entry in QuickBooks yourself.

• The rest of the order. Line items, totals and stage are untouched. Only the paid total and the balance due move.

If the balance has gone negative

A negative balance due means more money is recorded than the order is worth. Check first that it is not a typo: open the Payments filter and compare each row against what actually came in. A duplicated payment or an extra zero is the usual cause, and editing or deleting it puts the balance right immediately.

There is one more cause worth knowing about on an order you have edited and saved a few times. Until the end of July 2026, saving an order could re-book its deposit as money received and fold your other payments into that one row, counting them twice and creeping a little higher with every save. Saving an order no longer does that, but an order that drifted before then keeps the inflated figure until you correct it. Look for a Payment received row dated around when the order was created whose amount is closer to everything you have collected than to the deposit itself, then edit it back down to the deposit the family actually paid — or delete it if there was no deposit.

If the overpayment is genuine, settle it outside MonuDesk. MonuDesk has no refund function — there is no refund button anywhere in the app, and that includes card payments taken through MonuPay. Refund the family through your own bank or card processor, then leave the order's history as it is so your records match what really happened.

Learn more: What Happens When a Customer Overpays

Related articles:

• How to Log a Payment

• How the Activity Timeline Works

• What's on the Receipt PDF

• How to Use Open Balances

• What the Order Overview Shows