Recording a payment

When the money lands, the invoice gets marked Paid — automatically when a client pays by card in their portal, or by you when the payment came in some other way. This article covers both, plus what each invoice status means.

📸 Caption: the invoice detail page showing the status set to "Sent."

The four statuses

Every invoice is in exactly one of these states:

• Draft — under construction. Not visible to the client, not counted as outstanding.
• Sent — out the door. Counts toward A/R. The client can see it in their portal.
• Paid — money received. Counts toward revenue, drops out of A/R.
• Overdue — past its due date and still unpaid. Reports flag these for follow-up.

When a client pays by card

This is the common path and it needs nothing from you. Once an invoice is Sent, the client opens their portal, goes to Invoices, and clicks Pay. They pay the balance by card through Stripe, and the moment the charge succeeds:

• Studiohaus records the payment against the invoice — amount, date, and the Stripe reference.
• The invoice flips to Paid on its own.
• If you've connected QuickBooks, the payment syncs to your books automatically.

You'll see the status change without lifting a finger. (The money lands in your own Stripe account — see Creating an invoice for the one-time Settings → Payments setup that turns the Pay button on.)

When the money comes in another way

A check, a bank transfer, cash at the site — anything paid outside the portal. Mark it yourself:

1. Open the invoice — from the Financials page, or a project's Invoices tab.
2. At the top of the invoice, find the Status dropdown.
3. Change it from Sent (or Overdue) to Paid.

That records a payment for the outstanding balance, flips the invoice to Paid, and — if QuickBooks is connected — syncs it to your books, same as a card payment. The change is logged in the project's activity feed.

When to mark "Overdue"

You don't have to. The A/R aging report flags any sent invoice past its due date automatically. Some studios manually flip the status to Overdue so it stands out in the invoice list at a glance — fine, but not required.

Deposits and split billing

Studiohaus collects the full balance of an invoice in one payment, so handle deposits by splitting the work across invoices:

• 50/50: send a deposit invoice and a balance invoice; mark each paid as it lands.
• Any other split: same idea — one invoice per stage of your payment schedule.

For most design billing, a two-invoice split covers the realistic cases.

How QuickBooks fits in

QuickBooks is for your books, not for collecting. If you connect it (Settings → Integrations — see Connecting QuickBooks Online), every invoice and every payment against it syncs into QBO so month-end reconciles itself. The client still pays through their portal, on Stripe; QuickBooks just keeps the accounting side in step.

Related

• Creating an invoice
• How the client portal works