What am I doing wrong? Square invoices double paid?

[jusgottahavit]

I issued a square invoice to a customer for services to be rendered. When services were complete, he paid and I issued an receipt. I returned home and marked the square invoice as paid. The next day, my transaction report showed that I was paid twice. I refunded the receipt to correct the discrepancy. I have been working this way for a few months now but just recently discovered this problem. What am I doing wrong and how do I fix it?

[Kelly]

It sounds like you are double recording each of your sales, when you mark an invoice as paid your Square Dashboard assumes that you customer paid you with a different form of payment, like a check or cash. If you then charge your customer on your Square Register and mark the invoice as paid, you will see the sale double reported. 

Instead of manually processing the payment through your Square Register, you can simply have you customer pay the invoice. You will have your payment processed just like a swiped card transaction and your Square Dashboard will only track the invoice so you won't see that double reporting! 

[Dana5]

A similar thing happened to me. I sent an invoice, then the customer provided the card over the phone and I ran it using Virtual terminal. I went and marked the invoice "Paid" and now it shows two sales when there should only be one.

How do I balance my books now? I'd like to have the erroneous double charge removed.

[ACAcatering]

It sounds like you may have created a second ticket (apart from the invoice) when they called to make the payment.  Is that correct?  If so, then it would not show up as paid on the invoice, but would be an entirely separate transaction.  If you're taking a payment over the phone that isn't linked directly to the original invoice, then you will run into issues with duplicate orders.  If it was a separate transaction, you would want to cancel the invoice without notifying the customer so you don't cause confusion on their end.

[BlossomWithMe]

I am using a third-party service to collect my payments via Square. I didn't realize that this payment would reflect in the system without me manually creating an invoice. The result is that I am now showing two paid transactions (one via the third-party service and one that I have manually noted) when in reality, there has only been one. How do I fix this as there is no option to simply delete the manual payment but there are no actual funds to refund.

[JJ_]

Hello @BlossomWithMe! 👋

My understanding is that if you are using Square as a payment processor with an integration, the third-party will keep records of the payment to be able to issue refunds and Square will keep record as well to make sure that you can see report of your sales made through Square. If you have manual marked invoices as paid you would need to refund these transactions (making sure they are the Invoices you created and not the actual payment transactions) so that your books get balanced.

Important note: Refunding invoices marked as paid (that did not incurred in actual payments) will not debit your balance or linked bank account as they were just marked as paid.

If you need help identifying the right transaction, our Support team would be able to look into this with you! When you have a moment, please reach out directly by logging into your Square account and heading here.

I hope this information is helpful!

[BlossomWithMe]

Thanks so much, this was very helpful!