Asking for payment

A booking is rarely paid in one go, so you can ask for money in stages: a deposit to hold the dates, a balance before they arrive, and an adjustment if the booking changes. Each one records what you asked for, when it is due, and whether it has been met.

You cannot ask for more than the booking is for. Two live requests adding up to more than the agreed total is money taken twice, an apology and a refund — so the total is checked as you add one, and again if you later lower the agreed total underneath requests you have already sent.

Whether a request has been paid is worked out from the payments, never ticked off by hand. When you record money you can say which request it answers, and the box defaults to the oldest thing still owed. You can change that later: the money itself — the amount, the date, how it came — can never be edited, but which request it answers is a judgement, and getting it wrong on Tuesday should not need a fictional refund to fix on Wednesday.

Money that answers nothing in particular is said so, not quietly spread across whatever is open. Filling the oldest request first would guess wrong exactly where it matters: a group paying their balance while the deposit is still outstanding would have the balance recorded against the deposit.

Withdrawing a request keeps it, struck through — “we asked and then thought better of it” is worth knowing, and the amount goes back to being available to ask for again.

A request becomes an invoice when you issue one.