Help: My Invoice Isn’t Showing as Paid

A client says they paid, but the invoice is still glaring at you in Open. Deep breath: in almost every case the money is fine and the fix takes about a minute. Let’s walk through the usual suspects and get that invoice flipped to Paid.

First, figure out how they paid

How a payment lands depends on the route it took. Card payments through Fee-Lion update the invoice automatically; anything that happened outside the app has to be told about. Open the invoice from Invoices in the sidebar and check the timeline at the bottom.

• They clicked the Pay button in the portal and paid by card — this should mark the invoice Paid on its own. If it hasn’t, see the section below.
• They paid you another way — bank transfer, cash, a check, Venmo, a card you keyed in elsewhere. Fee-Lion has no way to know that happened, so you’ll record it yourself.
• They paid part of it — a deposit or a chunk — in which case the invoice is correctly sitting in Partially Paid, not stuck.

Tip: A green checkmark and a payment line in the invoice timeline mean the money is recorded. If the timeline is empty but your client swears they paid, the payment almost certainly went somewhere Fee-Lion can’t see — which is an offline payment you record by hand, not a bug.

If they paid by card but it still shows Open

Card payments flow straight into your own Stripe account, and the invoice updates the moment Stripe confirms the charge. When that doesn’t happen, it’s usually one of these:

1. Refresh the invoice. The portal and your dashboard occasionally lag a beat behind a fresh charge, especially right after the client hits Pay.
2. Confirm your Stripe connection is healthy. Go to Settings → Preferences and check that Stripe is still connected. A disconnected or re-authorized account can leave a charge in limbo.
3. Check whether the card actually succeeded. A declined or incomplete payment won’t mark the invoice paid — the client may have seen an error and assumed it went through. Ask them to try the Pay button again.
4. Look for a pending or processing charge. Some payment methods settle over a day or two; the invoice will update once Stripe clears it.

If Stripe shows a completed charge but Fee-Lion still hasn’t caught up after a refresh, that’s worth flagging to support — but it’s rare.

Record a payment you took elsewhere

This is the most common reason an invoice looks unpaid: the money arrived outside Fee-Lion. You simply tell the invoice it’s been settled.

1. Open the invoice from Invoices in the sidebar.
2. Choose Record Payment.
3. Enter the amount, the date it landed, and the method (bank transfer, cash, check, and so on).
4. Save. The invoice flips to Paid — or Partially Paid if you logged less than the full balance.

Want the keyboard-only route? Hit the command palette and type something like pay INV-204 to jump straight there.

When “Partially Paid” is actually correct

If you collected a deposit on the estimate or took an installment, the invoice is meant to show Partially Paid with a remaining balance. That’s not a stuck state — it’s the invoice keeping honest track of what’s still owed. The Pay button stays live in the portal so your client can clear the rest whenever they’re ready, and the status updates itself the moment they do.

What’s next

• Record an offline payment
• Invoice statuses explained
• Take a partial payment
• Connect Stripe to get paid