Record a bank transfer or check payment manually

Not every payment comes through the card Pay button. Wires, bank transfers, ACH deposits, and the occasional paper check all land outside Fee-Lion — and that’s perfectly fine. When you record those payments manually, the invoice marks itself down, the client’s balance stays accurate, and your reports tell the truth. Here’s how to log a payment you received offline.

Record the payment against the invoice

Open the invoice you got paid for from Invoices in the left sidebar. Then log what actually hit your account.

1. Open the invoice and choose Record payment.
2. Pick the method — bank transfer, ACH, wire, check, cash, or other. This is a record of how the money moved, not a charge Fee-Lion runs.
3. Enter the amount you received. To clear the invoice, this matches the balance due; for a partial, enter just what landed.
4. Set the date the money actually arrived — not today’s date if the wire cleared last week. This keeps your revenue reports and aging on the right day.
5. Add a reference if it helps — a check number, wire confirmation, or a quick note like “deposited 6/24.”
6. Save. The invoice updates to Paid (or shows the remaining balance), and the client sees the same thing in their portal.

Tip: Fee-Lion doesn’t move wires, checks or bank transfers your client sends you outside the portal; those go through your own bank. (Bank payments a client makes in the portal are recorded automatically.) Recording a payment here is bookkeeping: it tells Fee-Lion the money already arrived so the invoice and the client’s balance match reality.

Partial payments and split methods

Real-world payments don’t always arrive in one clean chunk, and that’s no problem.

• Got a 50% deposit by check and the rest by card later? Record the check now; the invoice shows a remaining balance the client can still pay with the Pay button.
• Client wired part and mailed a check for the rest? Record two separate payments — each with its own method, amount, and date — and the invoice adds them up.
• Slightly under- or over-paid? Log the exact amount you received. A leftover balance keeps the invoice open; an overpayment is easy to spot and refund.

What the client sees

The moment you save the payment, the client’s view in the magic-link portal updates too. No login, no email chase — when they open their invoice they’ll see it marked down or paid in full, with the balance reflecting exactly what you recorded. That keeps you both reading from the same page and saves the “did you get my check?” message.

Keep card and offline payments straight

Once you’re recording payments from a few different methods, a quick habit keeps your books clean:

• Card payments through Stripe show up automatically — you don’t record those by hand.
• Only log offline payments (bank transfer, ACH, wire, check, cash) manually, so you never double-count.
• Use the date field faithfully; it drives your revenue drilldown and invoice aging in Reports.

Do a light reconcile at month’s end — match recorded offline payments to your bank statement and confirm Stripe payouts line up. A few minutes here means your numbers are ready when tax time comes.

What’s next

• Record an offline payment
• Take a partial payment
• Reconcile offline and card payments
• Connect Stripe to get paid