Recording payments and refunds
Get money received into CLEO, and record what you gave back.
Recording a payment is how money becomes real to CLEO. It takes about fifteen seconds, and it's the only way anything financial in CLEO ever gets a number.
Three places to start
- From a client's record. Use Record a payment from the add menu, or open the Money received panel and press View payments. This is the usual way, because CLEO already knows who paid and can offer you their work.
- From Top customers. There's a Record a payment button at the top.
- From a blank start. Go to Record a payment without a customer in mind and CLEO asks you to pick one first. Every payment belongs to somebody.
The screen opens with what it is for: Money received from a customer.
Recording money in
The form is short:
| Field | What to put |
|---|---|
| Amount | What they actually paid you, including any tax. |
| Currency | The currency they paid in. |
| Received on | The day the money arrived. Today is filled in for you. |
| For | Optionally, the piece of work it was for. |
| Note | Optionally, anything you'd want to remember — "cheque", "deposit", "e-transfer". |
Press Record payment and it's in.
The For field only appears once CLEO knows whose money it is, because it offers that customer's work. If you record from the blank screen and want the payment attached to a job, open the client's payments afterwards and correct the entry.
Recording money back out
A refund is its own entry, not an edit to the original payment. Open Record a refund under the payment form and give the Amount refunded, the currency, the day and an optional note, then press Record refund.
CLEO is explicit about what that does: A refund is money you gave back. It is its own line in the history and comes off the net total.
So a $400 payment and a later $150 refund leave $250 net received — and both entries stay visible, because both really happened.
What you see afterwards
Money received at the top gives you Net received for each currency and the date of the Last payment. If you've taken more than one currency, each one is shown on its own line.
History below lists every entry, newest first, each one showing the day, the amount, whether it was a Payment or a Refund, the work it was for, your note, and who recorded it and when. The heading says what's in the list: Newest first. Corrected and voided entries stay, marked, and do not count.
Before there's anything to show, the list says No payments recorded yet. When money comes in, record it above and it appears here, newest first.
A couple of things worth knowing
Archived customers. You can still read the whole history of an archived customer, but you can't add to it. CLEO says: Their history is kept; bring them back before recording a new payment.
Bring them back first, record the payment, archive them again if you like.
Payments need Customers turned on. Money in CLEO hangs off customers, so if the customers part of CLEO is switched off, payments aren't reachable either.
Ask CLEO can read money, not record it. Ask it who paid you this month or what a customer has paid, and it will answer from the recorded entries. It will not record, correct, void or refund anything — money entries are only ever made by a person on these screens.
Sooner or later you'll record something wrong. Correcting or voiding a payment shows how to fix it without losing the history.