Problem solved: take a deposit at booking, collect the balance later

About this project

Month by month, how a logistics platform for a Toronto client went from a simple brief to a live, multi-company SaaS product.

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In short

Customers pay a deposit when they book a job and the rest later. The invoice shows both payments on one timeline, and staff collect the balance with a single click when the job is ready.

The problem

Charging the full amount at booking puts customers off and creates refunds when plans change. Charging everything after delivery leaves carriers carrying the risk. And if the two payments live in different places — one in Stripe, one in a spreadsheet — nobody can say at a glance what has been paid.

One invoice, two payments, one timeline

A booking invoice in Flow LGX carries the whole story. It shows the invoice kind, the due date, when the remaining charge is scheduled, the customer, the carrier, the job and its status. Underneath, a payment timeline lists each payment separately — the deposit with the time it was processed and its result, and the balance with its own status.

• The customer saves a card once, through Stripe’s secure fields.
• The deposit is charged when the job is booked, and the invoice shows “Partially paid”.
• The job’s financial status reads “Balance pending” until the rest is collected.
• When the job is ready, staff press “Capture balance” and the saved card is charged for the remainder.
• Each step — payment method added, deposit captured, balance captured — is written to the audit log.

Why statuses matter more than totals

Finance teams do not ask “what is the total?” — they ask “what is still owed, and when?”. Showing “Partially paid” on the invoice and “Balance pending” on the job answers that without anyone opening Stripe. The same statuses feed the payments chart on the owner’s dashboard: collected, pending and failed.

Useful beyond logistics

The same pattern fits any business that books work before doing it: removals, events, installations, clinics, workshops. If you take bookings and chase balances by hand today, a deposit-and-balance flow like this usually pays for itself quickly.

Lesson learned

Show payment status in the words finance people use — partially paid, balance pending — and nobody will need to open the payment provider to find out where money stands.