What is a Direct Payment?
A Direct Payment records a customer payment straight against a specific invoice. It creates one payment record that debits your cash account and credits the invoice's Accounts Receivable account. No cash receipt is created, and no Unapplied Cash account is involved.
In the SoftLedger UI, this is labeled Direct Payment.
Direct Payment vs. Cash Receipt
Use a Direct Payment for the common case where you already know which invoice the money is for — the two-step "receive cash, then apply it" process collapses into a single record.
Use a Cash Receipt when money arrives that isn't yet matched to an invoice. The receipt parks the cash in Unapplied Cash until you apply it. Batch and multi-currency grouped payments also use the Cash Receipt flow.
How to record a Direct Payment
There are four ways a Direct Payment gets recorded:
Invoice → Mark Paid. On an issued invoice, click Mark Paid. A form opens for the amount, cash account, payment date, posting date, and memo. Submitting it records one Direct Payment against that invoice.
Record Invoice Payments. Choose the Direct Payment method, pick a cash ledger account, select any number of open invoices with a per-row amount, and confirm. One Direct Payment is recorded per invoice, each to the cash account you chose.
SoftLedger Pay. Card and ACH payments collected through SoftLedger Pay are recorded automatically as Direct Payments to the configured SoftLedger Pay cash account.
API. Direct Payments can also be created programmatically through the SoftLedger API.
What gets recorded
Field | Value |
Type | Direct Payment |
Amount | A positive Amount that can not exceed the Amount Due |
Invoice | The Invoice being paid (always set by the system) |
Ledger Account | The cash account you choose to receive the cash from this invoice (or the SoftLedger Pay cash account set as default) |
Cash Receipt | None — Direct Payments never reference a cash receipt |
Payment Date | Transaction date in the journal entry produced |
Posted Date | Accounting date for the journal entry produced |
Memo | Optional description type field |
Reference | The journal uses the reference Receive Cash — the same reference used when a cash receipt is applied — so your AR cash-in reporting treats both flows consistently. |
The invoice must be in Issued or Partial Payment status. The payment reduces the invoice's balance due and sets its status to Partial Payment, or Paid once the balance reaches zero. A payment that would exceed the remaining balance is rejected, and the invoice is left unchanged.
Accounting impact
Each Direct Payment posts a single AR journal:
Account | Debit | Credit |
Cash account (the payment's ledger account) | Amount |
|
Accounts Receivable (the invoice's AR account) |
| Amount |
Note: For cash-basis tenants, the AR credit side splits by line allocation, matching how an applied cash receipt behaves.
Approval
Direct Payments follow the standard AR payment approval flow, controlled by the Auto Approve AR Payments setting:
Setting on — the payment is created already approved and its journal posts immediately.
Setting off — the payment is created in Created status with a draft journal. Approving it posts the journal.
Editing and voiding
Update. Changing the amount re-adjusts the invoice's balance and re-posts the journal to match.
Void. Voiding posts a reversing AR journal (debits and credits flipped), restores the invoice's balance due, and returns the invoice to Issued or Partial Payment. Only approved payments can be voided.
Good to know
A Direct Payment always belongs to exactly one invoice. There is no standalone or multi-invoice Direct Payment record — paying several invoices at once (via Record Invoice Payments) creates one payment per invoice.
Batch and multi-currency grouped payments use the Cash Receipt flow instead.
Questions about recording payments? Reach out to your SoftLedger team at support@softledger.com.