Let someone pay a balance down over time

Some money is owed rather than charged. Somebody with a few thousand dollars outstanding and an agreement to pay it off when they can does not fit a fixed request, which they cannot afford in one go, and does not fit a subscription, which would impose an amount and a date nobody agreed to.

Setting it up

On the Payouts page under Payment requests, create a request and turn on Pay it down over time. You name the Total owing and the Smallest instalment you will accept. The payer gets a page that leads with what is still owed, shows how much has already been cleared, and lets them send whatever they can toward it. The same link keeps working for the next payment and the one after that.

What naming the total changes

• Nobody can pay more than is still owing. The page refuses an amount above the remaining balance rather than taking it and leaving you to hand the difference back.
• The last instalment is allowed below your minimum. The floor exists to stop token payments, not to strand somebody twelve dollars from square, so it drops with the remaining balance.
• The request closes itself when the balance reaches zero. The payer is told it has been paid in full rather than being invited to pay again.
• A refund puts the money back on the balance and reopens the request. The same link starts working again, because that instalment is genuinely owed once more.

What it is not

It is not a subscription and it schedules nothing. No date is set, no reminder is sent by the request itself, and no card is ever charged automatically. The payer decides when, and how much, every time. If you want to chase them on a rhythm, that is a cadence or a follow-up.

Paying down works with everything else on a request. It can be linked to a resident, so each instalment posts to their ledger and reduces what they owe, and it can offer your offline methods alongside. It cannot be a hold, because a hold reserves money instead of collecting it.