QuickBooks Online still has no built-in way to split one invoice into scheduled installments. What it does have in 2026: Affirm financing on invoices from $50 to $30,000 USD, recurring sales receipts, progress invoicing, and Autopay. Each solves a different job, and picking the wrong one creates accounting problems that show up at tax time. This guide covers every native route with the real fees and limits, the bookkeeping trap Intuit's own community flagged, and how to run a true installment plan on a QuickBooks invoice.
Start with the decision, not the clicks. Each native option answers a different question: who carries the credit risk, when you get the cash, and what your ledger looks like afterwards. Match your situation in the table, then jump to the section that walks through it.
| Route | Cash timing | Fee to you | Credit risk | Limits | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Affirm on invoices | Full amount, next business day | 2.99% (standard card rate) | Affirm carries it | $50 to $30,000 USD, US only, consumer credit check | Consumer-sized jobs where you want the cash now |
| Recurring sales receipt | Spread over the schedule | Normal processing fees | You carry it | Needs signed card authority; cannot sit alongside an open invoice (see the trap below) | Fixed repeating charges that were never invoiced up front |
| Progress invoicing | Per milestone | Normal processing fees | You carry it | Estimate-based; multiple invoices, not one split invoice | Project work billed by stage or percentage |
| Autopay on recurring invoices | Per invoice, on due date | Normal processing fees | You carry it | Customer opts in, recurring invoice templates only | Subscriptions and retainers |
| Manual partial payments | Whenever the customer pays | Normal processing fees | You carry it | No schedule, no reminders, no visibility for the customer | A one-off arrangement you are happy to police yourself |
| Plan app (Paidnice, Partial.ly) | Spread over the schedule, auto-charged | App subscription | You carry it, with enforcement built in | Connected app required | B2B installment plans on invoices you have already raised |
Since February 2026, QuickBooks Online can offer Affirm's pay-over-time option directly on invoices. It is the closest thing QuickBooks now has to a native payment plan, and for the right job it is genuinely good: your customer spreads the cost, you get all of the money the next business day, and Affirm owns the chasing.
The facts that matter, from Intuit's own documentation:
Affirm is built for consumer-style purchases. A landscaping job, a med-spa package, a $9,000 kitchen refit. It runs a consumer credit check on the person paying, which makes it the wrong tool for invoicing a company on trade terms, anything over $30,000, repeat B2B billing, or any customer outside the US. For those, keep reading.
Intuit's most-linked answer for installments is the recurring sales receipt: a template that charges a stored card on a schedule you set. The setup, condensed from Intuit's guide:
That flow works when the charge was never invoiced in the first place. The trouble starts when people run it on top of an invoice that is already sitting in accounts receivable, which is exactly what most searchers here are trying to do.
Recurring sales receipts charge the card, but they do not pay down your invoice. A sales receipt needs its own product or service line, so each one records new revenue. Run one alongside an open invoice and you book the sale twice: once on the invoice, again on every receipt, while the original invoice sits in accounts receivable aging as unpaid.
A CPA flagged this in Intuit's own community in June 2026, calling the recommended workaround "incorrect advice". The clean method for an existing invoice is Receive payment against that invoice for each installment, so the balance falls and revenue is counted once.
Progress invoicing splits an accepted estimate into several invoices, by percentage or amount, as work completes. Turn it on under Account and settings, Sales, then "Create multiple partial invoices from a single estimate". It is the right tool for staged project billing: deposit invoice, mid-project invoice, completion invoice.
It is not a payment plan. There is no estimate behind a service invoice you have already raised, each stage is a separate document with its own due date, and nothing reminds the customer between stages. Intuit's own guide draws the same line: payment plans give the customer flexibility, installment arrangements are preset. If your customer owes one fixed amount and wants to pay it in six pieces, progress invoicing is the wrong shape. QuickBooks has also been rolling out Schedule Pay, which lets a customer pick a future date to pay an invoice. One date, paid in full. Useful, still not a schedule.
The QuickBooks community threads that rank for this search are worth reading because they are the real use cases. Here is the clean answer to each.
"The invoice is for $1,000 and they want to pay $200 a month." Keep the single invoice open. Record each $200 as Receive payment against it, so the balance steps down and your books stay honest. QuickBooks will not remind anyone about the remaining $800, so either diarize the chasing or put the invoice on an automated plan (next section) where each installment reminds and collects itself.
"We take a 20 to 40% deposit, then finance the balance over 36 months." This contractor-style arrangement, straight from a long-running community thread, does not fit any native route. Affirm caps at $30,000 and 36 months on consumer credit. Recurring receipts double-count. The workable structure: a deposit as the first installment, the balance on a written schedule with autopay, and interest (if you charge it) invoiced as it accrues. Put the agreement in writing before the first payment; our payment plan agreement template covers the clauses that protect you if it goes quiet.
When the job is "this exact invoice, paid in scheduled installments, without me policing it", that layer sits on top of QuickBooks. Paidnice connects to QuickBooks Online and creates the plan on the invoice you already raised:
Payment plans are included on Pro plans, from US$99 a month with local pricing in seven currencies. Businesses using Paidnice cut their average wait for payment in half within 30 days, and you can see what that looks like across our customer stories, from a bookkeeping firm that took a six-figure overdue book down by more than half to an events company that went from 20% late to zero. Setup is about 15 minutes from the QuickBooks app listing to the first live plan. If your jobs are consumer-sized, one-off, and under $30,000, Affirm above is the recommendation; where the two overlap, Affirm buys you next-day cash for 2.99%, Paidnice gives you the schedule, the enforcement, and a flat cost.
A schedule without paperwork is a hope. Before the first installment date, get the arrangement signed: the agreement template takes ten minutes to fill in, and if the plan is rescuing an already overdue invoice, the overdue invoice playbook covers deposits, plan length, and what to do the day an installment is missed. For the wider decision of when plans help and when they quietly turn you into a lender, start with the complete guide to customer payment plans.
Not on a single invoice natively. QuickBooks Online offers Affirm financing (customer pays over 3 to 36 months, you are paid next day), recurring sales receipts for scheduled card charges, and progress invoicing for estimate-based stages. A true installment schedule on one existing invoice needs a connected app such as Paidnice.
No. Affirm is the integrated pay-over-time provider for QuickBooks invoices. It covers invoices from $50 to $30,000 USD in the US, costs the business the standard 2.99% rate, and pays out the next business day.
Yes. Record it with Receive payment against the invoice and the open balance reduces. QuickBooks accepts partial payments happily; what it does not do is schedule the rest, remind the customer, or show them a plan.
No, and this is the trap. Each sales receipt records its own revenue line, so running one against an open invoice double-counts the sale and leaves the invoice aging as unpaid. Use Receive payment for invoice installments, or an app that writes each installment back to the invoice.
The standard QuickBooks Payments card rate of 2.99% per financed invoice, per Intuit's published rates as of 30 April 2026. On a $12,000 invoice that is $358.80. Your customer's own cost is 0% to 36% APR depending on their credit and chosen term.
This guide is part of a set on customer payment plans. Each piece stands alone; together they cover the whole system.
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