Payments

Payments & Integrations

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Payments in Tabs settle outstanding invoice balances. Tabs supports online collection through Stripe, bank reconciliation through Plaid, manual payment recording, and credit memos. Payment sync with your ERP is bi-directional. Credit memo sync is one-way: Tabs pushes credit memos to your ERP, and nothing comes back.

How payments work

A payment is a recorded transaction that reduces an invoice’s balance. Each payment has:

ComponentDescription
Balance dueRemaining invoice balance to be paid
Total paidSum of completed payments (excludes pending, removed, or reconciliation entries)
Payment typePending, Completed, Reconciliation (bad debt / bank fees), Removed, or Failed
Payment methodCredit card, ACH Debit, ACH Credit, Check, or Stripe

When a payment is applied, Tabs updates the invoice status automatically — PARTIALLY_PAID if a balance remains, PAID if fully settled — and syncs the payment to your connected ERP.

Recording payments

You can record payments in two ways depending on whether cash application is enabled.

Without cash application

Record payments manually when a customer pays outside of Tabs (wire, check, or ACH initiated from their bank):

  1. Open the invoice and click Record a payment
  2. Enter payment details from customer advice or your records
  3. Click Record payment — the customer receives a payment confirmation

With cash application

When Plaid is connected, Tabs recommends likely transaction matches based on remaining balance, invoice ID, transaction date, and customer name:

  1. Open the invoice and click Record a payment
  2. Review recommended bank transaction matches
  3. Select the matching transaction and confirm
  4. If a balance remains, reconcile as bad debt or bank fees — or leave open if you expect additional payments

If no bank transaction exists yet but the customer confirmed payment is coming, record a pending payment. This helps match the invoice to the bank transaction when it arrives.

Stripe payments are marked as pending until cash is received in your account. With cash application enabled, Stripe payouts are automatically attributed to the appropriate invoices along with any pass-through credit card fees.

Closing out an invoice

For balances you don’t expect to collect, close out the invoice as bad debt or bank fees. ERP accounts for reconciliation must be configured under Integrations → your ERP → Manage.

Stripe

Tabs integrates with Stripe to process payments through the customer payment portal and support autocharge:

  • Card payments — processed immediately; funds transfer to your Stripe account balance
  • ACH payments — take 5–6 business days; the invoice stays pending until the bank confirms or declines
  • Autocharge — charge stored payment methods automatically when invoices are sent (configured per customer in Billing Settings)

Customers can pay via ACH Credit or ACH Debit through the Tabs payment link. Stripe payout scheduling can automatically transfer your Stripe balance to your bank account.

Configure Stripe under Settings → Integrations → Stripe. See Set Up Stripe for the connection guide.

Plaid

Plaid connects your business bank accounts to Tabs for automated cash application:

  1. Connect your bank via the Plaid authentication flow
  2. Select accounts used to receive customer payments
  3. Map each bank account to the corresponding account in your ERP

Unmatched transactions appear in Data → Transactions. Tabs uses AI to suggest invoice matches from transaction descriptions — customer names, invoice numbers, and amounts.

Configure Plaid under Settings → Integrations → Plaid. See Set Up Plaid and Match Payments to Invoices for setup and workflow details.

Credit memos

Credit memos reduce what a customer owes without collecting cash. Use them to:

  • Correct a billing error after an invoice is sent
  • Apply a post-invoice discount or goodwill credit
  • Write off unused commitment balances

Creating a credit memo in Tabs automatically syncs it to your connected ERP. Applying it in Tabs reduces the open invoice balance and pushes the application to your ERP.

Apply Tabs-created credit memos in Tabs, not in your ERP. Credit memo sync is one-way (Tabs → ERP), so applying in your ERP is not equivalent. The apply comes back into Tabs as a payment on the invoice rather than as an applied credit memo: the invoice shows as paid, but the credit memo itself stays OPEN in Tabs at its full balance, and nothing links the two.

Credit memos created directly in your ERP do not sync back into Tabs at all. An ERP-originated credit memo has to be applied in that ERP.

For NetSuite, unapplying a credit memo or journal entry in NetSuite cancels the matching Tabs payment and recalculates the invoice balance on the next sync.

See Create and Apply Credit Memos for the API workflow, and ERP & Account Mapping for per-ERP behavior and field mappings.

ERP payment sync

Payment sync with your ERP is bi-directional:

  • Tabs → ERP — payments applied in Tabs sync to your ERP automatically, including Stripe and Plaid transactions
  • ERP → Tabs — payments manually applied in your ERP sync back to Tabs on the next daily sync

Removing a payment in Tabs syncs the removal back to your ERP. Journal entries for cash application are posted to the ERP accounts mapped during Plaid setup.

Credit memos applied to an invoice directly in NetSuite or Sage Intacct arrive in Tabs through this pull as a payment labeled Credit Memo (ERP), not as an applied Tabs credit memo. See Credit memos above for why that matters.

Credit card surcharge invoices

When you pass credit card fees through to a customer, the surcharge does not ride along on the original invoice in your ERP. Tabs creates a separate one-line invoice for the fee and settles it with its own payment, which keeps surcharge income distinct from service revenue in your books. This applies to QuickBooks Online, NetSuite, and Sage Intacct.

What to expect in your ERP:

  • The fee invoice takes the original invoice’s number with a -CCFees suffix
  • Its single line uses the credit card fee item you configured, and it is never taxed, regardless of your tax setup
  • It is dated the day it is created, and a matching payment is recorded against it right away
  • The payment on the original invoice is the amount excluding the fee

This requires a credit card fee item that exists in your ERP and is linked in Tabs, plus a deposit account for the fee payment. If either is missing, the fee invoice does not sync and the reason appears in your ERP sync errors.

Canceling the underlying payment in Tabs removes the fee invoice too, clearing its payment first and then the invoice. If that cleanup fails, the payment cancellation still completes and the leftover fee invoice is reported separately so it can be removed.

Because the fee settles its own invoice, the amount Tabs holds for a fee-bearing payment includes the fee while your ERP holds the amount excluding it. The two differ by design, so an ERP sync never overwrites the Tabs amount. It updates only status, method, and payment date.

Deleting, unapplying, and voiding a payment in your ERP

These three actions are not equivalent:

  • Deleted in your ERP propagates. Tabs cancels every payment that came from that record and recalculates the affected invoice balances. Because one ERP payment can cover several invoices, a single deletion can cancel several Tabs payments.
  • Unapplied in your ERP propagates too, but narrowly. Detaching a payment from one invoice cancels only that invoice’s portion and leaves the other applications on that payment alone.
  • Voided in NetSuite does not propagate. The void is reported as an ERP sync error against that payment and the Tabs payment is deliberately left as it was, so the payment still needs to be canceled in Tabs or confirmed as an accepted discrepancy.

Deletion and unapply detection are go-forward only. Tabs compares against changes since its last sync, so a payment deleted or unapplied before the integration was connected, or outside the sync’s lookback window, needs a one-off correction from Tabs Support.

Customer payment methods

Customers can store payment methods for autocharge in two ways:

  • Merchant-entered — add a card in the customer’s Billing Settings
  • Customer-entered — customer saves a card when paying an invoice through the payment link

Configure autocharge per customer under Customers → Billing Settings. See Customer Ingestion for billing contact and autocharge setup.