Creating an invoice to be paid in two installments?

Creating an invoice to be paid in two installments?

Hi there,

I own a small Photographic Services business and have not been able to find a way to fit my billing system into Zoho, or any other Accounting software.

The way my payments work is:

1. Customer pays 50% of total price of service to secure their event date. This may be months away form their event.

2. 5 days before their event, the customer is requested to pay for the second half of the total price for the service.

I would really like to set this up so that I only have to send them once invoice, which essentially has two due dates, with the requested amount split in between those two dates.

This would help me have a more accurate view of:

- Money foreseen to be coming in each month for the next few months.

- Customers really owing money. (As of now, I have to set the date of the invoice to either 5 days from the send date (which is when I expect the first 50%), OR the customer's event date (which is when I expect the second half). Therefore, a customer may not have paid the first half on the date we agreed as a limit, but it will not show as overdue, since the due date is not set until months from now. Or, if I do the second option, and the customer pays the first 50% on time, I record the payment, but since it is only a partial one, the invoice appears as Overdue even though they are on track with their payments.

I could change the due date once the first 50% is paid (not sure if this is even possible), but still the forecasts of money expected to be coming in  in future months would be inaccurate for the first half of the process.

Is there any way to solve this in Zoho?

I appreciate greatly your replies.

Carmen