Cancel/VOID Payment Plans without refunding | Voters

Cancel/VOID Payment Plans without refunding

Elaine Turso LLC

My clients need to be able to cancel payment plans. Currently, we are unable to void a payment plan without refunding the client. Sometimes, an invoice just needs to be voided without refunds.

February 28, 2025

Adebola Osofisan

UPDATE on my earlier comment: there is still no official "cancel / close without refund," but I found a workaround that marks the invoice Paid without refunding.
GHL will not accept a $0 leftover installment, but it will accept $0.01. Write the invoice down to "amount already collected + $0.01," point the last unpaid installment at that penny, save, then Record Payment -> Record manually for $0.01 (Cash/Other). Real payments stay. Reminders stop. No refund. Treat the extra penny as a write-off in your real books, not revenue.
Example: paid $895.00, total $2,290.00, due $1,395.00. New total = $895.01. Cancellation line = $1,394.99 (current total - paid - $0.01).
Do not Resend, Charge a card, Void, or Refund. Do not change the paid installment. Do not Save the invoice until the schedule total equals the invoice total.
Edit the Partially Paid invoice.
Change Payment Schedule. Leave Payment 1 alone. Delete extra unpaid rows (the last unpaid row cannot be deleted). Set the remaining unpaid row to the full amount still due so the schedule still equals the current total. If the due date is today or earlier, GHL says "Due date cannot be in the past" - move it to tomorrow. Save the schedule modal.
Do not Save the invoice yet. Add a negative line (or a fixed discount) for the cancellation amount, e.g. -1394.99 named "Cancelled - [event]." Total must now be paid + $0.01. Amount Paid must still be the original collected amount.
Change Payment Schedule again. Set the last unpaid installment to 0.01 (not 0). Schedule total and invoice total must both be paid + $0.01. Save the modal, then Save the invoice. Status will still be Partially Paid.
Record Payment -> Record manually. Amount 0.01. Method Cash or Other. Notes: "Cancellation write-off. No funds collected." If asked, pick the $0.01 installment. Status should become Paid.
If Save fails with "Schedule total must be equal to the invoice total," you changed one side only. If it rejects 0, use 0.01. If a negative line "does not take," the leftover installment is still the old amount.
Going forward: put the retainer on Invoice 1 and the remaining balance on Invoice 2. On cancel, keep Invoice 1 and void Invoice 2.
HighLevel: please still add cancel/close without refund and fix the help article. This should not be required.

Tina R

this is a MUST. I need this as well as I am no refunding a NON REFUNDABLE retainer. Where are we on this?

Adebola Osofisan

We run an event venue and book most clients on payment plans (a non-refundable retainer plus scheduled installments). When a client cancels, our policy is to keep what they have already paid (it is non-refundable) and reduce the invoice down to the amount actually collected, so the uncollectible balance stops sitting in accounts receivable and the reminders stop. No refund is involved, and none should be.
Today that is impossible on a partially-paid invoice that has a payment schedule. Every path is blocked:
Reducing the invoice total and saving fails with "Schedule total must be equal to the invoice total."
Setting the remaining installment to 0 is rejected with "Value must be greater than 0."
The delete (trash) icon on the pending installment is greyed out and disabled.
The Percentage / Fixed Amount toggle is disabled once any payment exists.
Voiding is blocked because it requires the paid amount to be refunded first, which defeats the purpose.
What makes this harder: your own documentation says this is supported. The help article "Editing of Payment Schedules and Partially Paid Invoices" (https://help.gohighlevel.com/support/solutions/articles/155000004960-editing-of-payment-schedules-and-partially-paid-invoices) explicitly states that on a partially-paid invoice you can "Add, edit, or delete payment schedule entries" and "modify due dates and amounts within each milestone," with previous payments left intact. In practice none of that is possible, and when I called support they confirmed the feature is in fact not supported and agreed to escalate internally.
The ask is simple: on a partially-paid invoice, let us either delete or zero out the remaining installments and reduce the total to what was actually collected (moving the invoice to Paid), or add an explicit "cancel / close without refund" option. And please bring the help article in line with the actual behavior so others are not sent in circles.
This is a common cancellation shape for any business that uses deposits or payment plans, and right now there is no clean way to close the books on it.

Brooke Haynes

This is essential. I do payment plans with clients, and sometimes they get cancelled, but I am not refunding, and they aren't continuing with next payments. It was a mutual agreement to halt the contract.

Tracy Hightower

We need a way to cancel payment plans or invoices without having to give money back to the client ASAP. Sometimes a client changes their mind before we even process payments, or an agreement falls through, and we just need to cancel the record, not issue a refund. Right now, our system makes us refund money even when it's not owed, which messes up our books and wastes our time. We need a simpler 'cancel' option that doesn't involve giving money back.

Lisa Kennemur

We have the same issue and request to allow for payment plans to be cancelled without a refunding work around. This is a basic function.

David James

Agreed, we have a client who had already paid but wanted a new amended invoice with different products with the same price. We marked the 2nd invoice as paid but now need to remove it from the total as the amount is counted twice.

Admin MeetNikki

This is definitely needed! We have a client that is now refusing to pay the remainder of their Invoice and we don't want them to receive any additional reminders.