How do I enter retainers (prepayments) in quicken H and B 2010?
How do I enter retainers paid by clients before I invoice them? For example, A client pays retainer of $4,000 which is anticipated to cover the next three monthly invoices. How do I show the deposit of $4,000 in my bank account in Q HB and then how do I invoice so that I am not either double entering the dollars in or having to produce invoices that sum to zero?
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This is essentially handled like anyother payment. Enter the total amount in the Customer Payment dialog as usual. Quicken associates this with the customer, and when you create your invoice you can apply the down payment to it.
For specific instructions for both manual entry and downloading the transaction from your bank, use the Search feature in Quicken Help. Use "prepayment" (without the quotes) for the search term and open the topic "How do I Track a prepayment or down payment."
Now, though, when I go into Invoices, create the new invoice, type in the same customer name that I entered the payment with, and then click Receive Payments, I don't see any existing credit available. It's not binding that payment I deposited with this customer for some reason.
Any info on what I'm doing would be greatly appreciated. By the way, as this thread is a few years old now, I am using H&B 2014, but the topic still seems to apply.
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Quicken associates this with the customer, and when you create your invoice you can apply the down payment to it.
Select the Apply Existing Credits check box to have Quicken apply the credit to this invoice.
Quicken tells you how much credit is available and tracks any remaining amount, which you can apply to the
next invoice you issue for this customer.
I am now using H&B 2013 and the above continues to work.