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Most AR automation tools treat invoice payment like an all-or-nothing proposition. Your customer either pays the full amount or they don't pay at all. But that binary thinking ignores how businesses actually operate.
A customer might have $50,000 in outstanding invoices and $30,000 available right now. Under traditional systems, you get nothing until they can cover everything. Meanwhile, your DSO climbs, your cash forecast gets murkier, and your collections team sends increasingly awkward reminder emails.
This matters more than ever. According to Centime's DSO research, roughly half of U.S. B2B invoices are currently overdue, and about 8% end up written off as bad debt. The companies finding ways to accelerate even partial cash collection are the ones protecting their working capital.
Centime's new Partial Payment Settings flip the traditional dynamic. Customers can pay what they have available, when they have it, while you maintain complete control over the rules.
The Cash Flow Math Behind Partial Payments
The logic here isn't complicated, but it's worth spelling out. When customers can only pay in full, invoices sit unpaid until they accumulate enough cash. That delay compounds across your entire customer base.
Research from Resolve Pay found that B2B companies implementing customer payment portals with multiple digital payment options reduced their DSO by an average of 8 days in the first quarter after implementation. The same research showed businesses offering early payment discounts for digital methods saw DSO improvements of 15 to 20 percent on average.
Partial payments extend this principle further. Instead of waiting for customers to accumulate the full invoice amount, you capture available cash immediately. A $30,000 payment today on a $50,000 invoice is worth more than $50,000 in 45 days, both in time-value terms and in reduced collection risk.
Capital One's analysis of B2B payment modernization reinforces this point: when buyers can choose the payment method and structure that works best for them, they're more likely to pay on time. That flexibility directly accelerates cash flow and reduces DSO.
The Admin Controls Worth Understanding
The feature lives under Settings > Receivables > Online Payments > Payment Preferences, and it offers three configuration modes:
Never disables partial payments entirely for all buyers. Some businesses, particularly those with small-ticket invoices or specific contractual requirements, may prefer this.
Always opens partial payments to every customer. This works well for companies prioritizing cash velocity over payment uniformity.
Buyer-Level Override is where it gets interesting. You can set a global default, then customize rules for specific customers through Buyers > Payment Settings. Maybe your enterprise accounts get partial payment flexibility while smaller accounts pay in full.
The December 2025 release notes detail additional threshold-based rules. Admins can configure partial payments to apply only when invoices meet certain criteria (above or below specific amounts). This prevents awkward scenarios where someone tries to pay $12 on a $15 invoice.
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What Your Customers Actually See
When partial payments are enabled, buyers log into the Customer Portal and see an editable Invoice Amount column in their Unpaid tab. The full outstanding balance appears by default, but they can adjust it downward.
Here's a practical example from the documentation: A customer at Amy's Bird Sanctuary has a $228 invoice. They decide to pay $100 now. If they're paying via ACH and you've configured an ACH discount, the system automatically calculates that too. In this case, a $10 ACH discount brings their actual payment to $90.
The payment summary screen breaks this down clearly before they confirm:
| Field | What It Shows |
|---|---|
| Applied Invoice Amount | The partial amount selected ($100) |
| Term Discount / Credits | Any applicable early-pay discounts or credits |
| ACH Discount / Surcharge | Payment method adjustments ($10 discount for ACH) |
| Payment Amount | Final amount charged ($90) |
Buyers can also apply available credits during this process. Hovering over the Applied Credits status reveals which credits were used and lets them modify the amounts if needed. They can select multiple invoices and pay them in a single grouped transaction.
Multiple Payment Methods: The Other Half of the Equation
The same release introduced support for multiple saved payment methods. Previously, customers had to delete and re-add payment methods to switch between accounts. Now they can store multiple cards and bank accounts, then select the appropriate one at checkout.
This sounds like a small quality-of-life improvement, but it removes real friction. A buyer managing payments across different cost centers or projects no longer needs to update their payment details every time. The system also defaults to their last-used payment method, reducing clicks for repeat transactions.
According to J.P. Morgan's analysis of DSO drivers, prompt invoicing, clear payment terms, and efficient follow-up processes strengthen cash flow and reduce AR aging. The corollary is also true: payment friction causes delays. Every extra step between "I want to pay this" and "payment submitted" is an opportunity for the invoice to get deprioritized.
The Reconciliation Side
For AR teams, partial payments create a tracking challenge. If a customer pays $100 on a $228 invoice, how does that show up in your records?
Centime handles this in the Paid tab view. The accordion display shows the original invoice amount, the applied payment, any discounts or surcharges, and the remaining balance. The documentation walks through exactly how each field maps to the underlying transaction.
For NetSuite users specifically, the December release also added an Individual Invoice Posting enhancement. Each invoice posts separately with its own credits and discounts, but a shared Payment ID maintains grouping visibility. This addresses a common pain point where grouped payments made credit-to-invoice matching difficult during reconciliation.
Who Should Actually Use This
Partial payments aren't universally appropriate. They make the most sense when:
Your average invoice size is large enough that partial payments represent meaningful cash flow. A $500 partial payment on a $50,000 invoice moves the needle. A $50 partial on a $500 invoice mostly creates accounting overhead.
Your customers have legitimate cash flow timing issues rather than unwillingness to pay. Partial payments help good customers manage their obligations. They don't fix bad customers.
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Your AR automation can handle the reconciliation complexity. Manual tracking of partial payments across dozens of invoices becomes unmanageable quickly.
Your terms and contracts don't prohibit it. Some industries have specific requirements around payment structures that partial payments might violate.
The feature is available now for Centime customers running NetSuite, Sage Intacct, or QuickBooks integrations. Configuration takes a few minutes in Settings, and your customers will see the option the next time they log into their portal.
See Centime in action
Our innovative AR, AP and business banking solutions are powerful alone, and even better together.
Schedule a tailored demo with a Centime expert.