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Split payments & receipts

basic

Take more than one payment per sale, add tips, and print or email a correct receipt.

Sometimes one payment method isn't enough. A customer pays part in cash and the rest by card, or splits a family appointment across two cards, or wants to add a tip on top of the service. Apolaris AI lets you record every tender against a single sale, keep the tip separate from revenue, and hand over (or email) a receipt where the numbers always reconcile.

This page covers the money side of a sale: taking several payments, recording tips, and producing the receipt. For building the cart itself — adding services and products, applying a discount code — see Sales & point of sale.

Who can do this

Action Required access
Create, edit, or delete a sale (set tenders and tip) is_manager, or the can_manage_sales privilege
Open a sale, print, download the PDF, or email the receipt is_manager, or the can_view_sale privilege
Take payment from the employee workspace ("Caja") A workspace user who can check out the booking

Access is granular per privilege. A domain manager (is_manager) always passes. Anyone else needs the specific privilege named above. Sales and receipts are always scoped to the user's organization, and the list and totals respect each user's visible sites.

"Manage sales" is one privilege that covers creating, editing, and deleting sales — there is no separate "take a split payment" permission. If a cashier can record a sale, they can split its payment.

How the receipt math works

Every surface in Apolaris AI agrees on the same three numbers, so a receipt printed at the front desk matches the one emailed to the customer and the one you see in reports:

  • Total = the net sale amount (the sum of the line items, minus any discount code). This is the revenue figure reports count.
  • Tip is recorded separately and shown below the total. It is never part of the Total and never counted as revenue — it is a pass-through paid out to staff (untaxed) through payroll.
  • Paid with (on the printed/portal receipt this is labelled Pago) lists the tenders. The tenders add up to net + tip — the full amount the customer actually handed over.

In short: Total = net, tip is separate, and what the customer pays = net + tip.

If a customer asks "what was the service price?" point at the Total. If they ask "what did I pay in all?" add the tip line — that is the sum of the payment lines.

A worked example

A customer has a $500 service, uses a promo code worth $50, and leaves a $60 tip, paying $200 in cash and the rest by card:

Line Amount
Subtotal (gross) $500.00
Discount (PROMO50) −$50.00
Total (net) $450.00
Tip $60.00
Paid — Cash $200.00
Paid — Card $310.00

The two payment lines sum to $510.00 = net $450 + tip $60. Reports record $450 of revenue and $60 of tip; the $50 discount is what the campaign "cost".

Adding multiple tenders to one sale

A tender is one payment of one method (cash, card, check, bank transfer, or other) against the sale. A sale can have as many tenders as you need.

  1. Build the sale as usual — pick the customer and staff member, add the service and any extra items, and apply a discount code if there is one.
  2. In the payment area, add a tender: choose the method and type the amount. Optionally add a reference (a transaction ID or the last 4 digits of a card).
  3. Add another tender for the next method and amount. Repeat until the tenders cover net + tip.
  4. Save. You land on the Sale Receipt page, which shows the line items, the Total, the Tip, and a Paid with breakdown listing each tender.

When a sale has more than one tender, its receipt is stamped as a Split payment; with a single tender it shows that method (Cash, Card, and so on).

The available methods are Cash, Card, Check, Bank Transfer, and Other. "Split" is not a method you pick — it is what the receipt is automatically labelled when you record two or more tenders.

Editing a saved sale and saving again re-records the tenders from what's in the payment editor. The edit form re-loads the existing tenders for you, so an unchanged save keeps the split intact — but if you clear the payment lines before saving, you replace them. Always check the Paid with lines after editing.

Online (gateway) payments can't be split

If your organization captures card / OXXO / SPEI through the integrated payment gateway, a single hosted-gateway charge is one payment and cannot be split. To split a payment you record the tenders directly (the manual cash/transfer/card path). Choose one or the other for a given sale, not both.

Recording a tip

The tip is entered as its own amount, separate from the sale total.

  • It is excluded from revenue and from the Total on every receipt and report.
  • It defaults to the sale's staff member but can be directed to a different tip recipient when someone else served the customer.
  • It is paid out in full (untaxed) to that staff member through payroll, and appears in their own earnings in the employee workspace.

On the receipt the tip prints on its own line beneath the Total, and (where set) the page shows who the tip goes to.

Tips can also be set to earn loyalty points if your loyalty program has "Earn points on tips" turned on — otherwise points are earned on the net sale only. See Loyalty program.

Overpayment, change, and balance

The sale tracks an outstanding balance = (net + tip) − tenders recorded:

  • If the tenders add up to less than net + tip, the sale still has a positive balance — keep adding tenders until it's covered.
  • If a cash tender is more than the remaining balance (the customer hands over a round amount and takes change), record the tender for the amount you are keeping, not the cash handed over. The tenders should reconcile to net + tip, not to the cash in the drawer minus change. Cash change is handled at the drawer, not as a tender.

Only positive tender amounts are accepted. You cannot record a negative tender to represent change given — record each tender as the money you actually kept for that method.

Printing and emailing the receipt

There are two places a receipt gets produced, and they print differently.

From the management area (Sales)

Open the sale (Sales list → a sale, or you land there right after saving). The Sale Receipt page gives you:

  • Print receipt — opens your browser's print dialog for the receipt page.
  • Download PDF — a narrow thermal-ticket PDF (SAL-YYYYMMDD-NNNNNN.pdf) rendered in your organization's language and currency, with the Total, the tip line, and the payment breakdown.
  • Email receipt — prompts for an address (pre-filled with the customer's email if you have one) and sends the receipt.

The receipt page is at /customers/sales/<id>/ and the PDF at /customers/sales/<id>/receipt-pdf/.

From the employee workspace ("Caja")

When staff check a booking out in the portal, the receipt prints through a hidden print frame rather than the browser's normal print. This is deliberate: a plain print would dump the whole agenda page (calendar, navigation, the checkout sheet) onto the paper. The hidden frame prints only the clean receipt — business name, items, Total, the Propina (tip) line, and the Pago (payment) lines — so what comes out of the printer is an actual ticket.

Both paths produce the same numbers (Total = net, tip separate, payments = net + tip). The difference is only how the print is triggered, because the workspace runs inside a larger page.

Emailing fails? Check email settings

If "Email receipt" reports that the receipt couldn't be sent, the most common causes are: no valid address on the customer (and none typed), or the organization's outbound email isn't configured. The error message distinguishes "no valid email address" from a real send failure — a send failure means you should check the organization's email settings.

Refunds and voids

  • Sales with a payment status of refunded or failed are treated as unrealized — they stop counting toward revenue, profit/P&L, commission, and tips, so a refunded sale does not inflate your numbers. Gateway (card / OXXO / SPEI) sales start pending and only count once the provider confirms; manual cash/transfer sales count immediately.
  • Deleting a sale removes it (managers / can_manage_sales only). Prefer a refund/void over deletion when you need an audit trail.

A sale is connected to several other parts of the system. Recording, refunding, or deleting one touches revenue and analytics, loyalty points earned on it, commission and tips owed to staff, and inventory for any products sold. Deleting a paid sale removes its revenue and any points/commission it generated. When in doubt, refund rather than delete so the history stays intact.

Cross-data impacts to remember

  • A discount code lowers the net (the Total), so it lowers the revenue every report counts — the discount amount is recorded separately as campaign cost. See Discount codes & promos.
  • The tip never affects revenue but does flow to the staff member's payroll and earnings.
  • Each tender is the source of the "Paid with" breakdown on the printed and emailed receipt, and of the split/single label on the stored receipt record.
Sales & point of sale Discount codes