Customer Deposit & Prepayment Tracker
Record every customer deposit and prepayment, link it to the right order, and apply it to the invoice only after AR signs off - with the remaining balance always visible, so deposits stop turning into double charges or lost credits.
A secure internal tool where your team logs customer deposits, links them to orders, and applies them to invoices only after AR approves - with a live remaining-balance view and a full audit trail.
Before you start
- A free Supabase account
- A free Vercel account
- A free Resend account (for approval and posting notifications)
- A CSV or Google Sheet of your recent deposits and a list of open orders/invoices
The problem this kills
A customer pays a deposit to lock in an order. By the time the invoice goes out, that deposit is living in someone's inbox, a sticky note, a side spreadsheet, and maybe a line in your accounting system - and no two of them agree. So one of two things happens, both bad: you bill the customer for the full amount and they get charged twice, or the deposit quietly vanishes and you eat the credit. Multiply that across a busy month and you've got angry customers, manual clawbacks, and an AR team that doesn't trust its own numbers.
The root cause is that a deposit and the invoice it should reduce never live in the same place under a single rule. Nobody can answer the simple question "how much of this customer's prepayment is still unapplied?" without a forensic dig.
What you'll build
A small, secure web app your AR clerks, sales reps, and CSRs log into. They record a deposit, link it to an order, and request to apply it against an invoice. Nothing posts until AR approves it - the app drafts the application, a person reviews it, and only then is the deposit committed and the balance reduced. Every deposit shows its remaining balance at a glance, and every action is stamped with who did it and when.
What's inside the Implementation Plan
- It starts by interviewing you about your business. Before a single line is built, the plan has the AI agent ask you how deposits flow today, what your order and invoice numbers look like, what your systems call things, and where the messy exceptions hide - then it tailors the data model, the validation rules, and every later step to your operation. This is not a generic template you have to bend to fit.
- A clear, beginner-friendly walkthrough you paste into Claude Code one step at a time.
- The full data model for deposits, orders, invoices, and applications - shaped by your answers.
- The AR approval gate, the live remaining-balance math, and duplicate guards.
- Email notifications for "deposit needs approval" and "deposit applied."
- A No-API-yet fallback: import your deposits straight from a Google Sheet or CSV, and export a clean CSV in the exact columns your accounting system expects - so it works today, even with zero integration.
- A verification checklist so you know it actually works before you trust it.
The governance it includes (this is the point)
- Login - only your team gets in.
- Row-level security - each person sees only their own organization's deposits and orders, enforced by the database itself.
- A human-in-the-loop approval gate - the AI drafts the deposit application; AR reviews and approves before anything posts to your system of record.
- A complete audit trail - who logged the deposit, who approved the application, what changed, and exactly when.
- Duplicate guards - the same deposit can't be applied to the same order twice, enforced on a deposit-ID + order key.
Who it's for
Accounts Receivable clerks, sales reps, and customer service reps at any business that takes deposits or prepayments - custom manufacturers, distributors, contractors, event and rental companies, anyone who collects money before the final invoice.
You've got this. Open the Implementation Plan, paste the first prompt into Claude Code, and let it interview you - by this afternoon you'll have a deposit tracker your AR team actually trusts.