Hearts & Fire — Staged Deposit Payments Research

Date: March 31, 2026 Context: Client needs to collect deposits on custom furniture orders in stages (e.g., 25% upfront, 25% midpoint, 50% at completion on a $6K couch). Lightspeed R-Series is their POS.

Can Lightspeed Handle This?

No — not for the workflow they need.

Lightspeed R-Series has layaway/special order features with deposit collection, but they fall short:

Feature	What It Does	Why It's Not Enough
Online deposits	Email customer a payment link when creating a special order/layaway	Single-shot request, not a series of milestones
Deposit requests	Collect partial payment upfront	Expire after 14 days, can't be modified or cancelled
Partial payments	Apply collected deposits at the register	Must be made in-person (per invoicing beta docs)
Layaway	Hold items with deposit, complete sale later	Designed for "take deposit at counter, pick up later" — not staged online collection

What the API Has

The R-Series API exposes Sale, SalePayment, SpecialOrder, CreditAccount, and Workorder entities. But there's no documented workflow for "create an order, then programmatically collect 3 payments against it over weeks/months via a hosted payment page."

Recommended Solution: Stripe + Custom Deposit Tracker

Build a custom deposit tracker feature in the Vercel/React app that uses Stripe Checkout Sessions for payment collection.

Architecture

[Vercel App — Custom Deposit Tracker]
  |
  |— Store creates a "Custom Order" with:
  |     ├── Customer info
  |     ├── Order description + line items
  |     ├── Total amount
  |     └── Payment schedule (e.g., 25% / 25% / 50%)
  |
  |— For each milestone payment:
  |     ├── Generate Stripe Checkout Session for that amount
  |     ├── Email payment link to customer (via Stripe or custom)
  |     ├── Webhook confirms payment → update order status
  |     └── Dashboard shows paid / pending / overdue per milestone
  |
  |— Optional: Write completed payment back to Lightspeed
  |   via SalePayment API (for bookkeeping reconciliation)

Why Stripe

Option	Verdict
Lightspeed deposits	Single-shot, 14-day expiry, no staged flow
Square Invoices	Has milestone billing but adds a second payment processor
Stripe Checkout Sessions	GA, great API, create payment pages on-demand, webhooks for status
Stripe Invoice Payment Plans	Perfect fit but currently in private preview

Stripe Checkout Session Approach (Available Now)

For each milestone payment:

Create a Checkout Session via Stripe API with the milestone amount
Send the URL to the customer (Stripe can email a receipt, or send custom email)
Listen for checkout.session.completed webhook to mark milestone as paid
Dashboard shows all custom orders with payment status per milestone

This is fully GA, well-documented, and battle-tested. No private preview access needed.

Stripe Invoice Payment Plans (Future Option)

If/when Stripe makes Invoice Payment Plans GA:

Create one invoice with amounts_due split into milestones
Stripe auto-emails reminders for each payment
Customer returns to the same payment page for each installment
Even cleaner UX — but requires private preview access today

What This Means for Scope

This is a separate feature from the Ecwid/Lightspeed eCom storefront integration. The e-commerce widget handles standard product sales. The deposit tracker handles custom orders with staged payments. They're independent systems that both live on the same Vercel app.

Not yet scoped in the quote. The current 12 hours for "Lightspeed Ecommerce" covers catalog/cart/checkout/shipping/search via the Ecwid widget. A custom deposit tracker would be additional scope.