Bruce,

>but.... once I add in the payments thing things get messed up.... if the customer has never made a payment on an invocie it will not display that invoice.. this would be pointless because if they pay in full we no longer care about it but we still wish to see it... an invocie that has no payment on it would be much better to see because then you can enter it into the system.

You need an OUTER JOIN between invoice and payment, so all invoices will show whether they have payments or not.