Billing & payments

An invoice turns a finished job into a numbered document the customer can pay against. Numbers run in sequence and are unique, which is what makes them usable in your accounts and in any later dispute.

Everything on the invoice comes from the job card: the labour, the parts, the prices. A wrong invoice is therefore almost always a wrong job card, and the card is where to fix it.

Once issued, an invoice is a record rather than a draft. It can be paid, part-paid or credited, but it is not quietly rewritten behind the customer's back. That is deliberate: they already have a copy, and two different versions of the same invoice number is exactly the problem numbered documents exist to prevent.

Klutch records cash, card, LankaQR, bank transfer and eZ Cash. Record the method the customer actually used even when the amount is identical; at the end of the day it is the split by method that you reconcile your till and your bank statement against.

One bill can take more than one method. Half in cash and half on a card is two payments against the same invoice, not something you have to round off or fudge into one.

Anything still unpaid stays visible against the job, or moves to the customer's credit account. Either way it does not quietly disappear, which is the failure mode of doing this in a notebook.

A part payment is money now with the rest owing. Take one when a customer puts down a deposit towards parts, or settles some of a bill and says they will return for the rest.

Record what they actually handed over. The balance stays against the job, so whoever is at the counter next can see it without having to ask anyone or find a note.

This is not the same thing as a credit account: a part payment is one bill partly paid, while a credit account is a standing arrangement across many visits. If a particular customer keeps leaving balances behind, they probably belong on a book account instead: see Run a credit (book) account.

A credit account is the book you already keep, kept in Klutch instead. Put a customer on credit and their unpaid balances accumulate against their name rather than against separate jobs, so you can see what someone owes across every visit they have ever made.

This is the part most shops actually want from software: knowing who owes what, and for how long, without leafing back through a notebook or trusting somebody's memory.

Credit accounts are included on every plan, Kickstart upwards. Set them up for the customers you genuinely extend credit to (a fleet operator, a regular three-wheeler driver, a company account) rather than for everyone who happens to be short that day.

Settling means recording money against a credit account rather than against a single invoice. A customer who owes for four visits and pays enough to cover two is a settlement, and Klutch applies it against what is outstanding.

Record settlements on the day they happen. A book account is only worth having if it is current: one that is a week behind is a notebook with extra steps and less trust.

Your takings for the day should account for both kinds of money: what came in against invoices, and what came in against book accounts. That total is what reconciles the till against what the shop actually did.