Dues and invoices
/app/billingRaising an invoice, recording a payment that came in another way, chasing what's owed, and voiding a mistake.
Where invoices come from
- A dues plan that's on a schedule raises them overnight, without anyone doing anything.
- You raise one by hand for a one-off — a locker, a guest round, an event. Or in a batch, for everybody or one category at a time.
- A food and drink order does not. It goes to the kitchen and onto the member's account as an order, and it's settled the way your grill room settles things.
Putting a plan on a schedule
A dues plan starts life as a price with a name on it. Turning on 'Bill automatically' is what turns it into a schedule, and it's off until you do — including for plans you set up before this existed. Nobody's members were ever invoiced because we shipped something.
- 1Open Members and find the plan in Dues plans.
- 2Tick 'Bill automatically'.
- 3Set the day it starts. This is the day it bills, every period — a plan set to the 1st of January bills on the 1st of January, not on whichever night you set it up.
- 4Set the net terms, in days. Thirty is the default, and that's what the ageing report measures against.
- 5Save. The next run picks it up.
| If the plan is billed | It raises an invoice |
|---|---|
| Once a year | On the anniversary of the start day |
| Quarterly | Every three months from the start day |
| Monthly | Every month on the start day — the 31st falls back to the last day of a short month |
| One time | Once, on the start day, and once for each member who joins after it |
What the schedule will and won't do
- One invoice per member, per plan, per period. Running it twice — a retry, a manual kick, two things at once — writes nothing the second time.
- Somebody who joins mid-season on a yearly plan is billed for the months they're actually here, rounded in their favour. Their terms start the day they joined, so the invoice isn't overdue the moment it appears.
- Somebody who joins after a period has ended isn't billed for it at all — they're picked up by the period they joined in.
- Only members marked active, and only members actually on that plan.
- Nothing is emailed and no card is charged. An invoice is a statement of what's owed; sending it and chasing it stay a person's job.
Only the period you're currently in is ever raised. If the schedule were interrupted for long enough to miss a whole period — which would take a month of outage on a monthly plan — that period stays missed rather than appearing weeks late. Raise it by hand and you'll know you did.
Recording a payment taken elsewhere
- 1Find the invoice.
- 2Record the payment, with the amount and how it came in — cheque, cash, over the counter.
- 3The invoice settles and the member sees it as paid.
Chasing
Outstanding invoices are grouped by how late they are — current, 1–30 days, 31–60, and older. That ageing view is the one to work down, oldest first.
Voiding
An invoice raised in error should be voided, not deleted. A void leaves the record and the reason in place, which is what your accountant wants and what stops the same question being asked again in March.
Every amount is held to the cent and never as a rounded decimal, so a year of dues adds up to exactly what it should. Prices you type are taken literally.
Questions
Can I part-pay an invoice?
Yes. Record the payment for the amount received and the balance stays outstanding.
Can members pay by card themselves?
Once payments are connected, yes — from their own Account screen.
Will this post to QuickBooks?
If you connect it, each paid invoice becomes a sales receipt automatically. See Connecting QuickBooks, Google and payroll.
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