Summary

This article will summarize the features of the Invoices Tab in your ServiceBox settings. 

Invoice Tab: Statuses

In this subsection, you are able to add, edit, and remove invoice statuses, as shown in the following screenshot. 

You will require these statuses, to keep your invoices organized by so avoiding duplication and redundancy errors. By default, the "Draft" status, is that in which you can make changes, and perform edits to the invoice. "Submitted" status indicates, that edits and changes to the invoice are complete, and have been sent to the customer. "Paid" means the customer has responded with payment, while "Cancelled" shows no action having been taken as it is void. You may add or change as many of these statuses as you need.

You are able to update the following fields in the Invoice Statuses table:

  • Description:

    • The text description of the status.

  • No Recalculations: 

    • If you set this to "Yes", it will prevent the invoice from being edited once it is set to the Status. This will take the calculations tab and remove any ability to add or edit.

  • Export to Accounting:

    •  If this is set to "Yes", then that means if the Invoice is set to the corresponding Status then that invoice will be imported to Accounting if synced with an accounting software.

  • Paid:

    •  We require at least one Status to be set to "Paid". This way, if an Invoice is imported to accounting and set to paid in the accounting software, then this status will be set when Invoice is marked as Paid.

  • Void:

    •  If this is set to "Yes", this will allow one status to be set as void. We suggest having one status that is for void Invoices.

  • Restricted:

    • Selecting this to "Yes" will mean only admin employees will have access to Quotes with the corresponding status.

  • Change Work Order To Status:

    • When you select a specific work order status from the dropdown menu, the corresponding description will automatically update the work order status. For instance, if you choose 'Invoiced' from the dropdown menu for the 'Submitted' invoice status, as soon as the invoice status is updated to 'Submitted', the work order status will be automatically changed to 'Invoiced'. This streamlined process ensures seamless synchronization between the invoice status and work order status.

  • Reorder List: 

    • The order of the Statuses in this list is how it will appear in any drop downs related to the invoice status. You can reorder the list to make the order of statuses best fit the processes of your operations.

Invoice Tab: Categories

In this subsection, you can define the categories in order to group all Invoices in your ServiceBox.  By default, Labour, Materials, Sub-Trades, and Other, are listed as item categories which will display on the invoice. We recommend that these categories match your Quote Item categories as well, see "Helpful Tips" below. 


The screenshot below shows you some examples of Invoice categories. 

You can customize the following fields in the above table:

  • Description:

    • The name of the category.

  • Labour:

    • ServiceBox requires one category to be set as "Labor". This will be used when generating billable time from a Work Order. All Time entries in the Work Order will be associated with the Item Category that is set as Labor.

  • Materials:

    • ServiceBox requires one category to be set as "Materials". This will be used when generating billable materials from a Work Order. If an Item is new, it will be added to the Materials group. If the item already exists, it will use the cost and markup for the already existing item.

  • Hide Unit Cost and Quantity & Hide Item Total:

    • When printing out an invoice, we display the Item Description, the Unit Cost (Cost x Markup), Quantity and the Total for the Row by default. In the case where you want to display the breakdown of the price, you may want to hide some fields. If you want to Hide Unit Cost and Quantity you can choose this option for a specific Item Category.

  • Show on Work Order:

    • should you wish to hide the category entirely from basic users, switch this function on to "no".

  • Show on Vendor Order

    • should you wish to hide the category entirely from basic users, switch this function on to "no".

  • Restricted Add:

    • Allows only administrative users to add to invoice.

  • Restricted Edit:

    • Allows only administrative users to edit.

Helpful Tips:

  • It is important to note if you are using the Quote items in the Invoice, then we should have the Item Categories the Same as the Quote Items (See Article, "Settings Configuration - Quote Tab").

Invoice Tab: Payments

  • This section includes
    • Credit Card Processor: Click on "Apply for ServiceBox PaymentsMerchant Account" link, all of the settings for the portal payments are found on the screen. For more information, please follow this link  Portal Payment User Guide
    • Payment Methods: a list where you can add, edit or remove methods of payments for your invoices. 

NOTE: If Stripe is enabled in your Plan Tab Features, customers will be able to associate a Payment Method to be a Stripe payment. So once that Payment Method is selected the user will be able to make a credit card payment.

Invoice Tab: Invoice Items

This subsection has a table that serves two purposes: 

  1. If you want to use Quote Items in your invoices, then this is where you will link the Quote Categories to the Invoice Categories. You do this by selecting a quote category from the dropdown “Use items from quote category”. This portion of the subsection is shown in the following screenshot. NOTE: In this section you can match invoice categories with quotes categories. 
  2. The other option is to not select a quote category (set dropdown to blank). When you do this, you will now have items added in uniquely to that Invoice Category. Once you do this you will display the add button and any items that have been added. This table includes all of the Invoice Items entered into ServiceBox. They are broken down by the Invoice Item Categories (See "Settings Configuration - Invoice Tab", for more details). Each Invoice Item Categories has a set of items under it. Each item includes Name, Long Description, Unit Cost, Markup, and Tax Level. You can do the following:
  • Add new items per Invoice Item Category by clicking the green + button.

  • Edit existing items by clicking on the pencil button.

  • There is a search that will allow a user to filter the items by the name. By partially typing into the search a subset of items will appear.





An example of adding items that are not from the Quote Item Categories is shown in the following screenshot.


Helpful Tip:

  • If you are using quote items as invoice items, you can set the default labour and the default overtime Item for each individual user if the default labour item and default overtime item are not sufficient for all users.

Invoice Tab: Invoice Settings

In this subsection, you can edit the settings related to your Invoices. An example of the features within Invoice Settings is shown in the following screenshot.

Here is a list of customizable features in your Invoice Settings:

  • Allow update of unit cost and markup from invoice: 

    • Selecting this box allows the user to make changes to the cost and markup of an item when in the Quote calculator. This way, the most recent cost or markup will be saved.

  • Allow new items to be added on invoice: 

    • Selecting this box allows the user to add new items to the quote. We do recommend selecting this box, as it makes things faster while adapting to a customer's demands. However, some customers may be apprehensive to select items that add to their cost of service.

  • Populate Unit Cost when selecting Items: 

    • Selecting this box will load up the unit cost for the item into the quote once an existing item is selected.

  • Populate Markup with selecting items: 

    • Selecting this box will load up the markup for the item into the quote once an existing item is selected.

  • Use $ Markup instead of Percent:

    • Selecting this box will display the dollar value of a markup instead of a percentage. Note: Selecting this box will display dollar value of markup prices as a default setting for all future created Invoice Items.

  • Default Labour item

    • This is used for Time and Materials (T&M) Invoices where the Time from the Work Order is imported into an Invoice. The items that appear in the list are the items that are included in the Invoice Status that has “Labor” column set to Yes.

Invoice Tab: Print Setup

This subsection allows you to customize many of the items included when printing a Invoice. As shown in the following screenshot, you can customize the format of your printed Invoice, by adjusting the margin size and layout as well as what you wish to hide or show in the final print out.


Here are some more detailed descriptions of the Print Setup subsection:

  • Invoice Label:

    • This is label that will appear at the top of the Invoice.

  • Customer Reference Field Name:

    • If you require a reference to the customer in the quote then enter the name that makes sense for the customer. For example you could enter in “Customer PO Number”.

  • Additional Contact Info:

    •  If you want to add your phone number or an email address in below the address in the Work order Print then use the Additional Contact info field.

  • Invoice Number Separator:

    • This is the separator that will help create the Invoice number. The format is Work Order Number split by the Separator and then the number of invoice.

  • Print Assigned Employee:

    • Select this if you want to print out the Assigned Person for the Work Order.

  • Assigned Employee Label:

    • If the Print Assigned Employee is checked off then you need to enter in the Assigned Employee Label. Usually we enter in "Technician".

  • Default Note:

    •  If you would like to have a default message entered into the Invoice Note once the Invoice is created, then enter the text of that here.

  • Final Wording:

    •  This is the message that appears at the bottom of the Invoice. If you have a Business Number that you need to display you can add it to the top of the Final Wording so that it appears below the Total.

  • Avoid page breaks in the middle of items:

    •  We suggest turning this on to ensure optimal formatting and legibility.

Helpful Tip:

  • If you want to see what the invoice will look like click on Save and Preview

Invoice Tab: Email Setup

This subsection allows you to define default values for your outgoing emails regarding Invoices. Any values set in this screen will load when a new Invoice email is created. An example is shown in the following screenshot.


Note you can set up multiple email templates for different types of emails. For example, you could have a specific email template targeted to new customers, and another template targeted for existing/recurring customers. 


Note: We do have special fields that we can insert into the Subject line or the Email Body that will load values from ServiceBox. An example of this is {{quotenumber}} which will input the current Quote Number. To see the Values that we can have in the Email Body there is a drop down that says “Insert Value”. All of the fields that we have are:

  • Company Logo: {{companylogo}} - This will include a small version of the logo into the email from the customer.

  • Company Name: {{companyname}} - This will display the company as defined in the Tenant Tab.

  • Company Address: {{companyaddress}} - This will display the company address as defined in the Tenant Tab.

  • Customer Name: {{customername}} - This is the name of the customer as defined in the Quote.

  • Invoice Number: {{invoicenumber}} - This will display the current invoice number.

  • Job Site Address: {{jobsiteaddress}} - This is the Job Site address from the Quote.

Invoice Tab: Portal Payment Setup

Once your merchant account is all setup an configured you can configure the Portal Payments set up here. For more information, please follow this link  Portal Payment User Guide