Skimmer Billing - Invoicing Settings

To learn how to choose settings for invoicing with Skimmer Billing, see the video below. Or, if you prefer, scroll past the video to view our step-by-step text instructions.

Step-by-step instructions . . .

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When you’re ready to start billing through Skimmer, you’ll want to choose your settings before you start creating invoices. Here’s how to get started. First, on the website go to Settings and then Invoicing.

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Last Invoice Number shows the number assigned to the most recently generated invoice. Next Invoice Number sets, as you would guess, the number that will be assigned to the next invoice you generate, and then Skimmer will count forward from there for each subsequent invoice. So, if you set this number to 1000, the first invoice you generate will be given the invoice number 1000, and the next one will be given 1001. You can set this starting number to basically anything you want above zero, and at any point you can come back to this screen and change what your next invoice number will be.

Payment Due gives you several common options to choose from, and whatever you set here will automatically apply to the invoices you generate. It defaults to Upon Receipt, which means that if you generate and send an invoice today, payment is also due today. But you can change the default to 15 days out, 30 days out, and so on. Although your choice will be applied to every invoice that’s created, you can edit any individual invoice to apply a different due date. Or, when you’re actually generating the invoices, you can switch from the default. So you’re not locked into your default choice.

Pay Days Before Due applies to customers who are on Autopay. This helps you specify when you want their Autopay to trigger. For instance, let’s say you have Payment Due set to Net15, you enter a 5 in Pay Days Before Due and you send the invoice on January 1. Payment would be due on January 15, but for customers on Autopay, the payment process will trigger on January 10 – 5 days before the official due date. If you want Autopay to apply on the actual due date and not before, enter a 0 in this box. But what if you want Autopay to trigger right when you send the invoice? To do that, leave the Pay Days Before Due box blank. If this box is empty, then for any customer set to Autopay, that payment process will begin when you generate and send the invoice, regardless of what you’ve chosen from the Payment Due box.

Default Pool Service Line Item Name is the label for your regular weekly or bi-weekly pool service. It’s what will appear as the line item on the invoice, and the Description of course lets you further describe what this line item is. The defaults that you set here will populate every invoice this way. However, as with the other options, you can change this with individual invoices during invoice generation.

Default Invoice Message. Whatever you want to tell the customer by default, you can put it here. Again, this can also be edited per invoice or at invoice generation.

Next, you can set your Taxable Defaults. What does that mean? Whenever you generate these types line items, you’re telling Skimmer that you either DO or DO NOT want them to be automatically listed as taxable. So, for example, if you check the box for Pool Service, anytime a pool service line item appears on and invoice, it will show as Taxable and the tax rate you’ve set will be calculated and added to the invoice. So, based on your location, if service or chemicals are always taxed, you can indicate that here.

Again, this can be edited on an individual invoice if necessary, but there is an exception. For pool service and chemical dosages, you’ll need to control those parameters here because changing their tax setting is not an option during invoice generation. Everything else can be, but for those two categories, your choice must be made here.

You may wonder why Products aren’t listed here as an option. Because if you go to Settings and then Products, you’ll see that each Product already gives you the ability to indicate whether it’s taxable.

Under Billing Info, fill in your company’s information. This will appear at the bottom of every invoice when it’s sent to your customer.

Invoice Email Settings apply when you email an invoice to your customer. You can indicate who and where the invoice is coming from, copy any addresses you’d like, and set defaults for email subject, header, message, and footer. Then you can attach your company logo so it also appears on the invoice email.

When you have the settings you want, be sure to click Save.

After you’ve saved, if you’d like to see what the email will look like, you can go to the top right corner, enter your email address, and send yourself a sample.