Skimmer Billing - How to Generate Invoices

To learn how to generate invoices 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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You’ve done the work, and now you need to get paid. Well, Skimmer Billing makes it easy. Here’s how to generate and send invoices. On the website, start by going to Billing and then Invoice Generator. The first screen is where you’ll enter all the parameters for what you want to bill for.

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Select your Bill From and Bill To dates, which tells Skimmer what service dates to gather your work from. This will default to first and last day of previous month, but you can change these dates to whatever you want. Choose your invoice date, which will default to today, but you can select another if you like. The due date will display automatically based on your default settings, which we review in another video. But if you need something different this time, you can change it here for the invoices you’re about to generate. Message on Invoice will show the default message you already set up, which we covered in another video. Again, though, you can change it here for these invoices if you want to. Changing this message here won’t change the default, just what’s displayed on the invoices you’re about to generate.

Next, choose what you want to include in these invoices – regular pool service and related items, work orders that haven't been invoiced, or both. Note that any invoice which includes a work order will not be autopaid. That applies to the work order itself and any associated installed items. Since work orders are typically regarded as non-routine and have the potential to be expensive, this gives your customer the opportunity to review those charges.

You also have the option to only include locations for monthly service if a stop has been finished. Unchecking this box will allow you to bill a customer who's set to Per Month billing whether you completed a stop for them or not. So in practical terms, what does this allow you to do? For customers set to a Per Month rate, it allows you to bill ahead for service for the upcoming month if that's how you prefer to bill. So for instance, let's say it's the end of May and I need to bill. If I uncheck this box, then set my Bill From date to 5/1 and my Bill To date to 6/1, Skimmer will generate invoices for customers I serviced in May. For customers set to a Per Month rate, it will also charge for June service. So, what happens next month if I do the same thing? When I bill at the end of June, and I set my Bill From date to 6/1 and my Bill To date to 7/1, for those Per Month rate customers that I already charged for June service, Skimmer will not try to charge them for that service again. It will only charge for anything extra that needs to be billed for beyond the base service price that they already paid. So if I charge extra for certain chemicals, or if I sold the customer a piece of equipment or completed a work order for them in June, those would be charged for now. And since I set the Bill To date to 7/1, I will also bill ahead for that next month's service. You can set your default choice for this on the Invoice Settings screen, but you can always change it here for this particular billing session.

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For the next option, select whether you want your customers to receive a combined invoice, or whether you want to generate a separate invoice for every service location.

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Finally, select which customers you want to invoice. Here you can choose to invoice all customers–and keep in mind that your choice above, whether or not to restrict billing to only locations with a finished service stop, will affect what this choice means. If you’ve unchecked that box, then selecting all customers here means that all customers set to Per Month billing will be included whether you’ve completed a service for them or not. If you’ve checked that box, though, only those with at least one completed stop during the billing period will be included.

You can also choose to bill based on customers with a certain tag or set of tags, or even one specific customer if you want. These options can be useful if, for instance, you have customers on different billing schedules such as biweekly versus monthly.

When you’ve chosen your parameters, click Continue.

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Next, you’ll be taken to a screen with a few tabs, all of which will guide you through generating your invoices, beginning with the Pool Service tab. Before we look at the tabs, though, we’ll click the Customize Service button to access another screen. This allows you to make a few more choices for regular service stops. At the top, you’ll see the defaults you chose in Settings for pool service line items. We cover that in another video. You can adjust them here if you like, without changing the overall default, and choose whether to display service dates on the invoices. Changing these will apply the change to all the invoices you’re generating.

Customize for Each Location is there in case you want to set a custom service name and description for a customer’s specific service locations. For instance, maybe they have multiple service locations, and you want to name each service after its location. Or you can leave it blank and go with the default.

When you’re ready, click Save & Continue.

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Back to the Pool Service tab now, which shows you all the pool service items for each billed customer in this single tab, including installed items and chemical dosages related to service. You can Expand All, or Collapse All and then click the arrow to expand for individual customers. You can edit item descriptions, make changes to quantity, price, taxable status, and choose whether or not you want to invoice for that particular item. Related to that, you’ll notice that all chemical dosages are displayed here, even if they’re chems you’re including in the service price. Those chems will be automatically marked as Do Not Invoice, but you can change that here for any chemical dosage if, in this instance, you need to charge for it. Also, note that you’re limited in what you can edit for the Service line items. This is so Skimmer can mark and keep track of what service has already invoiced so there are no accidental double charges.

You may see little alert icons. These may indicate that an item has a unit price of Zero and needs to be reviewed, or it may notice that a Service Rate Type hasn’t been set. It could also be that you’re generating an invoice for a customer you haven’t reviewed yet. Maybe they’re new and it’s your first time billing them. Either way, Skimmer is just helping you to review or adjust anything that may need your attention.

When everything is set, click Save & Continue.

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If you’ve chosen to include Work Orders, you’ll progress to that tab next. Here you’ll see all the work orders completed during your billing period. This screen gives you all the relevant information at a glance, including name of the customer, service location, line item name and description, the date it was completed, number of items installed, combined tax rate, taxable status, default work order price, chemical dosages, and the current total payment due. Since we’ve just arrived on this tab, this total may change if we modify any line items. We show you in other videos how to choose default settings for what will appear here. But once you’re here, if you need to make changes from those defaults, you can do so.

You can also see any items installed for each work order. They’ll appear right below the labor line item. You can tell the labor line item because it has a little square with a color that matches your chosen color for that work order type. Below that, the line items with a color circle are your installed items. For these, you’ll start with all the line item information you’ve set by default, but again you can change anything that you need to. If you make any pricing changes, you’ll also update the Before Tax Total.

Then click Save & Continue.

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Next is the Additional Items tabs, where you have the option of bulk applying line items, fees, or discounts to any invoices you want. If you don’t need to add anything, you can of course click Continue to Invoices Preview without making any changes. If you do need to add something, we have a separate video that walks you through this entire process, which you’ll find with our other Skimmer Billing tutorials.

When you have what you want, click Continue.

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Now you’re on the Invoices Preview tab. You can see an overhead view of all the invoices you’re preparing to send out. If there are any you don’t want to send, you can just uncheck the box on the left.

You can also review the details of individual invoices.

Choose one and click Details, and you’ll be taken to a screen where you can see every element of this invoice, from customer information to line items to total amount due. The invoice status even lets you know that you’re just looking at a preview because this invoice hasn’t actually been sent yet. This is useful for a final review before sending your bill to the customer, to make sure for instance you haven’t missed adding a price for an item or service.

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If you spot a mistake that you need to correct, just click Invoices Preview and then navigate to the appropriate tab. There you’ll make your corrections and Save, and that new information will be added to the invoice. If you want to do the same with the next invoice in line, just click Next and you’ll go right to it.

When you’re ready to go, click Invoices Preview to go back to the final tab. You see the count of how many invoices you’re sending, any taxes being collected, and the total amount due for all invoices combined.

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The Generate Invoices button is multi-function. You can just click the main button to generate the invoices. Or you can click the dropdown arrow on the right and access two possible actions - generate the invoices but don’t send them yet, or generate and send right now.

If you choose Generate and Send, Skimmer will create the invoices, send them to your customers, and change the status of all those invoices to Sent. If you choose to only generate the invoices, Skimmer will create them as a draft and send them to the Invoices page. We cover all the functions of the Invoices page in another video.

So that’s an overview of how to generate invoices with Skimmer Billing.