Service invoices and visit charges

When an After Care visit is not covered by warranty, Panzo turns it into a numbered service invoice you can chase, age and collect on, kept separate from your project milestones. This guide is for the owners, service desks and accountants who run post-handover work.

How service billing works

Service billing has two halves. The rate card lives in Control Panel and holds the firm's standard charges. The actuals, material spent and hours on site, are entered by the engineer when the visit is completed. Panzo combines the two into an itemised charge and, for a chargeable visit, lets you raise a service invoice in Finance.

• A visit is free when it is covered by warranty, which is the default. A customer is billed only when someone actively marks the visit Not covered and picks a reason.
• Non-coverage reasons come from your own picklist (misuse, seepage, third-party work, wear and tear, no defect found, out of warranty, client-supplied material).
• A manager can waive the charge as goodwill. The visit still records that it was not covered and why, so the pattern stays visible even when the money is not taken.

The rate card

Set these once in Control Panel under After Care. A component set to ₹0 produces no line at all, which is how you switch one off. Hours round up to the quarter, and a minimum billable floor applies once someone has attended.

Raising and collecting a service invoice

1. Complete the visit as chargeable

   On the ticket, complete the appointment, choose Not covered, pick a reason, and enter material and hours. Panzo shows the itemised total.

2. Raise the invoice

   A completed chargeable visit shows a Raise Invoice button. Confirm it to create a bill under the SVC numbering series (SVC-YYYY-NNNN), with a due date and balance.

3. Collect in Finance

   The bill appears under Finance, Service Invoices, with its due date and balance. Record full or part payments there. You can cancel an invoice only while no payment has been recorded against it.

Due dates and interest reuse the terms you already use for project billing: the due date is your invoice term counted in working days off the company calendar, and overdue balances accrue the same 2% per month late interest. A database rule enforces one invoice per visit, so a double click can never bill a customer twice.

What it is and is not, today

Service invoices are correct operational bills that age and accrue interest like any other receivable, and they show up in the Finance overview with an Of Which Service figure so you can answer "what are we owed for service" on its own. Be honest with customers about the current limits:

• They carry a single flat tax percentage, with no HSN or SAC codes and no per-component tax split, so a service invoice is not yet a GST tax-invoice compliant document.
• There is no client-facing PDF or email yet. The record and its tax are correct in Panzo, but sending a document to the customer is a manual step.
• There is no credit note. To reverse a paid invoice you handle a refund, since cancel only works on an untouched bill.