What is an invoice?
Invoices collect the charges that have been placed on your clients from lessons and ad hoc charges. When you generate invoices, you can review each one before sending them to your clients. Your clients can see any sent invoices and pay for them from their account.
How do I create invoices?
Navigate to Accounting > Draft Invoices, click the button 'Generate' and select the date range for which charges will be generated.
Uninvoiced lessons and ad hoc charges dated within this range will be included in the generated invoices. Lessons must be marked as 'Complete' or 'Cancelled but Chargeable' to appear on the invoice. If you also wish to generate payment orders for your tutors for items that have not yet been paid for, you can tick the select box on the form.
Both invoices and payment orders will be generated when doing this. The same process can also be done from in 'Draft Payment Orders'.
How to generate Invoices
Invoices collect the charges that have been placed on your clients from lessons and ad hoc charges. When you generate invoices, you can review each one before sending them to your clients.
Step by step process
Once you have completed lessons (lessons marked as ‘Complete’), you are ready for invoicing your clients. Invoicing is a 3 step process, and no invoices will be sent to clients until the final stage.
Enter your cutoff start and end date to generate invoices for all completed lessons between and including those dates that haven’t already been invoiced. When you're done, generate them.
Once this process has finished, you can see all the invoices generated under ‘Draft invoices’. You can view individual invoices by clicking on the invoice recipient to see a breakdown of the invoice and view a PDF preview.
You can also see the lesson reports that will be sent to the client along with the invoice in the PDF preview.
If the invoice is ready to send, stage invoices by clicking the 'stage' button on the invoice breakdown, by clicking on the small arrow on the list, or by using the checkboxes.
The final step is to send the invoices to the clients, by clicking the ‘Send Confirmed Invoices’ button.
The client now receives an email telling them how much they owe, as well as the invoice and lesson reports attached.
Like all TutorCruncher emails, the email is customisable in 'Email Definitions'.
More information
How do I review invoices?
Navigate to Accounting > Draft Invoices to review your new invoices. Clicking on an invoice will allow you to see which lessons and ad hoc charges are on the invoice. By clicking on a charge you will reveal the flow of money for that particular charge including the payer, payee of the commission and of the tutor's fee. You can remove any items you don't want on the invoice and view the PDF that will be sent to your client. If any of the items are edited, the changes will be reflected in the draft. However, the items will not be editable once the invoice is sent.
How do I send invoices?
To send invoices to clients, navigate to Accounting > Draft Invoices. Confirm the invoices using the right arrow buttons, use the checkboxes to confirm several invoices at once, or go to an invoice and click the the 'Confirm invoice' button. Then send all your staged invoices by clicking the 'Raise Confirmed Invoices' button. Note that any items on a raised invoice cannot be changed or edited. (Items can still be deleted, but remember to use this feature responsibly to avoid mismanaging your accounts.)
If your client has a valid email address, the invoice will be emailed to them, and it will be available in their 'Invoices' tab in their TutorCruncher account. Note that depending on your branch settings, emails may not be sent for invoices which can be auto paid.
How do I turn off free lessons appearing on invoices?
In System > Settings > Accounting Settings > General you can select the option 'Ignore free Lessons' to change this.
Can I send an invoice without sending an email?
Yes, all invoices can be sent to each client without having to send an email notification. This can be useful if you are reissuing a corrected/already paid invoice and you do not wish to confuse your client. Your clients can still see any Raised Invoices and pay for them by logging in.
Navigate to Accounting > Draft Invoices and confirm the invoice(s) that you wish to send in the same way as is explained above.
Once the invoice(s) is confirmed, click Raise Confirmed Invoice(s) and the top of the page.
A popover will appear to indicate which invoice(s) will be raised and sent to your clients. With this popover, you can choose to send them a corresponding e-mail notification and the checkbox to do so will be enabled by default. If you do not wish your client to receive an email, just uncheck the box corresponding to that client.
Uncheck the clients who you do not wish to receive an invoice email.
Click 'Raise Invoices' to complete the process.
If you go to Accounting > Raised Invoices and select an individual invoice, you can see in the 'Related Emails' section at the bottom of the invoice page that no email has been sent.
Is there a way I can attach an Invoice PDF to emails?
If you want to control whether there is an itemised PDF breakdown of charges is sent with any outbound payment request emails, then you can enable this in your branch settings. If you go to System > Settings > Accounting Settings > General, you can toggle the checkbox for Attach Invoice and Credit Request PDFs to Payment request emails. This will decide whether PDFs are attached to payment request emails for your clients generally.
There may also be times that you don't want certain clients in particular to receive that. You can override this setting on a client by client basis as well no problem. When you go to edit an individual clients profile, select "Edit Profile" under the "Actions" dropdown menu and expand the Accounting & Client Manager section. There you can select whether this client will follow general accounting settings regarding PDF attachments of invoices and credit requests, whether they will always receive attachments, regardless of general settings, or whether they will never receive attachments.
Can an invoice be split if there is more than one student?
Yes, if you are the paying client for more than one student, you can have your invoices split into one page per student if you wish. To do this, navigate to System > Settings > Accounting Settings > General, and enable the box for ‘Split invoices by student’. With this enabled, lesson details will appear on an individual page for each student on the sent invoice.
How do I pay an invoice?
Clients can pay invoices from their accounts using the card payment service Stripe. They simply need to log in to TutorCruncher, navigate to 'Invoices' tab, click on an 'Unpaid' invoice, and click 'Pay with card'.
TutorCruncher lets your clients pay their invoices via card without requiring a login to their account, they can simply do so via a secure email link.
Administrators can also mark the invoice as paid if your clients have not paid the invoice from their account. Navigate to Accounting > Raised Invoices, and click 'Mark Paid' next to the invoice. Record the amount paid on the invoice and the method. Alternatively, you can pay with Stripe by clicking on the invoice and clicking the 'Pay with Card' button.
Payments can be made in parts, but the invoice status will only be marked as 'Paid' once the whole amount has been paid for. If your company setup allows for automatic payment, the invoice can be automatically paid if the client has enough funds topped up.
Can split payments be made on an invoice?
Unfortunately, split payments cannot be made on an invoice. Administrators can take separate payments for an invoice outside of the platform, and then manually mark that invoice as partly paid within TutorCruncher.
How do I manually pay an invoice from the Client's Balance?
Click on an unpaid invoice and click 'Pay from Client Credit'.
You must have Automatically Pay Invoices from Client's Balance enabled for this.
How do I void an invoice?
To void an invoice, you must issue a credit note. Credit notes are issued if there is an error or dispute with the invoice. Go to the invoice and click on 'Issue Credit Note' at the top of the page. Fill out a description and the type of credit note, then click Submit. Payments cannot be made on a voided invoice. Any items on the voided invoice will be marked as uninvoiced, and charges must be regenerated to put the items on a new invoice.
Will a voided invoice be viewable to a client?
Yes, a voided invoice will still be viewable to a client when they log into their account. They will see why the invoice was voided, as well as an explanation as to why a credit note had been issued against it.
How to void an Invoice or Payment Order
Occasionally you need to change an invoice or payment order after it’s sent or paid because of mistakes made by the client, tutor or even admin.
Step by step process
For example, with this invoice, one of the lessons has been logged for 1.5 hours when it is supposed to be one hour. This has led to the client being charged wrongly.
To void an invoice, go to the invoice, click the ‘Issue Credit Note’ button, enter the necessary information and click 'Submit'.
The lessons on this invoice are now editable again, so you can change them to what they should be.
A new invoice now needs to be generated, so go to Accounting > Draft Invoices > Regenerate and regenerate the invoice you need using the appropriate cutoff dates.
You can see that the new invoice has the correct lesson times on it, so it can be sent off.
You can go through the same process with a payment order.
If an already paid invoice is voided, credit will be added to a client’s account without actually refunding this credit. If a refund is necessary, this needs to be done outside of the system and the client's balance needs to be adjusted manually to reflect that a refund has taken place.
More information
How do I refund a client?
There may be times that a client has made a payment on an invoice, but a refund may need to be issued due to an erroneous, or disputed invoice. In this instance, you have the option of refunding that payment to the client. When issuing a credit note, there is an option for 'Refund Payment'. If the client paid their invoices using Stripe, then that refund would automatically be processed within Stripe. If the invoice was paid using an alternative method, then that refund would need to be processed manually. Once the credit note has been issued & the checkbox for 'Refund Payment' has been selected, the client's balance will automatically be debited the amount of that paid invoice.
Why isn't a lesson appearing on my invoice?
There are a few reasons why this could happen:
Is the lesson marked as Complete? If you go to the lessons page, is there a green box saying Complete? Otherwise, you can click the 'Mark Complete button'. If this isn't available, check the reasons you cannot edit a lesson.
Has the lesson already been invoiced? On the lesson's page, you might have a panel called Invoices - if not this isn't the reason. If this panel is there and there is already an Invoice with Sent, Pending or Paid beside it, then the lesson has already been invoiced for.
Is the lesson chargeable? This is an easy check. On the lessons page, beside the student's name, there will be the amount you are charging. If this is zero, then the lesson won't be invoiceable.