Within TutorCruncher, an Invoice is a document issued by an organisation to one of their Clients to facilitate payment for tutoring services rendered unto them. They are typically comprised of charges for Lessons alongside any other Ad Hoc Charges (i.e. Lesson-related expenses). When a Client pays an Invoice, this will be reflected in their Client balance.

The Draft Invoices page - found via Accounting > Draft Invoices - is where Invoices are drafted, reviewed and raised. The page contains a list of all Invoices that have been regenerated, but not yet sent out to the Client, alongside how much the Invoice is for, how many items it contains, and who the paying Client is. The email icon found on items indicates that the Invoice will be sent by email, and the ‘auto charge’ Label indicates that the Invoice will be automatically charged.

An example of a Draft Invoices page.

Here you can:

An example of a draft Invoice.

Here you can:

Once a Lesson has been marked as ‘Complete’, you can navigate to your Draft Invoices page and select Regenerate before specifying a date range for the Invoices to be generated for. If the completed Lesson falls within the specified date range, an Invoice for that Lesson will be generated by the system, and will appear in the ‘Draft Invoices’ panel on the left hand side.

Regenerating Invoices for June.

To confirm and raise an Invoice, simply use the blue arrows next to an item on the list within the ‘Draft Invoices’ panel to move it over to the ‘Confirmed Invoices’ panel. You can use the checkboxes next to items in the list to select multiple items, and then use the blue arrow at the very top to move them all over to the confirmed panel in one go.

Once they’re in the confirmed panel, select Raise Confirmed Invoices to raise the confirmed Invoices.

This will open a pop-up box (shown below) asking for your final confirmation before the confirmed Invoices are Raised.

All client names with blue ticks beside their names will receive email notifications when the Invoice is Raised. You can turn off all email communication for Invoices by deselecting the checkbox for "Select All".

Any clients who cannot receive email notification for this Invoice will not be shown with a checkbox beside their name, they will instead be listed at the beginning of the pop-up message alongside details of why they cannot be sent the email (for example, "This user does not have an email address").

An example of a Client dashboard, with the ‘Unpaid Invoices & Credit Requests’ panel highlighted.

Alternatively, you can navigate to a draft Invoice by selecting its item on the list and clicking Confirm.

There are two ways they can do this:

1) If Client Login is enabled, then your Clients can log into their Client dashboard and view & pay the Invoice from there - they simply need to click the green ‘Pay Now’ button next to an Invoice found on the ‘Unpaid Invoices & Credit Requests’ panel.
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An example of a Client dashboard, with the ‘Unpaid Invoices & Credit Requests’ panel highlighted.
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2) They can also pay the Invoice without logging in via the secure payment link found on any payment request emails sent to them - this will take them to the secure Invoice payment portal.

In both cases, Client will first be presented with a number of payment methods that they can choose from; such as Card, Bank Transfer, or Direct Debit. This page will look something like this.

Paying an Invoice.

They will have the option to pay through Online or Offline means.

Online payment methods include:

1) Pay by Card: Client can pay using a saved debit or credit card.

Upon selecting the 'Pay by Card' option, the page displayed will feature a slight variation from the current Card Payment screen. Instead of prompting the Client to fill in their card details and subsequently providing an option to save their card to their account, the revised card payment screen will necessitate the Client to first save their card information. Following this step, they will be prompted to click to proceed with the payment.

Client saves their card details first, then proceeds to pay the Invoice.

2) Take a deferred card payment: This allows you to set up a delayed payment using the Client's debit or credit card. In this case, your client will be charged in 5 days.

3) Pay by Bank Transfer: If you have bank transfer enabled for your branch and clients have their bank details saved on the system, then they can make a BACS bank transfer directly from their bank account. The following page will give them instructions on where they need to transfer the funds.

4) Pay by AHC/Direct Debit: If you have GoCardless enabled for your clients, then they will have the option to pay via direct debit. Payments taken this way take 3-5 days to clear. The Invoice will be marked as Pending until then, and then be marked as Paid.

Offline payment methods include:

1) Pay using an offline method: you can use this method of payment if you are taking payment outside of TutorCruncher, e.g. cash or cheque.

2) Pay from Client credit: You can use this option to pay the invoice from credit on the Client's account.

If the Client has a valid email address, they will be notified via the ‘Payment Request’ Email Definition. If you have ‘Client login’ enabled in your Branch Details then your Clients will be able to log into their Client dashboard and view their Invoices from there.

With that said, Invoices can be sent without notifying the Client via email - particularly useful if you are reissuing a corrected or already paid Invoice and you want to avoid potentially confusing your Client.

You can do this when raising your confirmed Invoices; selecting Raise Confirmed Invoice(s) will open the ‘Raise Confirmed Invoices’ panel, from where there will be a checkbox list of all the users who will be notified of the Invoice via email - simply deselect them from this list to prevent an email being sent.

Yes - this can be toggled on/off via the ‘Attach Invoice and Credit Request PDFs to Payment Request emails’ checkbox found in your General Accounting Settings.

In cases where you don’t want a specific Client to receive a PDF with their Invoice, you can disable this for them via their Client profile. Navigate to their profile, select Actions > Edit Profile before opening the ‘Accounting & Client Manager’ tab where you will find a field titled ‘Attach Invoice and Credit Request PDFs to Payment Request emails’ that will allow you to override the setting on a per-Client basis.

For more information on customizing Invoice PDFs, see our article on HTML Templates.

Yes - to do this, navigate to System > Settings > Accounting Settings > General and enable ‘Split Invoices by Student’ checkbox. With this enabled, Lesson details will appear on an individual page for each Student on the sent Invoice.

Yes - simply navigate to System > Settings > Accounting Settings > General and toggle on the ‘Ignore free Lessons’ checkbox.

Troubleshooting steps: