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.

Whenever an Invoice is raised to one of your Clients for services rendered by one of your Tutors, it will appear in your Raised Invoices page, found via Accounting > Raised Invoices. This page contains a list of all Invoices you have raised, the Client the charge is due to, the Invoice status (whether the Invoice is marked as Paid, Unpaid, Pending or Void), alongside a record of how much the Invoice is for and how much is still left to pay.

An example of a Raised Invoices page.

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An example of a raised, unpaid Invoice.

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You can start accepting card payments with Stripe once you have it enabled in your System Settings - read more about that here.

There are two main ways your Clients can pay their Invoices via card:

The Payment Request email is the automated Email Definition that TutorCruncher uses to send Invoices to your Clients. It is fully editable, but by default it will typically contain an overview of the charges alongside a ‘Pay Now’ link with an attached PDF.
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An example of a Payment Request email.

If you have Client login enabled in your Branch Details then your Clients can log into their Client dashboard and pay their Invoices either via the ‘Unpaid Invoices & Credit Requests’ panel or via the billing tab.

An example of a Client’s dashboard, with the Billing tab and Unpaid Invoices & Credit Requests highlighted.

If you have Auto Charge enabled in your General Accounting Settings then any Clients with a valid Direct Debit or credit/debit card can be automatically charged after a predetermined deferral period.

Enabling Auto Charge with a five day delay.

The minimum value that can be input into the 'Auto charge and deferred payment delay' number field is '0' - if this is input, then the Client's primary payment method will be charged approximately two hours after the Invoice is raised.

You can enable/disable Auto Charge on a per-Client basis by navigating to their profile and selecting Actions > Edit Profile. From there, you will find a ‘Auto Charge override’ dropdown menu in the ‘Accounting & Client Manager’ tab allowing you to enable/disable auto charge for that Client only.

Disabling Auto Charge for a Client.

Clients who have a direct debit mandate set up with GoCardless can pay their Invoices via direct debit. Read more about that here.

If you have bank transfers enabled in your General Accounting Settings, your Clients can opt to pay this way. Read more about bank transfers here.

In cases where you have taken some other form of payment (i.e. cash or cheque), you can navigate to the unpaid Invoice and select the Take Manual Payment button to open the Add Invoice Payment panel.

Taking a partial cash payment.

Here you will be prompted to select a payment method from the ‘Payment Method’ dropdown menu and specify an amount - this can be a partial payment or the full sum. You can also add a description, specify a payment date and opt to send the Client a receipt via email.

Raised Invoices that have been marked as ‘Pending’ are auto charge Invoices that are still in their deferral period (the time period set by you to determine how long the Client is given to review incoming charges and dispute them if needed).

Once the deferral window has passed, TutorCruncher will automatically draw the money from the Client’s payment method and the Invoice will then be marked as ‘Paid’. If, for whatever reason, the auto charge fails, the Invoice will be marked as ‘Unpaid’, and there should be a record of the payment failure in the Invoice’s ‘Payment Events’ panel.

Yes - if you have ‘Automatically mark Invoices paid’ in your General Accounting Settings, you can navigate to the Invoice and select the Pay From Credit button to make a full or partial payment of the Invoice from the Client’s pre-existing credit.

Paid Invoices can be refunded by navigating to the Invoice you need to refund and selecting the Issue Credit Note/Refund button. This will open the Credit Note panel, from where you can add a description and will be prompted to to specify a ‘Type’ from the dropdown menu for the reason the credit note is being issued.

Issuing a Credit Note/Refund.

If you would like the money to remain as credit in the Client’s balance, then you can leave the ‘Refund payment’ checkbox unchecked; check this box if you wish for the monies to be refunded and the credit to be marked off their account.

Unpaid Invoices can be voided by navigating to the Invoice you need to void and selecting the Cancel Invoice/Issue Credit Note button. This will open the Credit Note panel, from where you can add a description and will be prompted to specify a ‘Type’ for the reason the credit note is being issued.

Voiding an Invoice.

The information shown and overall layout of the PDFs attached to your Invoices can be edited via HTML Templates - read more about them here.

Simply navigate to System > Settings > Accounting Settings > General and enable the 'Auto Invoice' checkbox.

If you want to remind a Client that there is an unpaid Invoice Reminder on their account, you can send an Invoice Reminder by navigating to an unpaid Invoice/Credit Request and selecting Send Reminder. This will open the Send Invoice Reminder panel, from where you can opt to send just a reminder, or resend the full Invoice.

Sending an Invoice Reminder.

Invoice Reminders can be automatically sent via email for unpaid Invoices after a set number of days have passed by navigating to System > Settings > Accounting Settings > General before enabling the ‘Automatic Invoice Reminders’ checkbox. The number of days that the automatic Invoice reminder is sent after is set via the ‘Automatic Invoice Reminders Delay’ field.

Setting up an automatic Invoice reminder.