Invoices and payments

An invoice is the frozen, numbered record of a repair order — its lines, tax, and totals captured at the moment you generate it. Every payment, deposit, and reversal lands on that same record, so the ledger always shows exactly what money moved and when.

Generating an invoice

A repair order must be Authorized or In-Progress before it can be invoiced — an unapproved estimate cannot skip straight to a bill. Set the status from the header select, or let a customer approval move it for you.

1. Open the repair order.
2. Click Generate invoice. The invoice opens immediately.

Generate invoice appears in the repair order header once the status is Authorized or In-Progress.

That one click does a lot:

• The invoice gets the next sequential number for your shop, in the form INV-000042.
• Every line, the customer and vehicle details, your shop letterhead, and any discount or fee from the summary rail are copied onto the invoice exactly as they stand. Jobs the customer declined are never billed.
• Tax is computed from your current tax rates and frozen, with a per-rate breakdown when different lines tax at different rates. Changing a rate later never changes an issued invoice.
• The repair order moves to Invoiced and locks — lines, customer, and vehicle become read-only.

The invoice screen. ① Record payment. ② Text pay link — shown once card payments are set up. ③ Print / Save as PDF.

Note: generating the invoice is where editing ends. If you spot a mistake afterward, do not delete anything — reopen the repair order instead (below), and the wrong invoice stays on file as a voided record.

Recording a payment

1. On the invoice, pick a Method — cash, check, card, or other.
2. The Amount field suggests the remaining balance. Leave it empty to record the full balance, or type a smaller figure for a partial payment.
3. Click Record payment.

Recording a payment. Once payments cover the total, the repair order moves to Paid on its own.

The paid total and balance update immediately. An invoice can carry any number of payments — a split between cash and card is just two entries. When payments cover the total, the repair order moves to Paid automatically; until then it stays Invoiced. There is no separate partially-paid status. Recording more than the balance is allowed, and the invoice shows the extra as a credit line.

Generating an invoice and recording a payment — about 20 seconds.

If your shop takes card payments through BayDocket, a Text pay link button appears next to the payment card, and payments charged on your own Square account can be recorded in one click from a suggestion banner — both are covered in Getting paid online.

Role note: generating invoices, recording payments, reversals, and reopening are Owner and Advisor actions. Technicians see repair orders read-only, without the invoice buttons.

Reversing a payment

A recorded payment is never edited or deleted. To undo one — wrong amount, wrong method, duplicate entry — you reverse it, which adds a matching negative entry to the ledger.

1. In the Payments table on the invoice, click Reverse on the payment’s row.
2. Confirm. The reversal is permanent and appears as its own line.

A reversal always covers the payment’s full amount, and each payment can be reversed once. To fix a wrong amount, reverse the payment and record a new one at the correct figure. If the reversal drops the paid total below the invoice total, the repair order returns to Invoiced.

Reopening an invoiced repair order

Reopening is the correction path for a mistake you find after invoicing — a missing line, a wrong price, the wrong repair order finalized.

1. Open the Invoiced repair order.
2. Click Reopen in the header and confirm.

Reopening voids the invoice. The voided document stays readable, clearly marked, and is never altered.

Reopening voids the invoice and returns the repair order to the status it held when you generated it, unlocked for editing. When you are done, click Generate invoice again — the new invoice gets a fresh number, and the voided one stays on file as history.

Note: you cannot reopen while money is recorded on the invoice. Reverse the payments first; on a Paid repair order the Reopen button only appears once the payments are reversed. Deposits are the exception — they return to the repair order automatically (below).

Deposits

A deposit lets you record money before any invoice exists — a customer putting money down while parts are on order — without finalizing early.

1. On an editable repair order, click Add… at the bottom of the summary card and choose Deposit.
2. Enter the amount, pick a method — Cash, Card, Check, or Other — and add an optional note.
3. Click Record deposit.

Held deposits list on the summary card. Reverse is available until a deposit is applied to an invoice.

Held deposits show in a Deposits section on the summary card, where an unapplied deposit can be reversed in full. When you generate the invoice, every held deposit is applied automatically as a payment, tagged (Deposit) in the ledger — if deposits already cover the total, the invoice is born Paid. If you later reopen, applied deposits return to the repair order as held deposits, ready to apply again on the next invoice.

Tip: there is no cap on a deposit relative to the estimate total — the total is still moving while the repair order is editable, so take whatever the customer puts down.

Terms and printing

If your shop sets Invoice terms in Settings → Shop details — warranty language, disclaimers — the text prints at the bottom of every invoice generated from then on. Terms are frozen with the rest of the invoice, so editing them later never rewrites an issued document.

To print or save a PDF, click Print / Save as PDF on the invoice. It opens your browser’s print dialog; choose a printer for paper or Save as PDF as the destination. The printed page matches the on-screen invoice, including the tax breakdown, the payment ledger, and a VOID marker on a voided invoice.