Management system update: Account Balances, granular funding, billing addresses and more

[Lauren]

Here is another round of changes for the management system. This time they’re to do with the invoicing section and it’s a big ‘un!
 

1. The main addition is the ability to record and allocate payments, then view how much credit/debit each child’s account is in within ‘Account Balances’.

• You’ll add a record of payments from each child’s new ‘Finance’ tab (go to Booking > Children > choose a child > then look in the tabs under their name and profile picture).  
• Those payments will be automatically assigned to the child’s invoices, starting with the oldest one, but you can overrule that and allocate money to specific invoices if you choose.
• Receipts for the payment will be emailed to the assigned bill payers.
• You can edit and delete records of payments
• The new Account Balances tab (go to Booking > Finance > Account Balances) will show you the balance for each child’s account and clearly indicate whether it is in credit or debit. There are page filters here to show accounts in just one or the other and for each room.
• Each child’s current balance will show up in a few places; within the Account Balances page, on their Dashboard, within their Finance tab, and on new invoices. You can prevent the balance from showing up on PDF copies of the invoice if you like from within the ‘Config’ area.

Note: So you don’t start out with all of children having a huge negative account balances, today we have auto added payments for all of your invoices currently marked as paid. The payment will be logged as being made on the day you marked the invoice as paid, and the payment type will be ‘other’ (as opposed to cash, BACS, direct debit, or however else they actually paid). Tapestry will not auto add payments moving forward.
 

2. For each child you’ll see a new tab – ‘Finances’.  

• There are two tabs with that, one for their invoices and one for Transactions.
• The Invoices one is almost the same as what you could see up to now, except we’ve dropped the status filter, and added a check box so you can set whether you see cancelled invoices or not.
• The ‘Transactions' tab shows a full list of payments and invoices for this child.
   

3. You’ll also do this from each child’s new ‘Finances’ tab.

• The name and address you set there will appear on invoices moving forward.
• You have been able to set the bill payer from the Invoices page for a while, but you can now also set the bill payer from the Manage Relatives section of the Control Panel (on the 'Adding/Editing a relative' screen or via Manage Relationships).
   

4. Invoice Status changes

• Whereas up to now an invoice’s status could be ‘Paid’ or ‘Sent’ or ‘Unsent’, we’ve separated out the statuses into a payment one and a sent one.
• We’ve added a new status – ‘Part Paid’. That’s for invoices that have had some money allocated but not the full amount yet.
   

5. Funding changes

• Quite a few of you told us that you need to be able to allocate funding in smaller chunks than 15 mins. We’ve made that change, so you can now apply any number of minutes.
• When you’re setting up the funded hours within new regular schedules, you might also notice that instead of a setting wheel to choose whether you view it in minutes or as a decimal, there is a check box.
   

6. Export your invoices

• You can now export invoice data from the Exports sections
   

7.  A new tab for extra charges

• In the Rooms section, you’ll now see an Extra Charges tab. This will show you how many times each of your Extra Charges have been charged on each day and for each day as a whole.
   

8. Other. There are a couple of other little things.

• You’ll see a new section on each invoice for Payments allocated to it.
• There are new history events within the control panel for new actions (e.g. recording a new payment)
• If you generate a negative invoice (this is one where the parent would have a credit, rather than a charge as usual), that credit will be auto allocated as a payment to the next invoice which is a charge.
   

The above is live on all active Tapestry accounts now.
If you’re not currently using the Invoicing feature and want to know more about it, take a look at the Invoices feature page on our information website.