Transitioning to the New Invoicing System

After many requests, we have added an invoicing module to our application, which will enable us to support several new scenarios we were unable to handle before. However, if you have been using IntakeQ's appointment management system with payments enabled, there are a few changes that will impact you.

Please note that the new invoicing module is opt-in. You are free to continue to use IntakeQ without enabling it and you won't see any of these changes, but once it is enabled in your account, you will notice the changes in different parts of the software.

This article describes these changes and will help you accomplish the things you were able to accomplish before.

1. Manually Charging for an Appointment

Before the introduction of invoices, payments were directly attached to an appointment (or package). Invoices act as a layer between appointments and payments. This gives you a lot of flexibility - like adding several appointments to a single invoice, mixing products and appointments in a single invoice, accepting deposits for appointments, etc.

When it comes to the day-to-day use of IntakeQ, the most significant impact of this change is probably the way in which you charge for appointments manually.

The Old Way

When the invoicing module is disabled, you can register an appointment payment by opening the appointment details, clicking on Enter Payment Information and processing the charge.

The New Way

With invoices, you would now create an invoice for that appointment before being able to create the charge. This adds an extra step, but we have added a convenient way to create the invoice, issue it and open the payment dialog with a single click.

Notice that if you don't have the client's credit card on file, you can send them the invoice and have them pay online. You can also enter partial payments in the invoice. These were not possible before.

2. Manually Charging for a Package

The new invoicing has added more flexibility to how packages are paid. You can now have multiple payments for the same package, or require an upfront deposit when a client books a package in the Booking Widget.

The Old Way

Similarly to appointments, payments were applied directly to a package and you could only have one payment per package.

The New Way

With invoices, you now have to first create an invoice and then process the payment (or send it to the client). The major benefit is that you can create multiple invoices for the same package.

3. Appointment Auto-Charge

The appointment auto-charge settings didn't change much, but its behavior has been greatly improved.

The Old Way

The auto-charge settings consisted of a couple of account-wide fields that could be overridden for each service or package. These settings determined whether or not to ask for the client's credit card when they booked an appointment and when to charge their card.

If you created an appointment in your calendar, you would have to enter the client's payment information for that specific appointment in order to enable auto-charge.

The New Way

With invoicing, these settings have been expanded and when auto-charge is set to charge the client on the appointment date, IntakeQ will do it as long as the client has a card on file.

Additionally, you can tell IntakeQ to send the invoice to the client in case they don't have a card on file yet. Lastly, if auto-charge fails to charge the client's credit card, IntakeQ can send an invoice to the client so they update their card on file.

Final Thoughts

These are the main sections that require a new way of doing things, the other sections are completely new and are covered here. It may take a couple of days to get used to the changes, but we believe that the benefits will make them worth it.

Remember that you don't need to enable the invoicing module in case you are not comfortable with these changes. Just keep in mind that new payments features - like deposits, recurring payments, etc. - will rely on the invoicing module.

If you would like to enable the invoicing module in your account please contact us and we'll be happy to help!