Collecting payment is arguably the most important part of the booking process. Without being able to collect payment for your services, you wouldn't be able to continue helping your clients! To make tracking your client payments easier, booking information pages in BusyPaws list all of their associated invoice and payment information. This includes invoices generated manually or during the client self-booking process in addition to any no charge invoices resulting from credit use. In this guide we will take a look at everything you need to know about invoicing for your bookings.

There are a few quick ways to keep track of the invoicing and payment status of your bookings in BusyPaws. To start, the default colour of bookings on your calendar is an easy reference point when looking things over. In addition, switching to the List View on your Schedule page and checking the "Invoiced" column allows you to easily track some basic information about the number of invoices and payments have been made for each booking.

If you are looking for more details, each booking page will include some extra information about the invoicing and payment status of any registered clients. This information displays slightly differently depending on whether the booking in question is for an individual service or for a group/series. Note that, if ever you are unsure of a booking's payment or invoice status, you can also always check for any existing invoices on the booking's information page.

The booking payment status for individual services is indicated in a few different ways. Firstly, the progress bar at the top of the page can help give some general information about the booking. When a booking is upcoming (i.e. its scheduled date/time has not yet passed) its progress bar will be blue and labelled "Booked". The progress bar will stay in this state until the booking has been completed (i.e. the date/time of the booking has passed), regardless of its payment status.

Bookings are marked as completed approximately two hours after their scheduled end time. If an individual service booking has not yet been paid at that point, the progress bar will turn yellow and be labelled "Completed".

When a completed individual service booking has a paid or no charge invoice associated with it, the progress bar will turn green and be labelled "Paid".

Note that, when a booking has credits reserved on it (either by clients during self-booking or by a user applying credits manually), a no charge invoice will be generated automatically when the booking is marked as completed. If credits are applied to a booking after it has already been marked as completed however, the user will need to generate that no charge invoice manually to mark the booking as paid.

Another way that the payment/credit status of an individual service booking can be checked is the presence (or absence) of a "Credits Reserved" tag. This tag includes the number of credits reserved and appears at the top of a booking's info page when payment has been processed on it or when one or more credits have been reserved.

The invoicing and payment status of a booking is also indicated by the available actions in the menu bar at the top of a booking's information page. When a booking (or part of a booking) has not yet been invoiced, "Invoice" and "Invoice Send" options will be found in the "Actions" button menu at the top of the page.

If the client has one or more credits available to apply to the booking, there will also be a "Reserve Credits" option. For more information on credits, check out our guide on Creating Using Customer Credits.

When an individual service booking has an associated unpaid invoice, a green "Process Payment" button will be present beside the "Actions" button. The "Actions" menu will also have additional options for viewing, printing, editing, or voiding the invoice, and sending the invoice to the client.

If the booking has an associated paid invoice, a green "Refund" button will be present beside the "Actions" button. The "Actions" menu will also include options to view, send, or print the invoice, as well as an option to view the invoice payment(s).

Finally, if the booking had credits applied and a no charge invoice was generated, The "Actions" menu will include options to view, send or print the invoice, but will have no payment or invoicing options.

Since group bookings generally involve multiple clients, they may have several invoices on the go at the same time. While the specifics of each invoice can be viewed on the "Invoices" tab, there are a few different ways to quickly judge the invoice and payment statuses for the clients registered for your group bookings. To begin, the overall invoice and payment status information for the booking will be indicated by progress bars located near the top of the booking's information page.

Each booking will have a "Booked" bar below the service name and general information. This bar indicates the status of the booking. A blue, partially filled, "Booked" bar indicates an upcoming booking. When the booking passes, this bar changes to "Completed" and turns fully yellow.

As invoices are generated for the booking (whether automatically or manually), two additional bars appear. The first, labelled "Invoices", indicates the number of invoices that have been generated compared to the number of pets that are registered. The second, labelled "Paid", indicates the number of registered customers that have either a paid or a no charge invoice.

Client-specific information is also visible from the "Attendance" tab of the booking's information page. In the attendance list, each pet will be listed with a small payment icon next to their registration, indicating their invoicing and payment status. The payment icon looks like a small circle with a dollar sign ($) in the middle.

The colour of the payment icon gives an indication of the customer's status. Green means no further payment is needed, yellow that the client has been sent the invoice but has not yet paid, grey that the customer has not yet been invoiced (and has therefore also not yet paid), and purple that only part of the customer's registration (i.e. only the service, not their add-on) has been invoiced/paid. Hovering your mouse over any client's payment icon opens a small bubble with further insight into the specifics of the client's payment status.

Note that different statuses may be indicated by the same payment icon colour. Both paid and credited registrations are shown in green, though "Credited" indicates that a no charge invoice has not yet been generated for that customer. Likewise, a purple icon can mean either that the client's registration has been partially paid or partially credited. When partially credited, the info bubble will indicate which components were credited.

If a customer has been manually added to a booking, or if they were able to self-register without pre-paying, you may find yourself needing to generate an invoice to collect payment for their registration. The available options for this process vary slightly between bookings for individual services and those for group services.

When scheduling an individual service booking, you may choose to invoice at the time the booking is created. This can be achieve using the "Invoice Now" toggle at the bottom of the New Booking form. With this toggle turned ON (purple), selecting the "Add Booking" button will automatically generate and send a booking invoice to the registered client.

If the booking has already been created, whether self-booked by the client or scheduled by a user, you can easily create an invoice by selecting the "Invoice" option in the "Actions" button menu at the top of the booking's information page. This option will be present for any booking with services and/or add-ons that do not yet have an associated invoice. Selecting "Invoice" generates a draft invoice to which any desired manual changes or additions can be made.

Instead selecting "Generate and Send" in the "Actions" button drop-down will create and send the invoice to the customer in one step. Note that using this option to generate an invoice skips the draft stage for the invoice and instead sets it as unpaid. This means the client will receive the invoice right away. Additionally, if credits have been reserved on the booking and a no charge invoice is generated in this way, that invoice cannot be voided.

For more information on where to find booking invoices once they have been generated, refer to the section of this guide on Viewing Existing Invoices.

Since group bookings need to be scheduled before any clients can be added to them, it is not possible to invoice during the user scheduling process. You may however find yourself needing to manually generate invoices for any client whose registration was added manually by users or those that self-registered without requiring payment.

Once customers have been added to the booking, select "Invoice (All Customers)" in the "Actions" button menu at the top of the page to generate invoices for all registered customers that do not yet have an invoice for the booking. This option will be present for any booking with clients registered for services and/or add-ons that do not yet have associated invoices. Selecting "Invoice (All Customers)" generates draft invoices to which any desired manual changes or additions can be made.

As for individual bookings, the "Actions" button menu will also include an "Invoice and Send (All Customers)" option that will create and send invoices to registered customers in one step. Note that using this option to generate your invoices skips the draft stage sets all invoices to unpaid. If any clients have credits applied to cover their registration, generating invoices in this way will result in no charge invoices that cannot be voided.

Note that, since this process often results in the generation of more than one invoice, you will not automatically be redirected to any invoice's page. Should you wish to edit and/or send any of the new draft invoices, you will need to navigate to them one at a time. Keep in mind as well that, when using this method to generate invoices for clients in a group booking, only those clients with services and/or add-ons that are yet un-invoiced will have new invoices generated. New invoices will not be generated for any clients for whom the service/add-on has already been invoiced, regardless of its status (draft, unpaid, paid). The only exception to this is the case where a customer has been invoiced for their registration, then has an add-on selected for them, for which an invoice can then be generated.

There are times when you may prefer to generate invoices for individual customers, rather than for the whole group at once. This can be done by clicking on the ellipses next to the customer's registration, then selecting "Invoice Now" from the drop-down menu. That will open a New Invoice page for that customer, allowing you to make edits or additions to their invoice before either saving it as a draft or sending it to the customer.

To simplify the invoicing process, particularly for group classes, we recommend setting up automatic invoicing, even if you do not require payment at the time of registration. For more information, see the Configuring Invoicing for Self-Booking section of our Invoice Basics guide or Configuring Payments in Client Self-Booking in our Stripe Payments guide. If you have automatic invoicing set up for your classes, you may still occasionally find yourself needing to manually register/invoice your clients. If don't want each booking in the set listed as a separate line item in those cases, you will want to instead generate a manual invoice from the customer's profile (instead of generating one from the booking), then assign the service credits to their class booking. That method is a little more involved but will allow you to ensure the full set of classes is listed as a single line item on their invoice.

Whether set up for an individual service or for a group, all of a booking's associated invoices can be found on its information page. This helps you easily track and manage the payment and invoicing history for all of your bookings. To locate the invoices linked to a specific booking, open the "Invoices" tab on its information page. Note that this tab will only display on bookings for which at least one invoice has already been created.

With this tab open you will be able to see a full list of invoices associated with the booking. Each invoice is listed with its invoice number, the name of the client, the issue date, the included booking(s), the invoice total, and the invoice status (sent and payment). Select any invoice to open its info page.

Since many individual bookings have only once invoice associated with them, the "Invoices" tab will often list the basic information as well as a view of the invoice in its entirety.

Should a second invoice be generated for newly selected add-ons however, the invoices will be listed in the same way as those for a group booking.

For more information about what the various invoice status icons indicate, see the section of our Invoice Basics guide on Invoice Statuses.

Booking invoices are generally the most common type of invoice generated for your clients. Whether generated automatically during the self-booking process, or manually by a user, booking invoices are an integral part of providing services to your clients. To learn more about invoices and payments, check out the following help guides: