Invoicing and getting paid

One debt, one number, one document. Raised from what actually went out, paid the way that customer pays, and in your accounts without anybody typing it twice.

Invoices in your own sequence

Every invoice is numbered in a single sequence for your business, whether it covers one order or a month of them. The prefix and the number to start from are yours to set, so Bottle's numbers sit apart from whatever your accounts package already uses. Invoices already sent keep the number they were sent with.

Two kinds

• An order invoice covers one order, raised when you send a payment link for it, and the link pays it.
• A period invoice is raised overnight at the end of a customer's cycle, weekly, monthly or quarterly. It can carry gas delivered on account in that period, rent for the cylinders they held, and credits for deposits owed back on cylinders returned, so the money comes off what they owe rather than waiting for a cheque. Any one of the three is enough to raise it, and nothing owed means no invoice.

An order is only ever on one invoice. Once billed it is marked, so the next run leaves it alone. A customer with no cycle set is never invoiced by Bottle at all, which is right for a business that invoices from its own accounting package and for anybody who pays at the door.

The ways a customer pays

• A card link, emailed with the invoice, paid before the gas goes out or after it has.
• A card at the door, where the driver shows a code the customer scans and pays on their own phone.
• Cash, recorded by the driver at the door and counted in at the yard.
• On account, invoiced on their cycle and paid by bank transfer, with your bank details at the foot of the invoice.
• Money that came another way, marked off by the office when a cheque or a transfer lands.

Card payments run through Stripe, into an account in your own name, so the money is yours rather than passing through us. Card details never reach Bottle's servers.

Chasing, without chasing

Reminders are off until you switch them on. Once on, Bottle emails a customer when an invoice is overdue, with the invoice attached and the ways to pay on it: the first a set number of days after the due date, then every so many days, up to a limit. An invoice that has been paid or cancelled is never chased, and one paid between the nightly check and the email going out is dropped rather than sent. Orders paid by card link are not chased, because the customer who has not paid has not had the gas either.

Who owes you is a page rather than a spreadsheet: what is outstanding, how old it is, and who to ring.

Xero, without typing anything twice

Bottle raises your invoices and takes your payments. It keeps no ledger, files no VAT and reconciles no bank, because that is your accounts package's job.

• Customers move both ways. A contact in Xero becomes a customer here; a customer here becomes a contact there. A name on both sides is matched rather than doubled.
• Invoices go one way, to Xero, as authorised sales invoices under Bottle's own number, with the same lines, coded to the sales account you choose and taxed at your organisation's matching VAT rate. An invoice cancelled in Bottle is voided in Xero.
• Payments go one way. When an invoice is paid, the payment is recorded against it in Xero, into the bank account you picked for that kind of money, with a reference saying which it was.

It runs a few seconds after anything happens, however it happened, and again every few minutes to catch anything missed. Running it twice sends nothing twice.

VAT

Prices in Bottle never include VAT. It is added on the invoice, at the rate the product carries, and a business that is not VAT registered says so once and sees no VAT anywhere.

What happens next

What gets invoiced comes from what the driver recorded at the door, and cylinder rent comes from the movements on each customer's account.