Invoices for route businesses: due dates that remind you to chase

If you clean windows, gutters, or solar panels on a route, the job is rarely the slow part. Getting paid is. You finish on Tuesday, the customer means to pay, and three weeks later you are wondering whether they did.

An invoice will not make anyone pay faster. What it can do is make sure you remember to ask.

Start from the order

In BatchDrop an invoice is issued from an unpaid order — one you added yourself, outside a drop. Add it from the Orders page or from the customer's page. Lines come from your catalogue or are typed in as free text, with an option to save a typed line to the catalogue if you will use it again.

You can mark the job fulfilled before it is paid, which is how most service work actually goes: done first, billed after.

Invoices are on Pro and Business. Receipts are on every plan; see pricing for the rest.

Pick a due date

When you send the invoice, choose a due date — it starts two weeks out, and you can change it to whatever your terms are. Invoices are numbered per store, INV-0001 onward, and an order has one live invoice at a time.

The due date is the useful part. It creates a follow-up for that day, so on the due date the invoice shows up in your follow-ups alongside everyone else who needs a call, and in the daily digest email. If your store is set up as a service business, the dashboard opens on Today — customers, follow-ups due, unread texts — so the reminder is on the first screen you see.

When they pay

Mark the invoice paid, or the order — they settle together. Choose how the money came in: cash, Venmo, Zelle, or other. The follow-up is completed, and a receipt goes out that says which invoice it settles.

Corrections: void and reissue

You can edit an order's lines until its invoice is issued. After that the invoice is fixed, because a document with a number on it should not change underneath the customer.

If you got it wrong, void the invoice and give a reason. Its follow-up goes with it, the order's lines become editable again, and you send a new invoice with a new number. The old one stays on record, marked void, at its original link. Cancelling the order voids its invoice too.

Where it goes

Same rule as receipts: by email if the customer has an email address, otherwise by text. An invoice by text needs the customer to be opted in to texts from you. If neither will work, the order page tells you before you send — add an email or ask for consent first. Every invoice has a link that opens without signing in.

What it does not do yet

• Customers can't pay an invoice online. The invoice page says "Awaiting payment", and they pay you the way they always have. Online card payments are in development.
• It is not a PDF. It is an email and a web page.
• No tax calculation. Amounts are in US dollars.

None of that changes the main point. A due date that turns into a reminder means the chase happens on the day it should, not three weeks later when you finally notice. More on orders, receipts, and invoices.