There are two areas of ServiceM8 where you can set invoice payment terms for clients (i.e. the number of days they have to pay their invoice, which is used to calculate and insert payment due dates in invoice templates, or when automated invoice payment requests are sent to clients using the Automation Add-on etc):
- The default payment terms to be applied to all regular jobs/clients; and
- Client-specific payment terms, where it's necessary to apply different payment terms.
Default Payment Terms for all Jobs/Clients
You can set standard Invoice Payment Terms to be used for all customers in Settings > Preferences > Invoicing > Invoicing Terms:
The Invoicing Terms "Invoice period" that you select here will be applied to invoices for all customers, except where you have set specific customers to a non-standard Payment Term.
Client-specific Payment Terms
To set payment terms to a client which are different to your default terms, go to Clients > Open Client (for the relevant client) > Billing Details > Payment Terms.
"Prepaid" and "COD" (i.e. cash on delivery) options are equivalent to 0 days.
Tip: Any clients without a specific Payment Terms option selected will use your account's default Payment Terms configured in Settings > Preferences > Invoicing > Invoicing Terms.
Before 2019, the ability to set non-default payment terms for a client was only possible by activating the Customer Payment Terms Add-on. This add-on has been deprecated and the ability to set non-default payment terms for a client is now available in all accounts.
When you produce an invoice for a client, the invoice's Due Date is set according to the client's Payment Terms
The payment due date is calculated from the date the job was Completed, or the date the first PDF invoice was produced on the job (whichever came first).
You can also display the Payment Terms instead of the Due Date on your invoices
If you would prefer to display the terms rather than the due date (e.g. show "Payment Terms: Prepaid" instead of "Due Date: 12/09/2019"), you can customise your invoice template to accomplish this. You'll need to insert a merge field into your MS Word docx template with the field code {company.customfield_payment_terms}.
See this help article for information on how to customise your templates.
How Customer Payment Terms syncs with accounting packages
- Due Dates calculated for each invoice using client-specific payment terms will sync to your accounting package. The Due Date for each invoice will match in both ServiceM8 and your connected accounting package.
- If you select client-specific Payment Terms in your accounting package, these will not sync to ServiceM8.
- Non-default Payment Terms applied to clients in ServiceM8 will not sync to the client database of your connected accounting package.