GarageDoorBossPro Blog — Billing & Payments

Billing Reports for Garage Door Companies: What Got Invoiced, What Got Paid, What Is Still Owed

A busy week of spring calls and opener installs feels like a good week. Whether it actually was depends on three questions: how much did we invoice, how much did we collect, and how much is still out there. Owners who can answer those without digging through a shoebox of tickets make better decisions about hiring, buying a second van and chasing the accounts that slow down.

Billing You Can See

The record behind each invoice is covered in Equipment Records Behind the Invoice: Showing Garage Door Customers Exactly What Was Done. Reports are the step back from individual invoices, where you look at the whole picture.

GarageDoorBossPro includes reports alongside clients, jobs and billing. Because invoices come from jobs and payments are recorded when the card on file is charged or the customer pays online, the billing information is already in one place. Nobody has to compile it from paper tickets and bank statements.

Three Questions Every Week

A simple weekly billing review covers three things:

• What got invoiced. Every completed job produced an invoice. Did the week's work turn into the invoices you expected?
• What got paid. How much of that was charged at completion, auto-charged or paid online in the customer app?
• What is still owed. Which invoices are open, which are past due, and which customers show up on that list more than once?

Fifteen minutes on a Monday morning is usually enough. The point is not a deep financial analysis. It is catching problems while they are small.

What to Look For

A few patterns are worth watching:

• Jobs without cards on file. If a lot of open invoices come from customers without a card on file, make card capture part of booking.
• Declined cards that never got fixed. A short text pointing to the customer app usually solves these.
• Slow monthly accounts. If a property manager's statements always sit, a quick call to their bookkeeper may turn up a simple fix, like sending the statement to a different contact.
• Forgotten lines. If after-hours calls or add-ons do not show up on invoices as often as they happen, remind the team to note them on the job.

Repairs, Installs and Plans

Garage door work comes in different shapes, and it helps to think about each:

• Repair calls are usually paid quickly when there is a card on file, because they are charged at completion.
• Installs may have a deposit invoice and a balance invoice. Make sure both are issued and paid.
• Tune-up plans bring in steady work. Watch for plan visits that were completed but whose charge failed on an expired card.
• Monthly accounts get one statement each month covering every address. Check that each statement went out and got paid.

Who Should Look at Reports

In a one-van company, it is the owner. In a bigger shop, it might be whoever handles the office. Office user roles let you decide who has access to billing, so the person running reports is the person who should be seeing the money. That is covered in Who Handles Billing: Office Roles and Daily Billing Habits in a Small Garage Door Company.

Reports and Your Accountant

Your accountant will want clean records of what you billed and collected, including sales tax. When every invoice comes from a job, every line comes from your service list and tax is added the same way every time, the numbers you hand over at tax time are consistent. Ask your accountant what they need from you and how often; the goal is to make that hand-off easy.

Cash Flow Starts With Knowing

A small garage door company does not run out of money because the work is bad. It runs short because invoices sit unpaid while bills keep coming. Watching what is open each week is the simplest defense. The cash-flow side for a one-van business is covered next, in Cash Flow for a One-Van Garage Door Business: Getting Paid the Day You Do the Work.

A Short Weekly Habit

Reports are only useful if someone looks at them. A short weekly review of what was invoiced, what was paid and what is still owed keeps billing honest and catches problems early. For the rest of the billing system, visit the garage door invoicing software page.