Don The Plumber

My invoices are 3 parts. White, pink, & cardboard type carbon. I do this simply because 95% of my service calls, I send them a bill in the mail.This allows the customer to keep the white sheet, & send the pink sheet back with payment. This IMO makes the customer feel that there will be no doubt what the payment was for, on my end, rather just sending a check in an envelope. It doesn't matter to me whether they send the pink copy, white sheet, or nothing but the check.I also send a return addressed letter, for them to use, to mail back to me. All they need to do, is put a stamp on it.
This may sound crazy to some, but I would much rather get to my next job, than sit there in front of customer, trying to figure out every item I used, & how long I was there, & so on.... But that's just me. I feel that if I can do my invoice at my leisure, I can make it more professional, & not screw myself, or the customer, by overlooking or missing something.
On a job that is quoted, such as a water heater, outside hose bibb replacement, toilet replacement, or other, then I have the invoice made out, (but not total, in case they say those 3 famous words, "WHILE YOUR HERE"), & I will collect when I'm done.
Also like TM said, which I think is important, I have job location on the bottom line of my invoice, below the name & address of the person paying, or where I'm sending the bill. This helps with situations like a landlord that has several rental properties. Also like when I do work in a large building, such as a church, I put in the job location i.e. convent, rectory, school, maint. bldg., womens bathroom in back, mens bathroom in front, ect....., exactly where work was performed.

Just one more thing I do with water heaters, is on the box they have several small stickers on the tag. These small stickers contain the model & serial numbers, along with bar code. I just take these off the tag, & put these stickers on my invoice (they are made to do this & peel off easily), & there is plenty of stickers to put one on your copy, & one on customers.

Phat Cat

Our invoices are three part too. Plumber takes the top two to the job and the pink copy stays at the office. Customer gets top original copy and we get the yellow one. None of the pinks leave the folder, it's our way of making sure all invoices come back to the shop or have been billed out. When the yellows come back, everything is entered in the computer, then put in A/R paid or A/R. After computer entry, pinks are trashed.

__________________
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. – Edmund Burke

TheMaster

What if the plumber makes a mistake on the invoice? Do you fill out the invoice in advance with the job description and the customers name or what?

My original call ticket takes the place of your 3rd copy. When that bill gets paid I mark my call ticket...PAID

Phat Cat

They are filled out in advance with customer's name, address, tel. #, job location, and original complaint in the top sections of invoice. If the plumber makes a mistake, he makes up another invoice/sales receipt on the job. In that case, the new invoice comes back along with the original invoice I made up.

Two copies leave the office, one stays to insure the other copy comes back to the office and if I need to contact the customer because a job went over, I have all the customer's info right where I need it.

__________________
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. – Edmund Burke

Ron

Don't you have numbers on your invoices, it would seem easier just to track the numbers as we do here.

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Stephen Hawking: If the government is covering up knowledge of Aliens, they are doing a better job of it then they do at anything else.

Phat Cat

Yep, they are numbered. Three plumbers with blank numbered invoices in their boxes. Some tickets are made up by the office, some are generated on site.

If I just tracked numbers, here is what I envision:

Me - Where is invoice #10021?

What was that for?

Me - IDK - It was after xyz job, but before ABC job?

Let me check my box. Are you sure you gave that to me and not John?

Me - Yeah, I gave you invoice 10015 - 10025. See my sheet.

I think that might have been the one I threw out because I wrote another invoice on top of it and the carbon copy was not readable.

Me - You know this is how we account for invoices to make sure every job is billed. It's important that nothing is lost.

I know, I'm sorry. You remember, that day was crazy. You had to pull me for that emergency job.

few weeks later - REPEAT above scenario

__________________
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. – Edmund Burke

TheMaster

The numbered invoices are assigned to each plumber....invoice #'s 30035-30050 as an example. The plumber given those invoices is rsponsible for each and every one of them no matter if they make a mistake on the invoice it must be turned in and marked VOID.

Call origination tickets that are taken when the customer calls have a duplicate carbonless copy.....one gets torn out of the book and one stays in the book......when I get paid for that call I mark it paid on the permanent call ticket book and on the invoice. Paid invoices go in one box and charge customers go in the other box.

No way the plumber could say sombody else was assigned the invoices because its easy to see they have every other numbered invoice that you say you assigned them.....if you have some clowns that try to lay blame......have them sign for the blank numbered invoces when they receive them.

We had the same thing with specialty plumbing tools that we shared as a shop........the tool would be lost and everyone would start pointing fingers at each other. We simply locked the tools in a closet and you had to sign the tool out that you wanted and sign it back in........if you failed to do that then the plumber who last had it......BUYS ANOTHER>

Ron

If if an invoice goes bad, they should never be thrown out, voiding the invoice and returning it to the office is what we do, accountability is kept tight.

OK we get a stack of 100 invoices at a time, once a week we turn them in, on our time sheet the invoice number is entered and with all relevant info, i.e. broke down, time on job, labor, material.

This is just how we do it.

__________________
Stephen Hawking: If the government is covering up knowledge of Aliens, they are doing a better job of it then they do at anything else.

TheMaster

Plumbcrazy is correct with all the excuses you will get......My favorite one to give was....."The numbers must be mis-printed on the invoices" because I remembered once where they found that it happened...mis-printed It didn't happen very much at all......and when it did it was made a big damn deal out of,you can bet that. if you get a guy "losing" invoices on a regular basis he might be doing jobs and giving the person one of your receipts and keeping cash he's driving around in your truck with your materials and its easy to slip next door to a job and replace a flapper or a ballcock and collect some extra cash to keep

Ron

Yes in all the invoices I have received in the last 2.8 years with the company I work for I have found maybe 2 or 3 invoice numbers missing, mass printing of invoices from whom ever prints them, are computer controlled, hiccups happen in all software programs. When I did find them I indicated on the time sheet as missing. Now say if I was saying missing numbered invoices were showing up in every set of 100 invoices then that would throw up a red flag.

__________________
Stephen Hawking: If the government is covering up knowledge of Aliens, they are doing a better job of it then they do at anything else.