Charges vs Invoices

This explains the one idea that makes all the billing screens click into place. There are almost no steps here; just a way of thinking. Read it once and the rest of the money sections will feel obvious.

The big idea in one breath

Wattle keeps two separate things in mind, and so should you:

1. A charge is a line on the client's account. It says: "this client owes us $85 for a consult." Charges build up quietly in the background as you care for an animal.
2. An invoice is a document — a tidy snapshot of some of those charges, ready to hand to the client and ask for payment.

Charges come first. The invoice is created later, when it's time to bill. One invoice can scoop up many charges at once.

That's the whole model. Everything below just fleshes it out.

Charges vs invoices, side by side

A quick story to make it stick

A dog comes in for a vaccination and an exam. The vet ticks two items during the visit:

• "Wellness Exam" — $60
• "C5 vaccine" — $85

Those are two charges. They sit on the client's account as unbilled — money owed, but no document yet.

On the way out, the front desk clicks Generate Invoice, which gathers both charges into one invoice for $145. Now there's a document to print or email and take payment against.

The clever part: a pet hospitalised for four days might rack up a dozen charges across the week — and they all roll into a single invoice at discharge. That's why Wattle keeps charges and invoices separate. (More on that in Invoices.)

Why bother keeping them apart?

Because real vet billing is messier than "one visit, one bill". Keeping charges and invoices separate is what lets Wattle handle:

• A pet hospitalised for several days, with charges added daily, billed once at discharge.
• A multi-pet visit — the cat's booster and the dog's skin check — billed together on one invoice (or split, your choice).
• A walk-in sundry sale — a bag of prescription food with no visit attached — that still needs charging.
• Paying off a bill in instalments, where the invoice tracks the balance owing on its own.

A simpler "every visit makes its own bill" system can't cope with these. Wattle can, because charges and invoices are free to combine however the day demands.

Draft vs finalised — the lifecycle

Both invoices and estimates live their lives in two stages. This is the single most important thing to understand, so here it is plainly.

Draft = a scratchpad. You can change anything — add lines, remove lines, fix prices, change dates. A draft is not an official document. It doesn't count toward what the client owes, and you can't take payment against it or send it.

Finalised = locked and official. The document gets its invoice number, becomes a proper record, and is now ready to be paid, printed and sent. You can no longer freely edit it (but see "made a mistake?" below — nothing is a dead end).

   DRAFT  ──(Finalise)──►  FINALISED
  (edit freely)            (locked, has a number,
                            can be paid & sent)

⚠️ The most common slip-up: thinking Save means "done". It doesn't. Saving just keeps your changes on the draft. The document isn't official until you click Finalise. A finished-looking draft that nobody finalised will sit in the system unbilled forever. When you're truly finished, Finalise.

Made a mistake? Nothing's permanent (almost)

Here's your safety net:

• Draft with an error? Just edit it. Or delete it — drafts can be deleted because nothing official has happened yet. (Deleting a draft is permanent, but it's only a scratchpad you're throwing away.)
• Finalised something by mistake? Use Unfinalise to pop it back to a draft and edit it again. This works even if a payment is already attached — Wattle would rather let you fix things than lock you out.
• Need to cancel a finalised invoice? Use Void. It cancels the invoice but keeps it in the records (so the audit trail stays honest). And if you void one by mistake, Un-void restores it — voiding isn't a dead end either. Use Void for finalised documents; use Delete only for drafts.

There's a fuller walk-through of all of this in Invoices.

The one that trips everyone up: two different "Finalise" buttons

This is the trickiest bit, so we'll go slowly. Wattle has two buttons that both say Finalise, in two different places, and they do two different things. They are not the same button.

The key thing to hold onto:

Think of it as two finish lines:

• Finish the visit → "the clinical work is done, this animal is ready to be billed." (Done by the vet, usually.)
• Finish the invoice → "the bill is official, let's take the money." (Done by the front desk, usually.)

How it all flows together

Here's the journey from "vet does something" to "client pays", showing where charges become an invoice:

  Vet adds items during the visit
            │
            ▼
       CHARGES land on the client's account  (unbilled)
            │
   Vet clicks "Finalise visit"  →  visit is "Ready to Pay"
            │                       (charges still just sitting there)
            ▼
   Front desk clicks "Generate Invoice"
            │
            ▼
       A DRAFT INVOICE is created from those charges
            │
   Front desk clicks "Finalise invoice"  →  invoice gets its number
            │
            ▼
   Front desk takes payment  →  invoice is paid

You don't have to memorise this — the screens guide you. But if you ever feel lost, find yourself on this map: Am I dealing with a charge, or a document? Is the document a draft, or finalised? Those two questions answer almost everything.

A couple of things worth knowing

• A recorded payment doesn't always clear a bill on its own. When you take a payment, you usually choose which invoice it pays. If you don't, it sits on the account as credit and the invoice can still look unpaid. If a payment "didn't work", it's almost always sitting unallocated — see Taking payments.
• The status badge can say "Overdue" on a finalised invoice. That badge reflects whether it's been paid and whether the due date has passed — it's a separate idea from draft-vs-finalised. Don't be alarmed by an "Overdue" badge; it just means the due date passed and there's still a balance.
• Charges are always tied to a patient; invoices only need a client. When you bill, try to keep a patient attached so you can answer "what was this charge for?" later.

Where to go next

• Invoices — creating, finalising, voiding and merging the actual documents, step by step.
• Estimates (quotes) — the same draft↔finalised idea, used to quote a price before work begins.
• Taking payments — recording money and allocating it to the right invoice.
• The catalogue & prices — where the items and prices behind each charge come from.
• Glossary — plain definitions of charge, ledger, unbilled, draft, finalised and more.