Payments to check: chase the money still owed

How to work the Payment Chases list (who still owes money, contact and snooze buttons, the draft email) and how the Write-offs & Credits page approves small write-offs and credits.

Where: web · Who can use it: Payment Chases: owners and directors by default (permission View List), plus anyone the company has given it to; each action also needs payments.chase. Write-offs & Credits: read access for managers, directors and owners; approving is owners and directors only.

Screens may differ slightly from what you see.

What it is for

Payment Chases lists the jobs where a customer still owes money, so someone can contact them. For each one you can mark that you have contacted the customer, snooze it for a week, or get a draft chase email to copy.

Write-offs & Credits is where an owner or director approves or rejects a write-off or credit that is above a set amount. A write-off clears a small balance. A credit records money owed back to a customer. Neither one is a payment.

To record money that has come in, see Record a payment. That article has a short section on chases. This article is the full one.

Who can use it

Payment Chases

• The page has no role check of its own. The server decides.
• The server needs two things. The router first checks the permission View List.
• Each chase action also needs payments.chase. By default that is on for manager, sales, director and owner, and off for installer.
• So by default only owners and directors get through. A manager or salesperson sees an error banner on the page, unless the company has given them the permission. The banner text is: "Payment details are visible to owners and directors (or people they have given access)."
• A salesperson who is locked to their own quotes only sees chases on jobs where they own a quote. A colleague's job is left off their list, and a direct action on it answers "Job not found".

Write-offs & Credits

• The server decides.
• You can open the page if you are a manager, director, owner or admin, or if you hold one of the balance-adjustment permissions. The page says "Balance write-offs and credits are for owners, directors and managers." to anyone else.
• You can Approve or Reject only as an owner or director who holds Balance Adjust Approve. You can never approve your own request.
• Setting the threshold needs Balance Adjust Threshold. By default only the owner has it.
• Requesting a write-off or credit needs its own permission: Balance Write Off or Balance Credit Record. By default only the owner has them.
• The company must have the feature switched on. If not, the page says "Balance write-offs and credits are not switched on for this account."

How to use it

Work through Payment Chases

1. Click Payment Chases in the menu.
2. Read the four cards at the top: - Total Chases: "Outstanding jobs (excl. snoozed)". - Total Outstanding: the total owed, with the average per job. - Snoozed: "Jobs with active snooze". - Needs Cost: "Active jobs missing installer cost". See Things to know for what this counts.
3. Pick a tab. The tab names show the number waiting in each:

4. Each card shows the customer name, the job reference and the amount owed in red. Below that are Install date (with the days left), Last contacted, Status, and the Email and Phone if they are on file.
5. Click Refresh to reload the list. A tab with nothing in it says "No outstanding jobs in this bucket."

Mark a customer as contacted

1. After you have rung or written to the customer, click Mark Contacted on their card.
2. IBIOS records the time, and hides the job from the list for 5 days. The page does not tell you about the 5 days.
3. The action is written to the audit log.

Snooze a chase

1. Click Snooze 7 days on the card.
2. The job leaves the list until that date.
3. To see snoozed jobs, tick Show snoozed jobs. Their cards show "Snoozed until" and a date.

The page has no button to undo a snooze. The server can do it, but this page does not call it.

Get a draft chase email

1. Click Draft Email on the card.
2. A window opens with the text of the email. Its title is Draft Chase Email and it carries a Template tag with the note "AI brain offline — sent as a clean template. Review and edit before sending."
3. Click Copy to Clipboard, then paste it into your own email.
4. Click Close.

IBIOS does not send the email. The wording is fixed. It names the job, the balance, and the install date, and says the customer can pay by bank transfer or card.

If the job has no accepted quote, no draft is made. The page shows an alert saying "Balance unavailable for this job" and the reason.

Approve or reject a write-off or credit

1. Click Write-offs & Credits in the menu. The page title is Balance write-offs & credits.
2. The tabs are Waiting for approval and All. Nothing waiting says "Nothing is waiting for approval."
3. Each row shows the amount and type, the job (click to open it), the customer, the balance when it was asked, the reason, and who asked and when.
4. Click Approve. A box asks for a note, which is optional.
5. Or click Reject. A box asks for a reason, which is required.
6. If you asked for it yourself, the row says "You asked for this - another owner/director must approve." and shows no buttons.
7. A banner confirms what you did, for example the amount and the job.

To change the threshold, enter a figure in Threshold (£) and click Save threshold. You only get the field switched on if you have the permission.

Ask for a write-off or credit on a job

This happens on the job page, not on this page.

1. Open the job and find the balance adjustments area next to its payments.
2. Click Write off balance (£…). It only shows while the job owes money and you hold the permission. Or click Record credit / refund owed (£…). That one only shows while the job is overpaid.
3. Fill in Amount (£) and Reason (required), then click Confirm.
4. An amount up to the threshold applies at once. A larger one waits for a different owner or director to approve it.

Tips

• Work the Imminent tab first. Those customers are closest to their install date.
• Click Mark Contacted straight after you speak to the customer. It stops the job coming back to the top for five days.
• Read the draft email before you copy it. It is a general template.
• Tick Show snoozed jobs if a customer says they have paid and you cannot find them on the list.

Things to know

• Who appears. The list comes from one shared rule. A job appears when it is not cancelled, on hold, completed or declined, is not paid in full, and has an accepted quote. The amount owed must be at least the company's minimum, which is never below £10.00. A job with an install date appears only when that date is inside a chase window. With those defaults the Far and Distant tabs are normally empty. A job with no install date appears once its accepted quote is old enough (35 days by default).
• How the amount is worked out. The balance is the total of the job's current accepted quote (including VAT, after discount), minus the payments recorded, with refunds taken off, minus any active write-offs. The installer's cost is not used.
• Write-offs are not money. They lower the balance owed but do not count as a payment, so they never show in Total Paid or in the Cash In figure on Monthly sales report and targets.
• Needs Cost. Those jobs cannot be chased, so they are not in the list.
• Tab numbers. The numbers on the tabs count jobs that are not snoozed, even when Show snoozed jobs is ticked.
• Audit. Marking contacted, snoozing and every write-off or credit action are written to the audit log.

Related articles

• Record a payment
• See what a quote has been paid
• Deposit taken, not converted
• Monthly sales report and targets
• Find and manage jobs
• Record a payment on the phone