Invoices

This standard governs invoices in the accounting system of All About Pawz, LLC: the formal claim for payment and the basis of receivables. The Accounting Operator creates, sends, reminds, marks paid, applies deposits to, and voids invoices; the Accounting Manager approves voids of paid invoices and owns collections decisions. The governing rule is simple: an invoice that has been sent to a customer is a promise the business made. It may be corrected, credited, or voided: it may not be treated as though it never existed.

The invoice record

The invoice carries the commercial facts: number, dates, lines, tax, discounts, total, amount paid, amount credited, and state: and the full communication history: when it was sent, how many times it was resent, the last reminder, and whether it was viewed.

1. Where a customer says an invoice never arrived, the operator answers from these fields: when it was sent, how many times, and whether it was opened. An unviewed invoice after two sends indicates a wrong address or a mail filter, not a forgetful customer; the operator confirms the address before a third send.
2. Each line carries a description, quantity, unit price, discount, tax code, tax amount, and the revenue account the line posts to. The line-level revenue account is what makes the Profit & Loss right; where totals are correct but revenue reporting is wrong, the lines are the first suspect.
3. An invoice may link to a pet, appointment, or booking. Where an invoice's service details look wrong, the operator checks the linked appointment before editing the invoice.
4. A deposit-paid amount on the invoice tracks deposits already collected, so the paid-marking procedure does not collect them twice. Deposits are governed by Deposits.

The lifecycle

Create.

1. Build the header and the lines, pricing each line carefully; the invoice inherits whatever is entered, and each line's tax code and revenue account travel with it.
2. Confirm the billing contact before the invoice is first sent.

Send and resend.

1. Send promptly: the day the work is done or the goods ship. Every day between the sale and the invoice is a day added to the collection cycle.
2. Each send records the time and increases the resend count on the invoice record.

Mark paid: for money that arrived outside the normal payment flow: a check in the mail, cash at the register, a bank transfer.

1. Confirm the money actually arrived, the amount, and the method.
2. Mark the invoice paid, recording the payment method and reference with the mark. "Paid" without a method is an incomplete record and confuses the bank reconciliation under Banking.
3. The action refuses an already-paid invoice: no second books entry is posted: and refuses a void invoice. On success it records the paid state and time, computes the paid amount as the total minus credits minus deposits already paid, and posts the books entry: cash debited, accounts receivable credited.

Remind.

1. Send reminders from the invoice record; each reminder is recorded with its count.
2. Reminders increase in firmness by count: the first is a prompt, the second is firm, and the third contact is a telephone call.
3. A customer reminded four times with no payment is not a reminder problem; the operator refers the invoice to the Accounting Manager as a collections decision. Before escalating, the operator verifies that the billing contact is the right person: invoices and reminders sent to the same unreceiving address fail the same way.

Void.

1. Void cancels the invoice: the balance goes to zero, the history is preserved, and the void is recorded with who acted, when, and why. The reason shall be complete: for example, "Voided in error, reissued as" followed by the new invoice number.
2. Void is only for an invoice that should never have existed: wrong customer, duplicate, or a sale that fell through before delivery.
3. Void is not a substitute for a credit memo. Where goods or services were delivered and the amount is being adjusted, the operator issues a credit memo so the revenue and the adjustment both remain visible. Void says "this never happened"; a credit memo says "this happened and the amount is adjusted."
4. Voiding a paid invoice posts a reversal books entry: the cash and the receivable unwind. A voided invoice can never be restored; the wrongly voided invoice is reissued under a new number, with the void referenced in the memo.

Apply deposit.

1. Check the deposit-paid amount first; applying a deposit that has already been applied double-counts it.
2. Applying the deposit relieves the customer-deposits liability against the receivable, under Deposits.

Editing discipline

1. An unsent invoice may be edited freely.
2. A sent invoice: descriptions may be corrected, but a price the customer has already received shall never be changed silently. The operator issues a credit memo for the difference, or voids and reissues.
3. Line edits carry weight beyond the words: changing a tax code changes the tax liability, and changing a revenue account moves the sale on the Profit & Loss. Every edit to a sent invoice carries a note stating why; the next reader is the operator in three months or the accountant at year-end.

Controls

• Separation of duties: the person who marks an invoice paid does not reconcile the bank account the money arrived in.
• The mark-paid books posting is attempted automatically and can fail without changing the invoice's paid state. Where an invoice reads paid and the books show no cash, the operator searches the journal by the invoice's source identifier and, if the entry is missing, posts it manually under Troubleshooting (Accounting Troubleshooting).
• The aging total can conceal its own problem: a level total with a growing oldest bucket means new sales are masking uncollected old invoices. The operator reads the buckets, not only the total, and checks the viewed markers: unviewed invoices are not being received.
• A customer shall not be collected twice for one invoice. A processor payment and a manual mark-paid for the same invoice produce a paid amount exceeding the total: an overpayment to refund under the Returns and Refunds Policy or to credit, identified by matching payments to invoices at the time of payment.

Records created and where they are kept

Invoice records, line records, reminder and viewing history, void records with their reasons, and the related journal entries are kept in the accounting system and retained under the Regulatory Record Retention Policy.

Escalation

A collections decision, a disputed invoice, or a void of a paid invoice goes to the Accounting Manager. Legal process touching an invoice: a demand, a bankruptcy notice, a subpoena: goes to legal@aapawz.com on the day it is received. System failures in sending or posting go to support@aapawz.com.

Review cadence

The Accounting Operator reviews the receivables aging daily through the Accounting Dashboard. The Accounting Manager reviews the oldest aging bucket and all voids weekly, and reviews this standard annually.