Billing Terms
A billing term records how a customer pays — for example Credit Card, ACH, Check, Cash, Invoice, or Batch Invoice. Each customer has one billing term. Pulse uses it to decide how that customer's jobs move through invoicing.
Billing terms can't be added, edited, or removed in Pulse Settings today. There is no Billing Terms section in Settings. You can still choose a billing term for each customer from the list your company already has.
Assigning a Billing Term to a Customer
- Open the customer and click Edit to open the Edit Customer drawer.
- Choose a term from the Billing Terms dropdown.
- Save.
Pulse also changes a customer's billing term for you when a payment method is saved or made the default:
- Saving a card switches the customer to Credit Card. This includes a card saved from a payment the customer made while booking online.
- Saving a bank account as the customer's default payment method switches them to ACH.
- Making an existing saved card the default switches the customer to Credit Card; making an existing bank account the default switches them to ACH.
How Billing Terms Affect Invoicing
These defaults apply only when the customer is linked to QuickBooks. A job that already has an invoice isn't set to be invoiced again, and a job that has already been charged isn't set to be charged again.
| Billing term | What happens on the Invoicing page |
|---|---|
| Batch Invoice | Jobs are not invoiced one at a time. They default to the batch invoice action and are grouped with the customer's other jobs. See Batch Invoicing. |
| Credit Card, Credit Card (legacy), or ACH | Jobs default to being invoiced. Pulse also selects Charge by default when the customer has a payment method it can charge through Pulse and the invoice total is more than $0. |
| Any other term (for example Invoice, Check, or Cash) | Jobs default to being invoiced, but Charge is not selected by default. |
For how these defaults work when you process many jobs at once, see Bulk Processing.
Billing Terms When Booking a Quote
If your company's booking questions include a billing terms question, Pulse selects your default card term for you. When a card-based term is selected, an Add Card button appears so you can save the customer's card before you book. See Full-Page Estimate.
Where Billing Terms Appear
| Location | How the billing term appears |
|---|---|
| Edit Customer drawer | Dropdown for choosing the customer's billing term |
| Job Detail drawer | The customer's billing terms |
| Invoice Detail | The Terms used on the invoice |
| Invoicing (Card view) | A badge on each job showing the type of term, not its exact name: Credit Card (for Credit Card, Credit Card (legacy), and ACH customers), Batch Invoice, or Invoice (for every other term, including Check and Cash) |
| Contacts page filters | Filter customers by Billing Term |
| Reports | For example, the Billing Terms column in Open Invoices and Dispatch Summary, and the Billing term filter in Bulk Rate Modifications (one term per bulk adjustment) |
Troubleshooting
| What you see | What to do |
|---|---|
| No Billing Terms section in Settings | This is expected. Billing terms can't be managed in Pulse Settings today. |
| The term you need isn't in the dropdown | New terms can't be added in Pulse today. Choose the closest existing term. |
| A job isn't set to get its own invoice | Check whether the customer is on Batch Invoice; those jobs are grouped into a batch invoice instead. Also check that the customer is linked to QuickBooks and that the job hasn't already been invoiced. |
| Charge isn't selected by default for a job | Pulse selects Charge by default only when the customer is on Credit Card, Credit Card (legacy), or ACH, is linked to QuickBooks, and has a payment method Pulse can charge, the invoice total is more than $0, and the job hasn't already been charged. Check the customer's billing term, QuickBooks link, and saved payment methods. |
| A customer's billing term changed by itself | Saving a card, saving a default bank account, or making a saved card or bank account the default updates the customer's billing term automatically. |
Related Articles
- Edit Customer Drawer — Where to assign billing terms to individual customers
- Creating Invoices — How billing terms affect the invoicing workflow
- Customer Billing & Payments — Payment methods and billing settings on customer records
- Batch Invoicing — Group jobs into a single invoice for a period
- Settings Overview — Navigate the Settings page