Accounting and online payments

This video covers the money side of ECHOPS: invoices, payments, bills, checks and expenses, and how clients pay an invoice online, through your own Stripe account.

The Accounting page

Open More, then Accounting. Five tabs run across the top: Invoices, Payments, Bills, Checks and Expenses. Owners and admins run the books. Members see only Expenses, for their own receipts, and viewers don't see Accounting.

Invoices made for you

Most invoices make themselves. When a deal is won, its signed quote's payment plan becomes the job's invoices: the deposit, the progress payments and the balance. The first is billed and due today. The rest wait as Not billed yet, until you click Bill it now. A signed change order bills itself, too.

The Invoices tab

The Invoices tab lists them with what's left and where each one stands. The menu shows what's owed, overdue, not billed yet, paid, or everything. Switch to By job to see each job's invoices together, and click Payment schedule to follow the signed quote, or switch to Financed or Custom.

New invoice

For anything else, click New invoice: a progress bill, an extra, or a credit. Pick the job, the kind, and a title. Start from a percent of the contract, or type the lines yourself: a description, a quantity and a price. Click Add a line for more. Keep Bill it now ticked, and pick the due date.

Paying online

Below the lines, a box reads The client can pay it online, by card or bank transfer. It starts ticked. You can also add a three percent fee when they pay by credit card, never on debit cards or bank transfers. Some states don't allow card fees, so check your state's rules first. Click Make it, or Make it and send.

Sending the link

The send window takes the client's email and name, the due date, and a note. Click Email it: it comes from your company, and replies come back to you. Or click Just copy the link, to paste in a text. Handed it over another way? Click I sent it myself.

The client pays

Your client opens the link, sees the invoice, and pays by card or bank transfer right on the page. Stripe emails them a receipt. ECHOPS records the payment by itself, and tells the owners, the admins and whoever made the invoice. Clients can pay from the client portal, too.

Record payment

Paid by check or cash? Open the invoice and click Record payment: the amount, how they paid, the day, and the check number or the card's last four digits. Nothing is charged here. The Payments tab lists every payment. A payment can't be edited, only undone.

Bills and checks

Bills shows what you owe suppliers and subs, from each job's order list and labor sheet; you mark them paid on Orders and Labor. Checks is your check register. Click Add a check and take a photo, and it's read for you. A check paid to a sub on a labor sheet lands here by itself.

Expenses

Expenses works the same way. Click Add an expense and photograph the receipt, and the vendor, date and amount are read for you. Pick the category, and the job if it was for one, so it counts in that job's profit. Paid with your own money? An owner or admin marks it paid back.

Connect Stripe

In Settings, under Online payments, an owner or admin clicks Connect Stripe, and Stripe's own pages collect your business and bank details. Each company connects its own Stripe account, and Stripe pays out to your bank. Pick cards, bank transfers, or both. Turn on Reminders to pay, and unpaid invoices get email reminders before and after they're due.

Connect Stripe before your next deal is won, so the deposit invoice can be paid online the day you send it. Next: Reports.