A completed stop normally produces two kinds of invoice line: one toward the customer who owns the address, and a settlement toward the subcontractor who did the work (see When an invoice line is created). Sometimes only one of them is wanted. A goodwill visit after a complaint should pay the subcontractor and cost the customer nothing; a job the customer ordered and your own crew drove has no subcontractor to settle; a check-up drive should not bill anybody. On an address dispatch you say so when you create it.
The choice
On the Address dispatch form, above Dispatch now:
- Should be invoiced is on by default. Switch it off and the dispatch is not invoiced at all, on either side. The stops are still driven, recorded and completed as usual.
- While it is on, Who should be invoiced? offers three answers:
- Customer and subcontractor, the default: exactly what every dispatch did before.
- Customer only: the customer line is drafted; no settlement line is drafted toward any subcontractor on the chain.
- Subcontractor only: the settlement lines are drafted; the customer is not billed.
A dispatch sent from a complaint starts on a different default, set by Carried out by: when the business held responsible for the complaint redoes the work, Should be invoiced is switched off, because the customer paid for that work once already and the supplier is not paid twice for it. When anybody else redoes it (another subcontractor, or your own crew), the answer is Subcontractor only: whoever redid it is paid and the customer is not billed again. Changing Carried out by resets the default; you can still change the answer yourself afterwards. Such a dispatch is always created as a dispatch of its own and never joined to a running one, so its answer is not replaced by that dispatch's. See How a complaint is assessed, timed and settled.
The summary before Confirm and dispatch repeats the answer. Afterwards the dispatch's Details tab shows the same switch and dropdown to the business that created the dispatch, and a change there is saved at once.
What it changes, and when
The choice is applied at the moment lines are drafted, which is when a business presses Confirm & create invoices (or when a retroactive-billing offer is accepted). It never overrides the other rules: only Completed stops bill, a stop with no price is skipped, a declined business is never settled, a per-season address still bills in instalments. The scope only decides which of the two sides the generator is allowed to draft.
Changing the scope on a dispatch that was already confirmed does not undo anything. Lines that exist stay on their drafts until you archive them; the new scope governs whatever is drafted from then on, and a side you have just switched on becomes billable at the next confirmation.
Bill completed work? (the offer that appears when an address gets a price) follows the same rule: a customer-only dispatch is never offered for a missing settlement line, a subcontractor-only one never for a missing customer line, and a dispatch that should not be invoiced is not offered at all. See Bill completed work that had no price.
Which dispatches have it
Only address dispatches. A route, zone or manual dispatch always bills both sides and shows no choice; if a stop on one of those must not be billed, mark it Unable, remove it, or archive its line on the invoice afterwards.
A single-address dispatch created from the phone has a plain Should this be invoiced? switch instead of the three-way choice: on means both sides, off means neither. See Start a dispatch from your phone.
A test dispatch bills nothing whatever the scope says.
Who decides
The business that creates the dispatch. A subcontractor invited to it cannot change the scope on the owner's dispatch; what it can do is settle its own work with its own subcontractors under the owner's choice. When the scope leaves your side out, the dispatch's Invoicing box on the Details tab has nothing to confirm for it, which is the sign to look at the scope before looking for a missing price.