Invoices basics

An invoice in Cleaner OS is a simple record of what a client owes: an amount, an optional due date, and a status. You can record the payments you receive — cash, check, transfer, or whatever you name yourself — and the invoice settles itself when they add up. What Cleaner OS does not do yet is take the money for you: card payments and auto-collection appear on your Money page under "Hands-off payments," clearly labeled soon.

So think of invoices as your smart ledger: they show who owes what, flag balances that slip past their due date, and turn overdue clients into one-tap follow-ups in your Inbox.

Where invoices come from

There are two ways a bill gets on the books.

You create it. On Money, under Invoices, tap + New: choose the client, enter the amount, and optionally set a due date and an internal note. Nothing is pre-selected for you — picking the client is a deliberate step, so a bill can't quietly go to whoever happens to be first in your list. The same + New button sits on each client's own page, where the client is already fixed and shown by name. Your note stays with you: the client's copy carries the amount, the dates, the status and — when the bill came from a visit — what was cleaned, never your note.

It arrives with an import. In the import review screen, each client row has a Balance owed (optional) field and a Due date:

• Enter the amount the client still owes, then check Confirm this balance — create an invoice for it. Unconfirmed balances aren't saved — you can add them later if needed.
• If the balance is already late, set the real past due date — it shows as overdue on your Money page right away, and once it's more than a week past due it becomes a follow-up in your Inbox.

And it bills itself. When a cleaner marks a visit complete, Cleaner OS creates that visit's invoice and emails the client their copy — no tap from you. Turn it off in Settings → Invoice each visit automatically if you bill some other way; everything else on this page keeps working. For the full import flow, see importing clients from a spreadsheet or from a photo.

Sending an invoice, and who actually gets it

Creating an invoice also emails the client a short note with a link into their portal, where the amount and due date live. Tap Send on any open invoice to send that copy again — after a phone call, or if the first one got buried.

An email only reaches a client who has a portal account. Accounts arrive by invitation (customer portal invites), so a client you have just added has none yet. Cleaner OS says so plainly instead of pretending:

• In the + New sheet, a client with no portal account is flagged before you save — the invoice is still recorded, it just is not emailed to anyone.
• After a Send, you get the count it is going to: "On its way to 1 recipient," or "Nobody to send to" with the reason. That count is who will receive it — the email leaves a moment later, so it is not a delivery receipt.

A client can also turn invoice emails off in their own portal settings, and that is their choice to make — an owner send does not override it. That is the other reason a send can honestly reach nobody.

Writing an invoice off

If a bill will never be collected — a goodwill credit, a duplicate, a mistake — tap Write off on the invoice and give a short reason. The invoice stays on the books marked Written off, so your history is intact; the client stops owing it and it leaves your overdue list. The reason is recorded in your audit trail; your client never sees it.

If the client had already paid part of it, that bill stays visible in their portal, struck through, with the payments they made and a line saying nothing more is owed. Money they actually handed you never disappears from their side of the record — only the remaining balance does.

This cannot be undone, so it is not the way to fix a typo — write it off and create the correct invoice.

Where you see what's owed

• Pulse, your dashboard, shows an Overdue tile with the total overdue amount and how many invoices it covers, plus an Invoices issued count in the "What Cleaner OS handles" list.
• At the top of Money, three tappable tiles break your money down by status — Collected this month, Unpaid, and Overdue. Unpaid and Overdue open the invoice list filtered to exactly those bills; Collected opens the bills that received a payment this month. The big number above them is the booked value of this month's visits, which is why it can differ from what's been collected. Right under it, that number is split by where each visit is: Invoiced, Done, not invoiced yet, Past, not marked done (a visit whose day has passed that nobody completed — its row links to the Inbox, where each one asks whether it was done), and Today & upcoming (including one under way today). The parts add up to the big number. A visit's money shows in the tiles only once it's invoiced, so a month of unbilled work shows a booked number over empty tiles. Visits are invoiced automatically when a cleaner marks them done, unless automatic invoicing is off. In that case a link under Done, not invoiced yet takes you to the setting. Turning it on bills future visits, not the ones already finished.
• Money lists each overdue invoice with the client's name, how many days overdue it is, and the amount, with an in Inbox → shortcut to act on it. When nothing is late, you'll see "Nothing overdue." Below it, Invoices lists your 20 most recent bills — unpaid, part-paid, paid or written off. A bill that has taken some money but is not settled reads Part-paid, with the amount in and the amount left beside it, so an unfinished bill is never filed under the same word as an untouched one. An unpaid or part-paid bill carries its own Send and Write off actions; a settled or written-off one is a record, so it keeps only View. Every row's View opens the invoice as a full document — letterhead, amount, payments received, remaining balance, and, when the bill came from a visit, what was delivered: the service, its date, the address, and who cleaned — with a Print / save PDF button, handy for a client who wants a paper copy or has no portal account. Your internal note shows above the document, for you only — it is left off the printed page and the PDF. If a bill's payments can't be loaded for a moment, the list says so and, on that bill, shows Not settled instead of an amount owed and hides Record payment — it never guesses. Reload to bring the numbers back.
• A client's own page shows that one client's invoices, under their properties. If that client was erased, their bills stay listed as the financial record but become read-only — no new invoice, no send.
• Clients you've invited see their own invoices in their portal, on the Cleanings tab — each bill inside the visit it belongs to, and bills not tied to a visit under Other bills (the Receipts & invoices row on their Me page opens the same list) — each amount, due date, and status — including Part-paid when they've paid some of it — plus their open balance total. Tapping a bill opens it as the same kind of document, printable on their side too; once it's fully paid, its document is titled Receipt. See customer portal invites.

Overdue follow-ups in your Inbox

When a client's open invoices go more than a week past their due date, a follow-up card appears in your Inbox, tagged Overdue. That short grace period keeps your Inbox quiet about invoices that are only a few days late — those still show as overdue on Pulse and Money right away. You get one card per client, not one per invoice: it shows the client's overdue total, how many invoices are behind, and how old the oldest one is.

Each card offers three quick actions:

• Mark handled — you've followed up with the client, so the card leaves the queue.
• Snooze — set it aside; it resurfaces later.
• Override — dismiss it with a short reason, which is recorded.

Marking a follow-up handled records your decision — it never charges the client and doesn't change the invoice itself. If another invoice for the same client goes overdue afterward, a fresh follow-up appears. More on how the queue works in the decisions Inbox.

Recording payments: what works today

When money arrives, tap Record payment on that invoice, pick how they paid, and confirm. The amount is pre-filled with what's still owed — change it for a part payment.

• Part payments are normal. The invoice stays open for the remainder, the row shows "$60 in · $40 left", and your overdue follow-ups chase the remaining amount, never the original total.
• It settles itself. When the payments cover the bill, the status flips to Paid — there is no "mark as paid" button, and that is deliberate: a bill can only be paid by money you actually recorded.
• Mistyped it? Tap Remove on the payment line and the invoice goes back to open, ready for the right amount. (You need this: Cleaner OS refuses a payment larger than what's still owed, so a wrong figure blocks the correct one until you take it off.)
• The client gets a receipt by email once the bill is fully settled, and sees it in their portal. A part payment sends nothing — there is nothing to receipt yet. If they have no portal account, Cleaner OS tells you so instead of pretending a receipt went out.
• Removing a payment tells the client only if they were told in the first place. Fix it before the receipt goes out and nothing is emailed at all — Cleaner OS pulls the unsent receipt back, and the client sees one correct receipt instead of a receipt, a retraction and another receipt. If the receipt has already left, they get a short note that a payment was reversed, and Cleaner OS says how many people it went to. Re-record the money afterwards and, if that note hadn't gone out yet, it is quietly dropped: the last thing your client actually read was "paid", and it is true again.

Payment methods live in Settings. Four are there from day one — Cash, Check, Bank transfer, Card — and you can add your own (Zelle, Venmo, whatever you actually use) or remove ones you don't. Removing a method keeps old payments readable: it just disappears from the picker.

If a bill genuinely will not be paid, Write off is still the honest way to clear it. The Hands-off payments section shows what is further out — automatic card collection and payouts — labeled soon until it ships.