Cylinder hire

Some of the trade rents the cylinder rather than taking a deposit on it: three pounds a week for as long as the customer keeps it, which for a busy kitchen is for ever. Bottle works the rent out from what each customer is holding and raises the invoice on their cycle, with whichever ways to pay you offer.

Setting it up

The charge. Under Products, choose Add a product, then Deposit or rent. Pick Rent, the gas type it is for, the price and how often: every day, week or month. “Flogas Propane rent, £3, every week.” One per gas type you rent; every size of it is charged the same.

The cycle. On each customer, How to invoice says whether they get an invoice for each delivery or one a week, month or quarter. Rent only goes on the weekly, monthly or quarterly invoice, so a customer renting cylinders needs one of those. The customer’s Cylinders section warns when rented cylinders are not being charged.

Rent does not get an invoice of its own. It goes on the customer’s period invoice alongside the gas delivered on account and anything credited back. See Invoices.

The foot of the invoice. Under Settings › Business › Invoices: your bank details for the customers who pay by transfer, a line of your own, and how many days they get to pay. Fourteen by default.

How it is worked out

Rent is never charged on the order itself, only on the invoice. A deposit is the other way round: it is money handed over with the cylinder, so it goes on the order the cylinder went out on.

Rent is for the days a cylinder is actually held, not for the period. Bottle walks the stock movements on the customer’s account, what went out to them and when and what came back and when, and adds up cylinder-days. Three cylinders all week is twenty-one; one handed back on Wednesday stops costing on Wednesday. The days of every size of one gas type are added together, so two 19kg and a 47kg are three cylinders of rent. That total, in days, weeks or months, at the rent on the gas type, is the line.

So a first delivery mid-period is billed for the days since, not the whole period, and a customer who hands cylinders back gets a smaller invoice next time without anybody adjusting anything. The email says as much, because it is the thing customers ask.

When it goes out

Every night, for every customer whose cycle has come round. The invoice covers the period just ended, is numbered next in your sequence (INV-BTL00001, INV-BTL00002) and is emailed to the customer. If the job was not run for a while it catches up one period at a time, so nothing is billed twice and nothing is missed between invoices. Nothing to press: it is the nightly job’s work, and the Invoices page shows what it raised.

A customer holding nothing that period gets no invoice, and their cycle moves on quietly.

Two ways to pay, on one page

Where the business has Stripe connected, the email carries a Pay by card button that goes to a page on the business’s own Stripe account. Where bank details are set, the email carries them, with the invoice number as the reference. Where both are set, the customer sees both and picks. A yard does not lose a payment because it only offered the way the customer does not use.

A card payment marks the invoice paid on its own, the moment Stripe says so. A bank transfer is marked paid by the office when it lands, and can be unmarked for the payment that turned out to be somebody else’s.

Cancelling

An unpaid invoice can be cancelled. It stays on the books marked cancelled and keeps its number, because a number that vanishes is a question from the accountant and a gap they will ask about.

What it is not

Not a deposit. A deposit is one charge on the first order and money owed back when the cylinder returns; see Stock. A customer is usually on one or the other. Not an order, either: an order goes on a van, an invoice goes in the post, and Bottle keeps them apart on purpose.