Billing and invoicing¶

Track billable events, price them with rate cards, and turn them into invoices you can email to a customer.

Accessing billing¶

Go to Billing in the left sidebar. It has two pages:

Billing events¶

The platform creates a billing event automatically whenever a billable operation happens in the warehouse. Each event captures the operation type, customer, quantities, and the charges that resulted.

Event types¶

There are six event types.

What an event records¶

Every event stores the measurements it was billed on and the money that came out of them, so a charge can always be traced back to the operation that caused it:

Which dimensions are populated depends on the event. An inbound event measures pallets and receipt lines; an outbound one measures LPNs and pieces; a storage event measures cases and square footage.

From event to invoice line¶

Events are the audit trail between an operation and a charge:

1. An operation completes — a receipt is closed, a shipment dispatches, a storage period is generated.
2. The system measures it and writes those quantities into the event's dimensions.
3. The customer's rate card prices each dimension, applying tiers where the rate card defines them. The result is stored on the event as its calculated charges, along with the tier breakdown used.
4. Invoicing turns each charge into a line. One invoice line is created per charge dimension, not per event — so a single receiving event priced on both pallets and lines produces two lines. Each line carries the quantity, the rate and the total, and stays linked to the event it came from.
5. Tax is added as its own line, unless the customer is tax exempt.

Viewing billing events¶

The Customer, Type, and Status filters take an operator as well as a value:

Status offers is and is not only, because it holds just two values.

Once a filter differs from its starting point, a Clear button appears with a count of how many filters are active. Clearing puts Status back to Pending rather than showing everything. Your filter choices are kept in the page address, so a filtered list is a link you can bookmark or send to someone else.

Creating invoices from events¶

1. Go to Billing → Billing Events.
2. The list already shows pending events only. Narrow it further by customer, type, or event date if you need to.
3. Tick the events to invoice.

4. Choose Create Invoice.

   An invoice is generated from the selected events.

5. Review the invoice and confirm.

Invoices¶

What an invoice holds¶

Invoice workflow¶

1. Let billing events accumulate as operations happen.
2. Select the pending events and create an invoice.
3. Review the invoice details, line items, and totals.
4. Attach supporting documents if you need to.
5. Finalize the invoice.
6. Email it to the customer as a draft you send from your own mailbox.

Voiding an invoice¶

Voiding cancels an invoice you've already raised, without deleting it. The invoice stays in the list with a Void status so the history still makes sense, and the audit trail records who voided it and when.

1. Open the invoice.
2. Choose Void.
3. Give a reason. It's optional, but it's the only explanation anyone will have later.

Emailing invoices¶

Zora prepares the message; you send it from your own mailbox.

Email Draft builds a standard email file (.eml) with the invoice PDFs already attached and downloads it to your computer. Opening that file hands the message to whatever mail client you normally use — Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird — with the recipient, subject, body, and attachments filled in. Nothing is sent until you press Send there.

Emailing a single invoice¶

From Billing → Invoices, choose Email Draft on the invoice's row. On a phone or tablet, the same action is on the invoice card.

You can also open the invoice and click Email Draft in the header, next to Download PDF:

The file downloads as Invoice-<invoice number>.eml. Open it, review the message, and send.

Emailing several invoices at once¶

1. Go to Billing → Invoices.
2. Tick the checkbox on each invoice you want to include.
3. In the blue bar that appears, choose Email Draft.

You get one message with every selected invoice attached as its own PDF, saved as Invoices-<count>.eml. Use it for a customer's month-end batch rather than sending ten separate emails.

What the draft contains¶

How the recipient is chosen. The platform looks at the customer's contacts and takes the first address it finds, in this order: the contact typed Billing, then the customer's designated primary contact, then any contact with an email address.

The To field is left empty — for you to fill in — when:

• the draft covers more than one customer, so there is no single right recipient
• the customer has no email address on file
• the contact's email field holds more than one address, which is ambiguous enough that the platform will not guess

Branding on a mixed batch. The from-address and the PDFs follow the branding of the invoice's warehouse. When one draft spans invoices from different warehouses, it falls back to your global company branding, so the message and its attachments always speak for the same legal entity.

Emailing does not change the invoice status¶

Building a draft is a read-only action. A draft invoice stays a draft; an open invoice stays open. Nothing about the invoice changes, and you can build a draft as many times as you like — useful for resending a copy a customer mislaid.

Customizing the wording¶

The subject and body are yours to edit — see Settings → Invoice Email. Administrators can reword the message and use placeholders for the invoice number, dates, amount, and your company details. Until someone edits them, the built-in wording is used.

Permissions¶

Email Draft needs the same view access to Billing as the rest of the Invoices page, so anyone who can see an invoice can prepare a draft for it. Editing the wording in Settings is an administrator task.

You can also build an invoice from scratch. On Billing → Invoices, choose Create Invoice, pick the customer and warehouse, then use Add Line to enter each charge by hand. Hand-entered lines aren't tied to a billing event, so they carry no dimensions or tier breakdown — just a type, description, quantity, unit price, and amount.

Invoice line types¶

Every invoice line carries a type. Lines created from billing events are typed automatically from the event they came from; lines you add by hand are typed with the Type select next to the line.

These eight values are the complete list. The API rejects anything else with a validation error rather than saving it, so a line type that is not in the table above cannot reach an invoice.

Changing a line type on an existing invoice¶

The Line Items table on an invoice detail page has a Type column showing each line's type, and the type can be changed while editing:

1. Open the invoice from Billing → Invoices.
2. Choose Edit — available only while the invoice is in Draft status.
3. Change the Type select on any hand-entered line, or use Add Line to add one.
4. Save the invoice.

Rate cards¶

A rate card sets per-customer pricing for warehouse services. A customer can have several, organized by dimension.

Rate card dimensions¶

Tiered pricing¶

A rate card can price in tiers, each with its own min/max range:

• Per-unit pricing charges per unit within a tier.
• Flat-rate pricing charges a fixed amount per tier.
• A rate card can hold several tiers — for example, the first 100 pallets at $5, the next 100 at $4.

Managing rate cards¶

1. Go to a customer's Billing Settings page. Rate cards are organized there by dimension — Receiving, Outbound, Labor, Storage.
2. Choose Add Rate Card.
3. Set the name, dimension, tiers, and pricing.
4. Set an effective date for when the rate card takes effect.
5. Save.

Storage charges¶

Storage charges bill a customer for warehouse space used over time.

Storage billing frequencies¶

Split monthly is not a fourth frequency — it's a switch you can turn on in addition to Monthly. With it on, stock arriving on or after the 16^th is charged half a month's rate for that period, so a customer whose pallets land mid-month isn't billed as though they'd been there since the 1^st.

Storage dimensions¶

Choose which of these to charge for:

Configuring storage billing¶

1. Open a customer record and choose Billing Settings.
2. Under Storage Billing, select the billing frequency.
3. Enable the storage dimensions to charge for — Per Pallet, Per Case, Per Sq Ft, Per Container.
4. On Monthly billing, optionally enable Split Monthly for pro-rated mid-month arrivals.
5. Create a Storage rate card with the tiered pricing you want.
6. Save.

Generating storage charges¶

Storage charges generate on the configured frequency. The platform:

1. Calculates inventory quantities for each storage dimension.
2. Applies the customer's rate card tiers.

3. Creates billing events of type Storage Charge.

   The events appear in Billing Events, ready to invoice.

Customer billing settings¶

Every customer has a billing settings page, reached from their customer record.

What it configures¶

Accessing billing settings¶

1. Go to Catalog → Customers.
2. Choose a customer to open their record.
3. Choose Billing Settings.
4. Set the billing parameters and rate cards.

Getting it right¶

Rate cards. Review them annually so pricing reflects current costs. Use tiers to offer volume discounts. Set effective dates on a rate change so historical billing keeps using the old rate. Keep inactive rate cards on file rather than deleting them — you'll want the audit trail.

Storage billing. Match the storage dimensions to how you actually measure space in your warehouse. Use Split Monthly so fluctuating mid-month inventory is billed fairly. Review storage charges before invoicing to catch anomalies early. Document rate agreements with customers so a dispute has something to point to.

Invoicing. Invoice on a regular cadence rather than letting events pile up. Attach supporting documents — BOLs, receipts — for transparency. Use Bill To when a third party pays for the customer's services.

Accounting integration¶

Invoices generated here can be pushed into QuickBooks Desktop rather than re-keyed. Export is a deliberate action, not automatic — see QuickBooks Desktop integration for connecting the provider, choosing the service item and A/R account exported invoices post against, and mapping customers.

Related guides¶

• QuickBooks Desktop integration - Connect accounting and export invoices
• Customer management - Manage customer records
• Company branding - Logo and company info on invoices
• Settings - System-wide billing configuration
• Invoice Email settings - Edit the subject and body of invoice email drafts
• Reports - Financial and billing reports