Billing rules
Sometimes a customer is charged for the collection but not the bin rental. Sometimes one site of theirs has negotiated its way out of the futile fee. Billing rules are how you record that, once, so it holds for every future invoice instead of being remembered by hand each month.
You’ll find them as a What we invoice card on any customer’s page and on any site’s page.
Rates say how much; billing rules say whether
These are two separate decisions, and keeping them apart is the whole idea.
| Where it lives | What it answers | |
|---|---|---|
| Rate card | On the service | How much is this charge? |
| Billing rule | On the customer or site | Does this charge reach the invoice at all? |
Switching a charge off does not delete its rate. The price stays on the rate card, the job is still recorded, the work still shows in your reporting — the line simply doesn’t appear on the invoice. Switch it back on and the same rate resumes.
The switches
The card lists every charge type your organisation can bill, in two groups:
Services — bin lift, heavy bin surcharge, bin rental, hooklift transport, hooklift variable weight, futile visit fee, bin cleaning, bin delivery, variable volume.
Surcharges and levies — fuel levy, public holiday surcharge, and general surcharges.
Each has a switch showing whether it ends up on the invoice. Everything is billed by default; you’re recording the exceptions.
See The words WastePro uses for what each charge type is and how it’s measured. The label on the switch is your organisation’s own name for that charge type where you’ve set one.
How a site inherits from its customer
A site starts wherever its customer left it. There’s no “inherit” setting to choose — it’s simply what happens.
Set the rule on the customer
That applies to every site and every service under them, now and in future.
Change one on a site
That site now departs from its customer for that one charge type. Everything else still follows them.
Set the site back to match the customer
It resumes following them automatically. There’s no third state to manage.
The site card names the customer it’s starting from, and links to them, so you can always see what the baseline is.
Two things people get wrong
It isn’t one service. A rule applies to every active service under that customer or site. The confirmation tells you exactly how many before you save.
It isn’t only from now on. The rule applies to every period that hasn’t been invoiced yet — including a draft sitting on the invoicing screen right now. If you’re mid-way through a billing run, expect the current run to change.
What can’t be switched off
Rebates and credits move money towards the customer. “Don’t bill this” is meaningless for a credit, and switching one off would quietly withhold money you owe — so those aren’t on the card. Handle a one-off adjustment as a per-line hold when you’re reviewing the invoice, where it’s visible and deliberate.
Three levels, three jobs
There are three places a charge can be held back, and they’re for different situations:
| Level | Where | Use it when |
|---|---|---|
| Organisation | Exclude from billing on Xero Invoice Export | A job type your business never charges anyone for. |
| Customer | What we invoice on the customer page | This account is on different terms from everyone else. |
| Site | What we invoice on the site page | One location of theirs is different again. |
Changing a billing rule needs edit permission. If the card shows View only, your role doesn’t include it — see Users & roles.
Next: Rates & pricing covers the other half — how much each of these charges is, and where to change it.