Customer Billing Section

Every customer has a Billing tab that gathers all their money in one place: their wallet balance, their invoices, the payments they have made, credit notes issued to them, and the running history of every financial event on the account. This is where you record payments, add balance, set an opening balance for a migrated customer, and review what the customer owes or has paid.

This page is a tour of the Billing tab. For creating a manual invoice and acting on invoices, see Create an Invoice; for renewing a service, see Renew a Tariff Plan.

For a staff-recorded cash, bank, card or wallet receipt, the selected payment method and account describe how money was received; they do not charge the customer. An eligible online invoice payment instead uses an active payment gateway, which confirms its own attempt before a receipt is treated as settled.

Where to find it: Sidebar → CRM → Customers → open a customer → Billing tab.

The balance header

At the top of the Billing tab a card shows the customer's Account Balance and, when a block is scheduled, the Next Block date. Balance is a single running figure: prepaid credit shows as a positive balance the customer can spend, and unpaid postpaid charges (receivables) pull it the other way.

Below the header is a row of sub-tabs. Each is described below.

Prepaid wallet vs pay-later (A/R) — the two funding models

The whole billing tab makes more sense once you know AltRadius runs two money models side by side:

• Prepaid (wallet). The customer holds credit in a wallet. Renewals and charges draw down the wallet; when it runs out, the service lapses. You top the wallet up with Add Balance or by recording an overpayment.
• Pay-later (A/R — accounts receivable). The customer is billed and pays afterwards. The unpaid invoice sits as a receivable until collected. A receivable is owned by whoever is expected to collect it — the branch (branch-direct customers) or a partner (partner-owned customers).

A single customer's activity can touch both models over time, which is why the balance is one combined figure and the history below shows wallet movements and receivables together.

Add Balance

Add Balance tops up the customer's wallet — for example when they hand over cash to pre-load their account. You record the amount and how it was received. The credit lands in the wallet and is available to fund the next renewal or to settle open invoices.

This staff action is different from customer self-service. The current customer portal offers online invoice payment when a suitable gateway is connected, while its wallet top-up controls remain hidden. Do not promise portal wallet top-up to a customer yet; see Customer Portal.

Set Opening Balance (migrated customers only)

When you bring a customer over from a previous system, Set Opening Balance records what they already owed or already had in credit, as a proper audited finance entry rather than a raw balance edit.

Field	What it does
Type	Opening Credit (they had credit) or Opening Due (they owed money).
Amount	The migrated figure. Must be greater than zero.
Reason	Legacy system migration, Data correction, Goodwill, or Other.
Legacy date	The original date from the old system — recorded for reference only; the accounting entry itself uses today's date.
Notes	Optional free text.

Opening balance can only be set before real billing has started for the customer. Once the customer has been billed, the option is blocked with a message telling you to adjust the balance with a manual invoice, a credit note, or a write-off instead. Only one opening balance of each type can exist per customer.

The Billing sub-tabs

Invoices

Every invoice raised for the customer, with its status and amount due. From here you can preview, pay, dispute or clear, write off, send, and download invoices. Use Add Document → Generate Invoice to raise a manual invoice.

Transactions

The wallet ledger: every credit and debit against the customer's wallet and its running effect on the balance.

Financial Activity

A combined chronological feed of invoices, payments, credit notes, and adjustments. Use it when you need a quick answer to “what happened when?”

Credit Notes

Credit notes created by cancellations, plan-change proration, write-offs, add-on cancellations, or manual concessions. Each entry shows its face value, how much has been used, and where the credit went.

Payment Receipts

The durable record of payments received, including the method, account, mode, and PDF view or download action.

Recording a payment — the four variants

"Recording a payment" is not one single flow — the system picks the right one for the situation, so you collect against the correct ledger. You will meet these:

Variant	When it applies	What it does
Customer payment	The everyday case — the customer pays an invoice, from the Invoices tab Pay action or the post-save dialog.	Settles the invoice from the customer's wallet or from an outside payment (cash/bank/etc.) and produces a receipt. Overpayment becomes wallet credit.
Branch payment	A branch-owned receivable is being collected (branch-direct customer).	Records collection against the branch receivable ledger rather than a partner's. Extending or waiving a branch receivable needs the relevant permission.
Conversion payment	The service is crossing over between prepaid and postpaid (a plan-change conversion).	Captures the payment tied to the conversion invoice. A prepaid→postpaid conversion cannot use "partner absorbs" — record cash or leave it as postpaid due.
Prepayment	A plan change is scheduled for the next cycle and the customer pays up front.	Holds the money as a prepayment that applies automatically when the renewal invoice is created. Only the "customer prepaid" intent is supported here — not IOU or "no payment expected".

At the operator level, the practical decision is prepaid wallet vs pay-later (A/R): are you taking money now (wallet / outside payment, settling the invoice) or leaving the invoice open as a receivable to collect later? The variant above is chosen for you based on who owns the receivable and what the service is doing.

Troubleshooting / FAQ

• "Billing has started for this customer" when setting an opening balance. Opening balance is a migration tool only. After the first real bill, use a manual invoice, credit note, or write-off.
• The customer's balance looks off after a refund. Refunds and cancellations credit the customer's wallet; check the Transactions and Credit Notes tabs — the wallet shows the credit side while the matching entries live in the credit note and settlement records.
• "This invoice is not a partner-collected receivable — record its payment from the Customer billing tab instead." You tried to collect a branch-direct receivable from a partner flow. Use the customer's Billing → Invoices Pay action.
• A prepayment I recorded hasn't reduced anything yet. A prepayment for a scheduled next-cycle change only applies when the renewal invoice is actually created — it is held until then. </content>