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Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at Customer Invoices & Credit Notes.

If you’ve ever needed to bill a client, track what they owe, or reverse a charge, this is the part of the system you’ll be working in. Customer invoices and credit notes sit at the heart of your accounts receivable process, and once you understand how they fit together, the whole thing becomes much more intuitive.

Let’s start with the types of invoices available to you, because not every billing situation is the same.

There are four invoice types. The first is a Standard invoice. This is your everyday sales invoice — you’ve delivered a product or a service, and now you’re asking the customer to pay for it. Most of what you do day to day will fall into this category.

The second type is a Credit Note. Think of this as the opposite of a standard invoice. If you need to refund a customer, reverse a charge, or correct a billing error, a credit note is how you handle it. It reduces what the customer owes you, or it creates a credit balance they can apply against future invoices.

The third type is a Deposit invoice. You use this when you want to request an advance payment before work begins or before goods are delivered. It’s especially useful for larger jobs where you want something upfront. That deposit amount then gets applied against the final invoice once everything is complete.

And the fourth type is a Recurring invoice. If you have customers on retainer, subscriptions, or any kind of regular billing cycle, recurring invoices let the system generate those invoices automatically on a schedule you define. You set it up once, and the system handles creating each invoice at the right time.

Now let’s walk through the lifecycle of an invoice. The workflow moves through six stages, and understanding each one tells you what you can and can’t do at that point.

It starts with an Order. When a customer order already exists in the system, you can generate an invoice directly from it, which saves you from re-entering all the line items manually.

From there, the invoice is created as a Draft. In draft state, you can still edit everything — line items, quantities, prices, tax codes, due dates. Nothing is locked in yet, so this is your chance to get things right before moving forward.

Once you’re happy with it, you Validate the invoice. Validation locks it and assigns an official invoice number. After this point you can’t edit the core details, so it’s worth taking a moment to review carefully before you validate.

The next stage is Sent. This is when the invoice goes out to the customer, whether by email directly from the system or through whatever method you use to communicate with them. The system logs that it’s been sent, which helps with tracking and follow-up.

After the customer pays, you Record the Payment. You can record full payments or partial payments, and the system will track how much remains outstanding. If a customer pays in instalments, each payment gets recorded separately and the balance updates accordingly.

Finally, once the full amount has been received and reconciled, the invoice moves to Closed. A closed invoice is complete and sits in your records for reporting and audit purposes.

Credit notes follow a similar structure — you create them, validate them, and then apply them. You can apply a credit note directly against an outstanding invoice to reduce what the customer owes, or you can leave it as an open credit on the account for future use.

It’s also worth knowing how this area connects to the rest of the system. Customer invoices link closely to Customer Orders, so if you’re raising invoices from orders, that’s where the chain starts. The Invoices and Payments module gives you the broader view of what’s been paid, what’s outstanding, and what’s overdue. And Bank Accounts is where payment reconciliation happens — when you match a bank transaction to a recorded payment, that’s the final step that moves everything to closed.

A few practical things to keep in mind. Always validate an invoice before sending it, because you can’t send a draft. If you need to correct a validated invoice, the cleanest approach is to cancel it and create a new one, or raise a credit note for the difference. And when you’re setting up recurring invoices, check the frequency, the start date, and whether the system should auto-validate them or leave them as drafts for you to review each cycle.

That covers the essentials — the four invoice types, the six-stage workflow from order through to closed, and how everything connects to the rest of the system.

That’s it for this episode of the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Thanks for listening.

Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at Customer & Sales Management.

This is the part of the system that handles everything from the moment you first hear about a potential customer, all the way through to getting paid. Think of it as the complete order-to-cash cycle — and we’ll walk through each piece of that today.

So let’s start with what’s actually included. Customer and Sales Management is made up of eleven sub-modules, and each one handles a specific part of the sales process.

The first is Customers, Prospects, and Contacts. This is your address book, essentially — it’s where you store everyone you’re dealing with, whether they’re an existing customer, someone you’re still trying to win over, or just a contact at an organisation.

Next up is Opportunities and Leads. If you’re tracking a potential deal — something that’s not confirmed yet, but you’re actively working on — this is where it lives.

Then you have Commercial Proposals. Once you’re ready to put something in writing for a client, you create a proposal here. Think quotes, tender responses, that kind of thing.

From proposals, you move into Customer Orders. When a client says yes and you need to confirm what they’ve agreed to buy, you create an order. That order then kicks off the rest of the process.

After orders come Contracts and Subscriptions. If your relationship with a client is ongoing — say, a retainer or a recurring service — you’d manage that here rather than treating every billing cycle as a brand new order.

Then there’s Interventions. This module is for logging on-site visits or field service work — any time someone from your team goes out and does something at a client’s location, you can track it here.

The Ticket System handles support and service requests. Customers raise tickets, your team responds, and everything is logged against the right customer record.

Partnership Management is for tracking referral relationships, resellers, or any third party you’re working with on a commercial basis.

Shipping Management covers the delivery side of things — tracking what’s been sent out and when.

Then you have Customer Invoices and Credit Notes. This is where the financial side lives on the customer-facing end. Once work is done or goods are delivered, you raise an invoice here. Credit notes handle corrections or refunds.

And finally, Point of Sale — for any in-person or counter-based transactions, this module handles immediate sales outside the standard order flow.

Now let’s talk about how all of these pieces connect in practice. There’s a standard flow that most sales follow, and it’s worth walking through in order. You start with a prospect — someone you think could become a customer. From there, you identify an opportunity, meaning a specific deal you’re actively pursuing. Once you’re ready to put a number on it, you create a proposal. If the client accepts, that proposal converts into an order. The order then triggers shipping, so goods or services get delivered. Once that’s done, you raise an invoice. And the cycle closes when payment comes in.

That sequence — prospect, then opportunity, then proposal, then order, then shipping, then invoice, then payment — is the backbone of how sales and delivery works in this system. Each stage flows naturally into the next, and the system is designed so you can convert one record into another with minimal rekeying. Your proposal becomes your order, and your order becomes your invoice. That keeps things consistent and saves time.

It’s also worth knowing how Customer and Sales Management connects to the rest of the platform. When you create a customer order, it can automatically reserve stock, so your inventory stays in sync with what’s already been committed to customers. You don’t have to go and update stock levels manually.

On the financial side, invoices and payments are tracked end to end. You can see what’s been invoiced, what’s been paid, and what’s still outstanding — all connected back to the original order.

And if you’re using WordPress as a customer portal, that ties in here too. Customers can potentially view their own orders, invoices, or service history through the front end, depending on how your setup is configured.

So to wrap up — Customer and Sales Management is really the heart of how NZRT manages its commercial relationships. It takes you from that very first conversation with a prospect all the way through to receiving payment, with a clear structure at every stage. Understanding which module handles which part of the cycle will help you navigate the system much more confidently.

That’s it for this episode of the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Thanks for listening.

Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at Customers, Prospects and Contacts.

If you’ve ever wondered where NZRT keeps track of all the companies and people it works with, the answer is a central database called the third-party database. Think of it as the single source of truth for everyone your business has a relationship with, whether that’s a potential client you’re chasing, a company that’s already bought from you, or a supplier you purchase from. Every external party lives here, and understanding how they’re classified will save you a lot of confusion when you’re navigating the system.

So let’s start with the four types you’ll encounter.

First, you have Prospects. A prospect is someone or some company that hasn’t bought from you yet, but you’re working on it. They’re in the pipeline, you might be talking to them, you might have sent them a proposal, but no order has been placed. They sit in that early stage of the relationship.

Second, once a prospect does place an order, they become a Customer. It’s as simple as that. That status change is important because it unlocks a different set of records and history for that company, things like invoices, payment terms, and order history.

Third, you have Suppliers. These are the companies you buy from rather than sell to. They appear in the purchase side of the system, but they’re still stored in the same third-party database. So you’ve got one place to look up any external organisation, regardless of whether money flows in or out.

Fourth, there are Contacts. Contacts are individuals rather than companies. A contact is typically a person who is linked to a company record. So if you’re dealing with a business called Acme Limited, the people you actually email and call, like their accounts manager or their technical lead, those individuals live as contact records attached to the main company entry.

Now let’s talk about what information you’ll find on a third-party record. There are a number of key fields you’ll want to be familiar with. You’ve got the company name, their address, their country, and the language they operate in. This matters because if you’re generating documents or correspondence, the system can tailor things to the right locale. You’ll also find a VAT or tax number field, which is important for compliance, especially when you’re dealing with overseas clients or suppliers.

From a financial perspective, each record holds payment terms, so you know whether a customer pays on fourteen days or thirty days, and a credit limit, which gives you a ceiling on how much exposure you want to carry with any one client. There’s also an outstanding balance field so you can see at a glance what’s currently owed.

On the sales side, you’ll see an assigned sales rep, which tells you who in your team owns that relationship. And there are tags and categories you can apply to group and filter third parties in ways that make sense for your business. Finally, there’s a customer since date, which gives you a quick read on how long that relationship has been active.

Now, the third-party database doesn’t sit in isolation. It connects to several other parts of the system that you’ll want to be aware of. The first is Opportunities and Leads. When you’re actively working to convert a prospect into a customer, that sales activity is tracked in the opportunities module, and it links back to the prospect record here. So you can always trace a customer’s journey from first contact through to closed deal.

The second connection is Commercial Proposals. When you put together a quote or a proposal for a customer or prospect, that proposal is linked to their third-party record. You can pull up any company and see every proposal you’ve ever sent them.

The third area is Customer Invoices and Credit Notes. Once a customer is active and orders are flowing, all of their invoice history lives here too. You can navigate from a customer record straight into their billing history, see what’s paid and what’s outstanding, and get a complete picture of the financial relationship.

So to pull it all together: the Customers, Prospects and Contacts section is your starting point for any external relationship in the system. It classifies everyone you deal with into clear types, captures the key details you need to manage those relationships, and connects through to the sales and finance modules so nothing falls through the cracks. Whether you’re qualifying a new lead, checking a customer’s credit limit, or looking up a supplier’s contact details, this is where you start.

That’s it for this episode of the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Thanks for listening.

Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at Opportunities & Leads.

If you’ve ever wondered how NZRT tracks deals from the moment a potential client makes contact all the way through to closing a sale, this is the episode for you. The Opportunities and Leads section of the wiki covers the sales pipeline — a structured way to manage deals, keep tabs on where each one sits, and get a clear picture of what revenue might be coming in and when.

So let’s start with the big picture. A pipeline is essentially a visual and organisational tool that shows you every active deal and what stage it’s at. Think of it like a series of checkpoints a deal passes through on its way to either being won or lost. And the good news is that in NZRT’s setup, those stages are customisable — you can adapt them to fit how your team actually works.

Out of the box, there are five pipeline stages. The first is Qualification, where you’re figuring out whether a lead is even worth pursuing. Does this prospect have a real need? Do they have the budget? Is the timing right? If the answers look promising, you move into the second stage, Needs Analysis, where you dig deeper into what the client actually requires. Stage three is Proposal Sent — this is when you’ve put together a formal offer and it’s sitting in the client’s inbox. Stage four is Negotiation, where you’re going back and forth on terms, pricing, or scope. And finally, stage five is either Won or Lost — the deal either closes in your favour or it doesn’t, and either way you record the outcome so you can learn from it.

Now, within each opportunity record, there are a handful of key fields you’ll be working with regularly. First, you link the opportunity to a customer or prospect — this keeps everything connected so you always know who a deal belongs to. Then you record the estimated amount, which is the value of the deal if it closes. Alongside that, you set a closing date — your best estimate of when the deal will wrap up. And here’s a really useful one: the probability percentage. This is a number that reflects how confident you are that the deal will close. A deal in early qualification might sit at twenty or thirty percent, while something in negotiation might be at seventy or eighty. That probability figure is what makes pipeline reporting meaningful, because it lets you calculate a weighted forecast of expected revenue rather than just adding up everything optimistically.

You also assign a sales rep to each opportunity, so it’s always clear who owns the relationship and is responsible for moving things forward. And there’s a next action date field, which is basically a built-in reminder — it tells you when you’re supposed to follow up, send something, or take the next step. This stops deals from going quiet and falling through the cracks.

Now let’s talk about how opportunities connect to the rest of the system, because this is where things get powerful. Once you’ve done the groundwork and you’re ready to put a formal offer in front of a client, you can create a Commercial Proposal directly from the opportunity. You don’t have to start from scratch — the information already in the opportunity record feeds into the proposal, saving you time and reducing the chance of errors.

And once a deal moves to Won, you can convert it into a Customer Order. That’s the moment the deal stops being a sales record and becomes an operational one — it triggers the next phase of delivery. So the pipeline isn’t just a reporting tool, it’s actually the starting point for the whole client engagement workflow.

A couple of practical tips worth keeping in mind. Keep your probability percentages honest and up to date — they’re only useful if they reflect reality. If a deal has been sitting in Negotiation for three months without movement, the probability probably needs to come down. And make sure next action dates don’t lapse — an overdue action date is a signal that a deal needs attention.

Also, if you’re managing a team, the assigned sales rep field makes it easy to filter the pipeline by person, so you can review what each rep is working on in a single view.

The Opportunities and Leads module is really the heartbeat of sales activity at NZRT. It gives you visibility, accountability, and a direct line into proposals and orders when the time comes. Whether you’re a rep managing your own deals or a manager reviewing the whole pipeline, this is the place to start.

That’s it for this episode of the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Thanks for listening.