Repair work, materials and services: why an invoice is not generated

Why an invoice is not generated for a repair: differences between work, materials and services, and how to avoid payment errors

Service centres and repair shops regularly use the «Repair» mode to manage repair orders, record defects and write off spare parts, as well as to monitor payments and outstanding balances.

During their work, business owners often ask technical support specialists the following questions:

The answers to these questions lie in understanding how invoices are generated and the differences between the components that make up the cost of a repair.

The difference between materials, services and work

For a repair invoice to be generated correctly, the repair order must contain at least one of the three components that make up the total repair cost. Each of them follows a fundamentally different accounting logic in the software:

1. Repair materials. These are physical goods, such as spare parts and components, that a technician takes from the warehouse to perform a repair. When a material is added to a repair, it is selected from the available stock and automatically reserved by the software to prevent it from being accidentally sold to another customer. Serial numbers can also be entered for materials subject to warranty tracking.

2. Repair services. These are non-physical items selected from the «Full list of goods and services» directory, for example urgent delivery or installation of a screen protector. Discounts can be applied to services, and warehouse components can be added to them if the service is configured as a bundle.

3. Work (Operations). These are the technician’s direct actions required to repair the device, such as soldering, cleaning or diagnostics. Work is selected from the operations directory and has two important prices: the price charged to the customer and the amount paid to the technician, either a fixed amount or a percentage, which the software can use to calculate the technician’s piece-rate wages.

The total repair cost is calculated from the combined value of the added materials, services and operations. If none of these have been added, the software considers the repair cost to be the amount entered manually by the user when creating the repair order.

How an invoice is generated in the «Repair» mode

The «Repair» mode is closely integrated with the «Sales with invoice issuance» mode. All settlements with the customer are processed through the automatic creation of an invoice.

• A repair invoice is created or updated automatically when you add material operations or record a payment from the customer.

• Materials are added to the invoice from the accounting centre specified for writing off materials when the repair was created.

• Work operations are transferred to the invoice according to your settings: the software can add each completed operation as a separate service in the invoice, with its own name, or combine all operations into one general service called «Repair work», whose price equals the total cost of all completed operations.

• When the repair moves to a status indicating completion, for example «Issued to the customer», an outgoing invoice is generated based on the created invoice, and the invoice is closed.

Why the errors «contains no materials» or «contains no items» occur

Business owners often find that they cannot record a payment or update an invoice because of two common situations:

This error occurs when you try to record a payment or update the invoice, but no spare parts, services or work have been added to the repair order. An invoice cannot be empty.

 Note: older versions of the software, before version 2022.0.25, contained an error that caused this message to appear even when work had been added to the repair but no materials or services were included. The software incorrectly failed to recognise the work that had been added. Updating Torgsoft completely resolves this issue.

This error appears when the repair invoice has already been created successfully by the software, for example after a spare part was previously added, but the user later opens the repair order and deletes all materials, services and work from it. As a result, the invoice becomes empty, and the software prevents payment from being recorded against an empty invoice.

How to correctly record a zero-cost warranty repair

Another frequently asked question is how to process a repair performed under warranty when the customer does not have to pay anything.

For warranty repairs, the price of a material, service or work operation can be set to zero, meaning that the total repair cost will also be zero.

For such a repair to be recorded correctly and completed in the software, two settings must be checked:

1. Displaying zero-cost work in the invoice. If operations are entered without a price but still need to be recorded for calculating the technician’s wages or maintaining the repair history, enable the «Include zero-cost operations in the invoice» option in the «Repair» mode settings. This will force the software to add them to the invoice.

2. Closing without payment. By default, the software requires the invoice to be paid in full before the repair can be completed. To close a warranty repair, or a repair that the customer has refused, go to «Settings» -> «Edit the repair status directory» and disable the «Prevent status creation without full payment for the repair» checkbox for the final status, for example «Issued». This will disable payment validation and allow the repair order to be completed without the customer making a payment. However, the outgoing invoice created from the unpaid invoice will remain open.