Collections and Payment Schedules

Collections is for the deals you are still owed money on — the ones where you carry the note yourself, or where the customer is leasing from you. It shows what is outstanding, what is past due, and who has not been contacted lately, and it is where you record each payment as it comes in. It has nothing to do with the credits you spend running the app.

Before you start

Collections is built out of your deal jackets, so the money has to be right on the deal first — the sale price, the down payment, and the terms. See Creating a Deal Jacket.

A payment schedule only exists where the deal jacket has buy-here-pay-here or lease terms filled in, under Buy Here Pay Here Setup or Lease Setup in the deal’s section bar. That is what sets the installment amount, how often it is due, and how many there are.

Nothing to add by hand

Every deal jacket with a balance still owing appears on Collections by itself. You do not add deals to it and you cannot forget to.

A deal drops off when it is finished: when its balance reaches zero, or when the deal jacket is marked complete or canceled. That is also why a deal you thought was done can reappear — if the balance is not actually zero, it is still owed.

Reading the board

Four figures across the top, and two of them are buttons:

Open deals	How many accounts are still being collected
Total remaining	Everything still owed across all of them
Past due	The overdue portion. Click it to show only those accounts
Needs follow-up	Accounts whose follow-up date has arrived, that are past due, or that have no next payment expected. Click it to show only those

Below that, the accounts themselves, as cards or as a table — the toggle on the right remembers your choice. Filter and sort them by status, deal type, sales rep, how long since the last log, and what kind of item is overdue.

Open deals

Total remaining

Past due

Needs follow-up

Card viewTable view

Maria Santos

2019 Honda Civic

Current

(305) 555-0142maria@example.com

Payments collected/

Remaining balance

Andre Whitfield

2021 Ford Ranger

Past due

(786) 555-0198

Payments collected/

Remaining balance

1 payment behind

IllustrationFour figures sit across the top of the board — Open deals, Total remaining, Past due and Needs follow-up. The last two are BUTTONS: pressing one filters the board to just those accounts and rings it red or amber. Below, one card per account, with an amber card marking one that needs following up, and each card carrying the contact details, a progress bar, and either the remaining balance or what is behind.

Working one account

Click an account to open it. Down the left: who the customer is, how to reach them, your internal notes, and the balance — collected, remaining, next payment, and a breakdown of what is past due. Down the right, a set of tabs:

• Schedule — every installment with its due date, amount, what has been paid against it, and whether it is paid, unpaid or overdue. Only on buy-here-pay-here and lease deals.
• Payment history — everything actually received on this deal.
• Charges — finance charges and fees added to the account. Only on buy-here-pay-here and lease deals.
• Activity — your contact log and the deal jacket’s comments, newest first. On a wide screen this is not a tab: it sits in its own panel beside the others, and it only becomes a tab where there is not room for both.

A warning triangle on a tab means there is something overdue inside it; hovering shows what.

Payments collected

Remaining balance

9 of 24 payments

1 payment behind

Next payment

SchedulePayment historyCharges

IllustrationAn open account puts the balance card down the left — collected, remaining, the progress bar, a line counting how many of the payments have been made, what is behind with an info button that breaks it down, and the next payment — with the tabs beside it. Schedule is first, and it is where the past-due line sends you: the card's own overdue breakdown ends with 'Open Schedule tab for details'. On a desktop there are two tabs, sometimes three — Charges only appears when there are any, and Activity is not a tab here at all: on a wide screen it has its own pane beside them.

Recording a payment

Two buttons at the top, and the difference matters:

• Record a payment — money you already have. Cash, a check, a money order, a card you ran somewhere else. Enter the amount and the date, pick the method, say what kind of payment it is, and add a memo or a check number if it helps. If the account has unpaid fees, the dialog asks how much of the payment goes to each of them; whatever is left becomes an installment.
• Charge a card — take the money now, by sending the customer a link or running their card on a reader. See Taking Payment From a Customer.

Note

The date on a recorded payment is the date the money came in, not the date you typed it. If you are catching up on last week’s receipts, set the date — the schedule, the past-due figures and the daily money report all read it.

Both show up in Payment history. A recorded payment moves the balance and the schedule immediately. A card charge moves them when the customer actually pays — until then it sits as pending and the balance still shows the money as owed, so do not read a sent link as money in.

A payment can be edited or deleted afterwards, and a deletion is written into the activity log with your name on it. The exception is a payment that is on an invoice: it cannot be deleted, or lowered below what the invoice holds, until it is taken off (or lowered on) the invoice, so the invoice never goes back to owing without anyone saying so.

Logging contact

Click Log to record that you spoke to the customer. Pick what it was — a note, a call, a text, an email, a voicemail, a letter, a promised payment, or something else — and write what happened.

Two fields do real work:

• Promised payment lets you record the amount and the date the customer committed to.
• Follow-up date puts the account into Needs follow-up when that date arrives.

The log history is the paper trail for the account, and it is what makes “who have we not chased?” answerable.

Changing the status of an account

Change status on an account sets it to one of:

Status	What it means
Active	Normal — being collected
Paused	Deliberately not being chased for now
Repo	The vehicle has been repossessed. The account stays open and still shows as past due — repossession is a marker, not an ending
Completed	Finished and paid
Canceled	The deal was undone
Written Off	Given up on

Choosing Written Off asks for the amount, the date and a reason before it closes the account, and offers to mark the vehicle written off at the same time. Setting a status here updates the deal jacket to match, so the two never disagree.

Printing and sharing

The menu beside the buttons prints or sends the customer:

• Account Status — where the account stands.
• Amortization Schedule or Lease Payment Schedule — the full schedule, depending on the deal type.
• Payment Receipts — receipts for what has been paid, on their own or with a balance summary.

If something is missing

What you see	Why
Clicking Collections shows a permission message	Your user cannot view deal jackets — an account admin changes it in Settings → Users
No Schedule or Charges tab	The deal is not a buy-here-pay-here or lease deal, so it has no installments. Add the terms in the deal jacket
Record a payment is missing	Your user can view deals but not edit them
The account is not on the board	Its balance is zero, or the deal jacket is marked complete or canceled
A schedule that does not match what you agreed	The schedule is generated from the deal jacket’s terms — fix the amount, frequency or number of payments there, not here

After you finish

For a day’s takings across every account — what came in, by cash, check, card or bank transfer — use the daily money report in Reports.