WorkJobs
Advanced Pricing and Opening Balance
How advanced pricing works on a job, including VAT, opening balance, price type, first-visit pricing, alternate pricing, and hourly-per-person setup.
Most jobs only need the main Price field, but the advanced pricing section is there for the situations where one amount is not enough. That includes VAT handling, opening balances for migrated accounts, first-visit pricing, alternating prices, and hourly-per-person charging.
Opening Advanced Pricing
- Show advanced pricing options: Turn this on when the simple price field is no longer enough.
- Automatic reopening: If there is a validation problem inside advanced pricing, Work Planner opens the section again so you can see the field that needs fixing.
VAT Fields
- VAT Rate: Only appears when the business is VAT registered.
- VAT Amount: Works alongside the rate so you can store the tax part of the charge properly.
- Main VAT rule: The VAT rate at the top of pricing is also the rate Work Planner uses for first-visit and alternate pricing, so you do not need to choose extra VAT rates for those amounts.
- Why this matters: The VAT settings here feed into later charge and invoice behaviour, so they are worth setting correctly at the start.
Opening Balance
- Opening Balance: Use this only while creating the job, not when editing it later. It is for bringing existing debt or credit into Work Planner when a live customer is being moved over from somewhere else.
- They owe you or they're in credit: Type the amount, then choose They owe you for money they owed, which creates an opening charge, or They're in credit for money they had paid ahead, which creates an opening payment. It starts on They owe you. Neither counts as income.
- Opening Balance Date: Required whenever the opening balance is not zero because Work Planner needs a real ledger date for that starting transaction.
- Balance on edit: After the job exists, the popup shows the live balance instead of the opening-balance fields.
- After the job is saved: Add the balance from the job's Transactions tab. While the job has no transactions, Add Opening Balance there opens an opening balance straight away. A customer with no transactions has Add Opening Balance on their own Transactions tab too, where you choose the job it's for. Once it has some, use New Transaction and choose Opening balance, which dates it the day before the job's first transaction, as an opening balance has to come first. It starts as money owed: choose They're in credit under Opening balance for money the customer had in credit, which makes it a payment. Creating a Transaction covers it.
Price Types
- Price Type: Tells Work Planner which price should be treated as the active one.
- Standard: Uses the normal price field.
- Initial: Uses the first-visit amount when the first visit is charged differently.
- Alternate: Uses the alternate amount when the job switches between two prices.
- Hourly Per Person: Treats the price as a rate and works it out from rate, people, and duration.
First and Alternate Prices
- First Price and First VAT Amount: Use these when the first visit should be priced differently from the ongoing work. The first VAT amount is calculated from the main VAT rate.
- Alternate Price and Alternate VAT Amount: Use these when every other visit, or another repeating pattern, needs a different amount. The alternate VAT amount also follows the main VAT rate.
- Downstream effect: These prices are not just for display. They change what Work Planner treats as the live amount when the matching price type is active.
Hourly Per Person
- Price: Becomes the hourly rate rather than the finished total.
- Duration: Required because Work Planner needs the hours or minutes to calculate the result.
- People: Also required, because the total depends on how many people are doing the work.
Raising Prices
To put prices up for many jobs at once, use Increase Prices on the Jobs list. It raises the regular price, or the hourly rate on an hourly job, and the alternate price from a date you choose, and recalculates VAT from the job's VAT rate. First-visit prices are left alone.
Related articles
- Creating a Job from the Dashboard: Shows where advanced pricing sits inside the full create flow.
- Editing a Job: Useful when you are changing live pricing rather than setting it up for the first time.
- Job Detail View: Lets you review the live balance and pricing choices after the job has been saved.
- Completion Popup: Useful when you want to see how the price you set here can feed into later charging and payment capture.
- Increase Prices Popup: Raise these prices across many jobs from a date.