Every billing run in Hauler Hero follows the same five moves: prep, create, post, apply credits, send. What changes from company to company is everything around them: how many billing profiles you have, whether you bill in advance or in arrears, which customers get paper, and when you charge late fees. This guide walks through the general shape of billing so you can fit it to your own setup.

Use whatever names make sense for your team; the system doesn't require any particular naming.

A smooth first run comes from setup done ahead of time. Work through this list a week or two before billing day.

Billing profiles are the foundation. Each one decides how often a customer is billed, when invoices are due, whether you bill in advance or in arrears, and how proration, rental fees, and suspensions behave. Find them under Settings → Billing → Customer

Billing Profiles. A few things worth deciding up front:

Every active customer needs a service. Everything on an invoice comes from the customer's Services tab, so an account without a service produces no invoice or a $0 invoice. The No Services report (Reporting → Customer Management) helps you find them.

Pricebook, fees, and taxes. Services, late fees, disposal fees, and taxes all need to exist in the pricebook first. There are three kinds of fees, and it helps to know which is which:

Tags for delivery method. Most companies separate paper customers from email customers with a tag (for example "Print Invoice") or a separate profile. Email is the system default, so usually only the exception needs a tag.

Payment processing. Confirm your merchant account is fully linked before inviting customers to pay online. Until it is, customers will see errors when they try to add a card.

Customer portal. Set your portal colors and logo, then send bulk portal invites about a week before your first billing run. Only customers with an email who haven't signed up receive them.

Custom invoice note. A short message printed on invoices, set in Settings. It applies to every invoice created or regenerated while it's saved, so set it before creating invoices and avoid changing it while someone else is billing.

Know how autopay behaves. Autopay runs at 12am of the invoice's due date. If it fails three times in a row it turns itself off, and customers with an email are notified each time it fails. Attempts can be managed under Billing Profile settings.

Ten minutes of prep saves an afternoon of fixes. Do these before you create any invoices.

Clean up accounts. Run the No Services report and filter for active accounts. Anyone listed either needs a service added or the account deactivated. To find active accounts whose services have ended, use Reporting → Business Configuration →

Configured Services, filtered to deactivated recurring services on active accounts. Reports can take about 15 minutes to reflect recent changes.

Enter payments received outside the system. Checks, cash, or payments taken by an old system should be posted first so customers aren't billed for balances they've already paid. Billing → Payment Batches is the fastest way:

Review on-request work orders. Extra pickups, bulk items, deliveries, swaps, and roll-off hauls only reach an invoice once they're marked Ready for Invoice. Go to Billing → Work Orders:

Many teams review work orders daily or weekly instead of all at once, especially with roll-off or heavy on-request volume.

Review late fees (if you use them). Go to Billing → Late Fee Review. Everything in Ready for Invoice will be added to the next invoices. Filter and Waive anything you don't want to charge. Common choices: accounts that have since paid in full, small balances, or invoices imported from a previous system. A waived fee can be unwaived from the Waived tab. Waivers don't show on the customer's account, so leave a billing note.

Creating invoices is safe: they start as drafts that only your team can see, so nothing reaches a customer until you post and send.

Invoice options

While invoices generate: the count at the bottom left climbs as invoices are built. Refresh until it stops and every invoice shows success. If any are stuck or failed, select them and Regenerate.

After you confirm, the Invoices tab opens already filtered to the profile and date you just created. That tab holds every invoice ever made, so if your filters reset, it can look like invoices vanished or multiplied. Always filter by billing profile, invoice date, and status before acting on anything.

Posting turns a draft into a live Unpaid invoice the customer can see and pay. Post Draft does this quietly, without emailing anyone, which lets you stage everything first and send when you're ready.

Invoice groups are batches of invoices you can email, print, or track together. Build them as you post:

A few things to watch:

Thinking about autopay? If you date invoices so they're due right away, consider waiting until autopay has run (the evening of the due date) before emailing. Then you can email only unpaid invoices, and autopay customers won't get a bill they've already paid. If you send early and a payment comes in afterward, regenerate the invoice to refresh what it shows.

Prepayments and overpayments sit on the account as credit until you apply them. Credit can only be applied to posted (Unpaid) invoices, never drafts. You can apply it before or after sending; the amount the customer owes is the same either way. Only how the invoice displays it changes, so pick whichever presentation you prefer.

To apply credits in bulk:

Why it matters: late fees follow the invoice's status, not the account's balance. A customer with enough credit to cover an invoice can still get a late fee if that credit was never applied before the due date and grace period.

Everything is posted and credits are applied, so now invoices go out. Work from Billing → Invoice Groups, one group at a time.

Email a group: open the group's 3-dot menu and choose Email Invoices (everyone in the group) or Email Unpaid Invoices (skips anyone already paid, such as autopay customers). Only customers with an email on file are sent anything. Re-sending a group re-sends to everyone selected, so check before you click twice.

Print a group:

Other print options from the same menu: postcards (3 or 4 per page, with your return address, permit number, and a custom message) and a JSON export if an outside mailing company prints for you. Some teams also email their print group, since anyone in it who does have an email gets a digital copy too.

Print or email just one invoice: open it from the customer's Billing tab. Click the white space to open the PDF, or use its 3-dot menu to email it.

Check what was delivered: expand a group to see a chart of delivered, opened, clicked, and bounced emails. For the specific addresses that bounced, use the Email Events report under Reporting → Customer Management (filter email type to invoice emails). It can take about 15 minutes to update. When a customer says they never got their invoice, the email activity on that invoice shows whether it was delivered and opened.

The bulk run only catches customers who existed when you ran it. Everything else happens on individual accounts, and almost all of it is fixable, so if a customer calls about a mistake you can confidently tell them you'll take care of it.

New customers mid-cycle. Customers added after the bulk run need their own invoice for the current period; they join the bulk run from the next cycle.

Sending the portal invite just before the invoice means the customer gets two clear emails back to back: "set up your account," then "here's your bill."

One-time charges. Extra pickups, bulk items, and similar charges belong on an on-request service or as a work order fee. Mark the work order Ready for Invoice and it will land on the next invoice. To bill it right away, create a manual invoice from the customer's Billing tab, or create drafts in bulk from Work Order Review with Ready &

Create Draft. Note that bulk drafts include every work order already marked ready, not only the ones you selected.

Fixing an invoice. Remember the rule: fix the source, then regenerate. Invoices don't update themselves when you change something.

Be careful deleting older invoices: if the period is outside the billing window (about 6 months for monthly), you may not be able to recreate it.

Cancellations. Add an end date to the service (you can choose to deactivate on that date in the future), then regenerate any open invoice so the final bill is prorated. If an account has no remaining services or balance, deactivate it from the 3-dot menu at the top right of the account. An account with a balance can't log in to the portal to pay it once deactivated, so settle or write off the balance first.

Most payments take care of themselves: portal and autopay payments post to the account automatically, with no end-of-day posting step. Your hands-on work is phone payments, checks and cash, and credits.

Taking a payment on an account. Everything lives on the customer's Billing tab.

The amount applies to the open invoice automatically; anything extra becomes account credit. Each payment line shows where it came from: "Portal," "Autopay," or the initials of the staff member who entered it.

Lots of checks or cash? Use Payment Batches (see Step 1) instead of entering them one by one.

Giving a customer a credit (a referral, goodwill, or an overcharge):

Refunds. Refund cards or ACH through your payment processor first, then update Hauler Hero to match. Cash, check, and Other payments can be reversed or transferred to another invoice from the account.

Custom due dates. A customer who needs a different due date (for example, someone paid on a fixed schedule) can get an override under Billing Details → 3-dot menu → Payment Terms. It applies only to them, and their autopay runs on that new due date.

Billing notes on the Billing tab are internal only. Use them to record promises to pay, waived fees, and anything the next person should know.

Hauler Hero sorts unpaid balances into aging buckets automatically: current, 1–30 days, 31–60 days, and so on. An invoice moves into 1–30 the day after it's due. Customer accounts are color-coded the same way, so you can spot an overdue account at a glance.

Working the list. Customers → Accounts (the account groups view) shows everyone by aging bucket. Open a bucket with the eye icon to see who's in it. From there you can act on the whole group at once: email reminders, add billing notes or tags, or suspend. The Accounts Receivable tab under Billing is another good place to filter and export past-due balances.

Reminders. From any invoice group, Email Unpaid Invoices sends a nudge only to customers who haven't paid. Text messaging is also available for reminding groups of overdue customers, though it doesn't send an invoice or a pay link.

Portal reminders. Re-sending the bulk portal invite only reaches customers who haven't set up their account yet. Once a week is plenty; more often starts to feel like spam.

Late fees. Each late fee has a pricing period (one-time, or repeating daily, weekly, or monthly until paid) and a grace period after the due date. The system checks every day, and anything assessed shows up in Late Fee Review for you to keep or waive. Backdating a payment doesn't remove a late fee that was already assessed; waive it instead.

Suspensions. You can suspend by hand from the account or an account group, or let the billing profile do it automatically once an invoice is a set number of days overdue. Automatic suspensions lift automatically once the customer pays. To exempt a specific customer, open their Billing Details → Suspension Automation, uncheck "inherit from billing profile," and turn it off. Re-check "inherit" later to link them back. Credit-limit suspension is also available if you'd rather suspend based on balance than on days overdue.

Nearly every billing hiccup comes back to one of these.

Help Center articles (step-by-step walkthroughs with screenshots):