Your Fergus customers, prices and unpaid invoices.

The Fergus customer export

Fergus’s customer export is a CSV file of each customer’s name, contact and address. It comes in through Import, in Settings, as Customers from Another spreadsheet. A column is matched to a field where the import knows the column’s name.

Since October 2024 the export has also carried a charge-out rate, a materials discount, a labour discount and a tax rate for each customer. The import has no customer field for any of the four. A column nothing is matched to is named in the line of columns not used.

• Each row’s address filed as the customer’s first site and as where the bills go
• A whole address in one cell split into lines, a town and a postcode, each split noted on its row
• A postcode starting BT placing the site in Northern Ireland
• A nation such as Scotland named in the address counted, and the site’s Which nation left blank
• A contact with a phone number, no email and no role in the file filed as the Main contact
• A contact with neither an email nor a phone number left off, with the customer still filed

The custom price book

Fergus’s custom price book can be downloaded as a CSV file. It comes in as Parts, and a part with no code in the file is given one.

A cost of zero is filed as not costed, and a figure past two decimal places is rounded and counted. A part with no selling price comes in only where Markup on cost where the price is blank prices it from a cost above zero.

Fergus’s custom price book can hold services such as travel time beside materials, each marked as material or labour. A row marked labour comes in as a part like any other. Labour rates, what an hour is charged at, come in from a file of their own, each row with a name and a charge per hour.

What is owed, from the Customer Invoice Report

Fergus’s Customer Invoice Report downloads as a CSV file. It lists each invoice’s number, dates, total including tax and payment status, with fully paid and part-paid invoices beside unpaid ones.

The rows come in as Open balances once four columns are matched: Customer, Invoice number, Invoice date and Still owed, including VAT. The report’s total column is matched to Still owed, including VAT by its name, and no payment status is read. So a fully paid invoice comes in as owed, and a part-paid one at its whole total. A row whose figure is blank or 0.00 is not brought in.

A customer is found by the whole name in the column matched as Customer, among those already in your book. A cell holding an address beside the name finds nobody, and that row is not brought in. Before anything is saved, up to 500 rows are listed, those not brought in first. A row to be brought in reads as who owes how much on which invoice, with its date and due date in words.

Invoice numbers that carry on from Fergus

Document numbers, in Settings, sets the Prefix, Digits and Next number of your invoices, quotes, jobs and credit notes, and every number has a prefix. The next invoice number can be raised to follow the last one issued in Fergus. The next number is never lowered. While Stripe issues your invoices, Stripe numbers them.

An open balance whose number is your own invoice prefix followed by digits moves the next invoice number past it.

VAT, contractors and registrations

A customer in Fergus can carry its own tax rate. A customer here holds no rate. The VAT on each quote and invoice raised here is worked out from your VAT registration, where the site is, the customer’s type and the lines.

Principal contractor, Main contractor or Contractor in the column matched as Classification files a new customer as Principal contractor. In the UK a customer of that type needs no VAT number, and one with none on file is not reverse charged.

Some kinds of work in the trade packs name a registration. Gas Safe for gas work and OFTEC for oil boiler work are the person’s own. NICEIC or NAPIT for electrical work such as a rewire is the firm’s own, and either one covers the work. For a firm in Great Britain, a stove installation names HETAS, which is the firm’s own as well.

Whether a booking the registration does not cover, because it is missing or has run out, goes ahead, brings a warning or is refused is set under Booking someone not certified for the work.