How to use AutoSOA

1. What is AutoSOA?

AutoSOA makes bills for you. That is the whole idea.

You tell it three things:

1. Who you bill (your customers).
2. What you charge them — rent, retainer fee, water, whatever it is.
3. How often, usually every month.

After that, AutoSOA writes the bill, sends it by email, and remembers who has paid and who has not.

2. The words you will see, in plain English

The screen uses a few words over and over. You do not need to memorise them — just come back to this table.

3. Getting in

1. Open the web address your administrator gave you. It usually looks like yourcompany.autosoa.com.
2. Type your user name and your password.
3. If a box asks for a Tenancy name, type your company's short name. If there is no such box, skip it.
4. Press Log in.
5. The first time, it may ask you to pick a new password. Do it, and write it down somewhere safe.

The menu on the left, explained

Everything lives under the Billing group. Click it to open it.

4. The whole job, in seven steps

This is the entire system. Everything else on this page is just detail on one of these seven steps.

5. Step 1 — The Setup Wizard

Go to Billing → Setup Wizard. It says "Three steps. About two minutes." That is true.

Screen 1 of 3 — "Your business"

Press Continue.

Screen 2 of 3 — "What kind"

You will see several cards, one per type of business. Click the card closest to what you do, then press Continue. Each card tells you what it will set up: what your customers will be called, what charges you start with, and when bills fall due.

• Do not agonise over this. Pick the closest one.
• Everything it creates can be renamed, changed or deleted afterwards.
• It only adds things. It never deletes anything you already have.

Screen 3 of 3 — "What you charge"

A small table appears with the charges that came with the card you picked. For each row:

1. Type the amount you actually charge in the Amount box.
2. If you do not use a row at all, press the red bin icon to remove it.
3. A row marked metered — electricity, water — stays at zero. Its amount comes from meter readings later, not from you.

The "Send statements automatically" tick box

Underneath the table there is a tick box. This is the single most useful setting in AutoSOA.

• Leave it un-ticked and you make and send every bill by hand.
• Tick it and two boxes appear: Create statements on day (1 to 28) and Email this many days before the due date.
• Example: day 1 and 3 days means bills are created on the 1st of every month and emailed 3 days before they are due.
• Customers with no email address are simply skipped — nothing crashes.

Press Done — add customers. Setup is finished.

6. Step 2 — Add the people you bill

Go to Billing → Customers. If your setup calls them Clients, Tenants or Occupants, that is the same menu item.

There are three ways in. Pick the one that suits how many you have.

Way 1 — One at a time (a handful)

1. Press New at the top right.
2. Fill in Name, Email, Phone and Billing address.
3. Press Save.

The Email box matters more than it looks. No email address means AutoSOA cannot email that customer their bill — you would have to print it instead.

Way 2 — Quick add (customer and their charges together)

Way 3 — Import from a spreadsheet (dozens or hundreds)

Go to Billing → Import Customers. This is the fastest way by a mile.

1. Open your Excel file. Select the rows. Copy them (Ctrl+C).
2. Click inside the big box on the screen and paste (Ctrl+V). Or press Choose a .csv file and pick a file instead.
3. Press Preview. Nothing has been created yet — this is a dry run.
4. Read the five numbers at the top (explained below).
5. Look at the table. Green Create rows are fine. Red Skip rows are not, and the Notes column says why.
6. If a plain "amount" column was found, choose which charge it belongs to in the drop-down.
7. Press Create N customer(s).
8. Press Go to the list to see them.

7. Step 3 — Billing Accounts and standing charges

Go to Billing → Billing Accounts.

What a Billing Account actually is

A customer is a person. A billing account is the thing you send a bill for.

Most of the time there is exactly one account per customer and you can treat them as the same thing. You need two only when one customer gets two separate bills — for example a landlord renting them two different units.

The magic bit: recurring charges

This is the step that makes AutoSOA worth using. Here you say, once, what this account pays every single period.

1. Find the account in the list.
2. Press the actions button on its row and choose Recurring charges.
3. A small table opens: Charge, Amount, Qty, Per period, Active.
4. Add a row for each thing they pay every period. Example: Monthly Rent 15,000, Qty 1.
5. Press Save.

From now on, every bill you make for this account already has those lines on it, with the right amounts. You never type them again.

8. Step 4 — Make the bill

Go to Billing → Statements → Statements. This is the screen you will live in. Press the blue New statement button at the top right.

Press Generate. The bill appears in the list as a Draft.

What AutoSOA fills in without being asked

• Every recurring charge on that account.
• Any unpaid balance carried over from before.
• Interest or penalties, if your setup uses them.
• The tax and the totals.
• The due date, worked out from your due-date rule.

So the only thing you normally type is the account and the two dates. Everything else is already right.

9. Step 5 — Check it, then issue it

A draft is not a real bill yet. Nobody owes it, it has no invoice number, and you can still change anything. Use that.

Check it

1. Find your draft in the Statements list.
2. Press the actions button on the row and choose View. The bill opens read-only, with its lines, payments and totals.
3. Read the lines. Are the charges right? Is the total right? Is it the right customer?
4. Close it.

Wrong? Fix it now

Choose Edit lines on the row. You can change the charges on a draft freely. Only a draft can be edited — this is exactly why you check before issuing.

Right? Issue it

Choose Issue on the row. Two things happen: the bill gets its official invoice number, and the bill locks. It is now a real document that can be sent and paid.

The four statuses

10. Step 6 — Send it to the customer

On the row of an issued statement, press the actions button. You have two ways to deliver it.

By email (the normal way)

1. Choose Email.
2. A box appears with the customer's email address already filled in. Check it. Change it if you need to send it elsewhere.
3. Press Send.

The bill itself becomes the body of the email, so the customer sees it immediately without opening an attachment.

On paper, or as a PDF file

1. Choose Print / Save as PDF.
2. The bill opens in a new browser tab and the print box appears by itself.
3. To print: choose your printer and press Print.
4. To get a PDF instead: in the Destination or Printer drop-down choose Save as PDF (or Microsoft Print to PDF), press Save, and pick a folder.

11. Step 7 — The money arrives

Recording a payment

1. Find the statement in the list.
2. Press the actions button and choose Record payment.
3. Fill in the four boxes below.
4. Press Record.

If the amount covers the whole bill, the status becomes Paid. If it is less, the bill stays open and shows the remaining balance. You can record another payment later — record as many as you need.

When the customer sends the proof themselves

Customers can upload their own deposit slips. Those land in Billing → Statements → Payment Proofs, waiting for you.

1. Open the Payment Proofs page. Anything pending is sitting there.
2. Press View proof and look at the slip. Does the amount match? Is the date right? Is the reference real?
3. If it is genuine, press Approve. The payment is recorded against the bill automatically.
4. If it is wrong or unreadable, press Reject.

12. You made a mistake. Here is what to press.

Everybody does this. Find your situation in the left column.

"Correct & reissue", step by step

1. Actions → Correct & reissue.
2. The old bill is voided, and an editable copy opens as a new Draft.
3. Fix whatever was wrong on the copy.
4. Press Issue. The copy gets a brand-new invoice number.
5. Send the new one to the customer.

In the list, the new bill shows "replaces INV-xxxx" underneath its number, and the old one shows "superseded by a corrected copy". Anyone looking at your records later can see exactly what happened.

13. Finding out what is going on

"Who owes me money?" — Payment Status

Billing → Statements → Payment Status. One row per bill, with Total, Paid, Balance, Due date, Status and Days overdue.

Click the Status filter and choose Overdue to see only the people who are late. Then sort by Days overdue, biggest first. That is your chase list for the week.

"What did we bill them last year?" — Statement & Payment History

Billing → Statements → Statement & Payment History. Every bill ever issued and what has been paid against it. Use Payments on a row to see each individual payment.

"Are we making money?" — Dashboard

Billing → Dashboard. Pick a From date and a To date at the top and everything below updates: Income, Expense, Net profit, a trend chart of all three, and your biggest expense categories.

If Net profit looks too good, it usually means nobody has been entering expenses. See section 15.

Working the lists

Every list in AutoSOA behaves the same way, so learn it once:

• Click a column heading to sort by it. Click again to reverse it.
• Use the filter on a column to narrow the list down.
• Drag a column heading up to the grey bar to group rows by it.
• Every row has an actions button at the right-hand end. That is where the verbs live: View, Email, Issue, Record payment, and so on.

14. Things you set once and forget

You will not touch these often, but when something looks wrong on a printed bill, the answer is almost always in here.

Charge Items — the things you charge for

Billing → Master Data → Charge Items.

Due-date Rules — when the money is expected

Billing → Master Data → Due-date Rules. There are four kinds.

If two rules could apply, the one with the higher Priority wins.

Statement Statuses — your own labels

Draft / Issued / Paid / Cancelled are built in and cannot be changed. On top of those you can add your own workflow labels — "Sent to client", "For approval", "Disputed" — and set them on a statement so your team knows where it stands. Optional.

Customer Fields — extra boxes on the customer form

Need a TIN, a contract number or a business permit on every customer? Add it here and it appears on the customer form from then on. You can mark it required, and the import screen will pick up a matching column automatically.

Branding — how the bill looks

Billing → Settings → Branding. Open this when a customer says "the bill has the wrong address on it".

Press Save branding. The next bill you print will use it.

S3 Storage Settings

Where uploaded files, like payment proofs, are stored. A technical setting — leave it to whoever looks after your IT.

15. Money going out — Expenses

The Dashboard cannot tell you your profit if it only knows what came in. Expenses are the other half.

1. Go to Billing → Expenses → Expense Categories first. Make a few buckets: Utilities, Salaries, Repairs, Supplies. Keep it short — six or seven is plenty.
2. Go to Billing → Expenses → Expenses.
3. Press New and record what you spent: the date, the amount, the category and a short description.
4. Do this once a week, or once a month. Ten minutes.

Now the Dashboard's Net profit figure is real, and "Top expense categories" shows where the money is actually going.

16. When something looks broken

Work down this table before asking anyone for help. Most of the time the answer is here.

17. Ten rules that keep you out of trouble

1. Check the bill while it is still a Draft. That is the only time changing it is free.
2. Never delete a bill. Void it, or correct and reissue it.
3. Put an email address on every customer, or you will be printing bills by hand.
4. Put standing charges on the account once, instead of typing them onto every bill.
5. Record the payment on the day the money lands, not at the end of the month.
6. Never record a payment for a proof you already approved. That is the same money twice.
7. Retire charge items by un-ticking Active. Do not delete them.
8. Enter your expenses, or your profit figure is fiction.
9. Open Payment Status once a week and chase anyone marked Overdue.
10. When something on the printed bill looks wrong, check Branding before you panic.

18. The one-page cheat sheet

Print this section and stick it next to your screen.

Still stuck? Email support@autosoa.com. To print or share, download this guide as a Word document — the full version, or the 5-page short version.