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21.3. Anatomy of an Invoice
Now, let's look at the invoice itself.
The invoice is divided into the following sections:
- Charges, grouped by activity
- Summary
- Transactions
In the Charges section, you will find different invoice sections with a blue header representing the a group of charges. Arctic automatically adds a different invoice section for each activity (rental or reservation) on the invoice. This helps keep charges together. Inside each section, you will find each reservation's items including all of the add-ons, fees (hidden and visible), discounts, and associated taxes as shown here:
The first key thing to notice that there is a hierarchy of charges. Below the primary charges (e.g., per guest pricing levels and add-ons) are sub-charges. This hierarchy helps ensure that percentage fees and taxes, as well as percentage discounts, are only applied to the appropriate charges on the invoice.
Notice how the Sub-Charges for the Reservation appear under and indented from the reservation charges that they are associated with. For instance, in the graphic above, the Hidden Fee of the Park Entrance Fee is assessed per pricing level and therefore appears under each reservation pricing level item both under the "Adults" and the "Youths". Add-ons appear as separate charges, not sub-charges, because these are separate charges from the pricing level costs. It is important to understand the way Arctic organizes the fees and charges associated with reservations so that when you need to edit reservations by adding additional fees and/or discounts you will know where to place them to get the results that you are looking for. We will discuss this more in the "Editing Invoice" section of this guide.
Another point to notice is that the Hidden Fees are not added to the invoice total because these fees are included in the price of the reservation. However, when you run the End of Day Balance reports you will see these fees allocated into the accounts they are associated with rather than as part of the trip income (e.g., it will separate out part of the trip cost into a distinct account helping improve your accounting records). For example, in this invoice, you would see $172 for the Rio Grande Tubing Trip Income and $8 allocated to Park Entrance Fees rather than $180 in trip income. Hidden Fees can include any fees that are automatically included in the price of your trips, like insurance, park entrance fees etc. Agent Commissions also show up as Hidden Fees.
The last two sections of the invoice are the Summary and the Transaction sections as shown here:
The Summary section of the invoice is where you will see all of the charges from the Activity sections subtotaled. This will also be where you can add a discount to the entire invoice rather than a discount that would only apply to a specific charge on the invoice or a specific reservation as shown with the "Preferred Customer Discount" shown above. Note: if you apply a discount to the entire invoice, Arctic will subtract the discount first and then display the subtotal. If there is no discount in this section, Arctic will only display the subtotal for the charges of the Activity sections.
The final section of the Invoice is the Transaction section. This is where all of the payments, scheduled payments, holds and refunds for the invoice are added and where they appear once the transactions have been processed. There is complete information on how to process each of these types of transactions for an invoice further in this guide.