We're excited to introduce Flexible Fees! This feature lets you create custom fees that are automatically applied to client invoices. You can create fees for things like travel expenses, special handling fees, or accepting certain forms of payment — whatever you need for your business. For example, you can set up a convenience fee that automatically charges 3% on each invoice a client generates, or an Out Of Service Area fee with a flat rate of $10, giving you more control and flexibility in how you charge your clients.

Flexible Fees are whatever you need them to be! Whether you want to charge clients for expenses you incur from travelling your route, going outside of your main service area, or accepting different payment types, you can create different fees that will be automatically added to a client's invoice as either a flat amount or a percentage, depending on your needs. Each fee will appear as a separate line on your client's invoice, helping to keep things clear and professional while allowing you to reclaim your time:

To create Flexible Fees for your company, first navigate to the Settings > Invoicing & Payments > Flexible Fees section of your Admin Dashboard.

Then, click the + Create A New Fee button:

From here, you can enter the fee name and description, and choose whether it will be charged as a flat amount or a percentage:

Once you are finished inputting the necessary information, be sure to click Save Fee to finalize your new Flexible Fee.

Before creating Flexible Fees for your company, there are a few things to keep in mind. While these fees can help you offset costs associated with running your business, it's important to note that, as a business owner, you are solely responsible for ensuring that any fees you charge comply with your local, state, and federal laws and regulations. Time To Pet does not verify legal requirements in your area.

Before you can create and finalize your custom fees, you will see the Important Fee Guidelines pop up, which asks you to accept these guidelines and accept full responsibility for fee compliance:

As we note in our guidelines, we highly encourage you to keep the following best practices in mind:

If you decide you no longer want to use one of your Flexible Fees, you can delete it by navigating to the Settings > Invoicing & Payments > Flexible Fees section of your Admin Dashboard. From here, locate the fee you want to delete and click on the Edit button next to that fee:

Additional options will appear, allowing you to edit the details of your existing fee. From here, click the red Delete Fee button:

If you want to reverse a fee that has already been applied to an invoice, you can do one of two things.

1) You can add a negative custom line item to the invoice in the amount of the fee you are reversing

OR

2) You can add a credit to the client's account in the amount of the fee you are reversing and apply it to their invoice

We cover each option in more detail in the following sections.

If you have a situation where a client has paid for an invoice that you no longer want to charge a particular fee for, you want a clear record of what was done to remove the fee on the invoice, or you'd prefer not utilize the Credits feature, you can add a negative custom line item to your client's invoice to offset the amount charged by the Flexible Fee applied to the invoice.

The first step is to locate the invoice and open the Edit Invoice screen. You can access the Edit Invoice screen via the client's Balance Sheet or from the Services/Invoices tab on their profile.

Balance Sheet:

Services/Invoices Tab:

Once you have the Edit Invoice screen open, select the Add Custom Item button. A new line item will appear on the invoice. Fill in the Date, Title, and Description fields however you'd like. When you get to the Amount field, ensure that you enter the total amount of the fee(s) you'd like to remove from the invoice, and put a minus sign in front of it to make it a negative amount:

Doing so will deduct the fee amount from the invoice's balance. If your client has already paid the invoice amount, those funds will become an open payment. For more information on how to apply open payments to other services, see our help documentation here: How To Apply Open Payments.
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If you need to reverse a fee that you've charged a client, the other thing you can do to help offset the balance of the fee to ensure your client isn't charged for it (or to pay them back if they already were) is add a credit to the client's account in the amount of the fee.

To add a credit to a client's account, navigate to the Services/Invoices tab of their profile. Along the top of the page, you should see a Credit Balance. Click the pencil icon to the right of it to adjust the credits the client has:

From here, select Adjust Credit Balance and enter the fee amount you're reversing as a positive amount. You can also leave an option note to explain the nature of the credit. Once you're ready, Save Adjustment:

The credit will be added to the client's account balance:

You can then follow the steps in our Applying Available Credit To A Client Invoice guide to apply the credit balance to the client's invoice.