This article goes over the different billing menus in CLIP and explains what options you have to bill your customers using the non-QCLIPxe version of the CLIP program. Billing your customers is an important function in every company.

Let us start from the billing menus in CLIP. These are the following four options to choose from: Mid-Month Billing, Billing Process, Print Invoices By Date, and Bill Minimum Charge Jobs.

Note: Bill Minimum Charge Jobs can also be used on QCLIPxe versions under the QuickBooks Functions menu.

Mid-Month Billing is typically used for getting invoices/statements to customers at any time during the billing month. This serves as a quick way to get an invoice or statement emailed or printed without having to go through the monthly billing process.

Let us start with the Form drop-down menu at the top left of this screen. You can choose from a variety of statement and invoice forms: Full Statement - #919 L, Plain Paper Statement - #165 LSB or 747 L, Small Statement - #308 L, Pin-Feed Statement #730, Full Size Invoice - #331 L, Plain Paper Invoice - #165 LSB or 932 L, Small Invoice - #313 L, and Pin-Feed Invoice # N/A.

Select By Individual at the top left in order to selectively choose customers to bill. A way to choose only a range of customers is to uncheck By Individual and then put in a range of customer numbers in the start and stop field to the right of By Individual.

Before sending out your bills, you may want to consider entering a Billing Message. Keep in mind that the Billing Message is a message that will appear to all of your customer base.

Once you select Preview Bills, the bill will be previewed on the screen. By selecting Print Bills, the bill will be sent straight to the printer for printing.
For information on the emailing bills and how to mass email your Invoices/Statements, please visit the Emailing Bills instructional article.

The Billing Process in CLIP is a monthly closing process that will need to be completed once a month for your balance forward billing customers. During this process, you can print/preview/email bills, print your sales tax report, reverse billing, and then close the billing period.

Back to the Billing menu, click Billing Process when the company is ready to close the billing period for all of your balance forward billing customers.

The Sales Tax Report, Reverse Billing, and Close Period buttons are grayed out because you must click Age Accounts/Print Statements beforehand. After you click Age Accounts/Print Statements, you will want to preview/print one bill then return from that screen. Once you have preview/print at least one bill, you will be able to use the options that were previously grayed out.

Now we can print the sales Tax Report.

The sales tax report can be pulled for a specific state or specific area of your choosing. It is recommended that you select Print to PDF so that you can have the report as a backup. The PDF does save the file under your PDF folder in the CLIP folder.

Let us look at the Billing Sub-Menu or Billing Functions screen. If you need to Reverse Billing, the Billing Process will be reversed so that you can go back into other CLIP menus like File Maintenance or Enter Transactions to adjust some customer's accounts before closing the billing period. Once you are finally ready, you will click the Close Period button to finalize and close the monthly billing period.

Please read carefully and review the four steps outlined in the Check List. Once each step is complete and each of the four steps has been selected "Yes," then click Close the Period.

These are the final steps of closing the billing period. Please ensure that everyone ELSE is out of CLIP before you click "Yes." After you click yes, the index files and the period will be closed. After closing the period, it is recommended that you close CLIP and then reopen.

Print Invoices by Date is a task that will need to be completed for customers if you need a bill to show a certain amount of jobs performed for a date range. This will not be a true invoice, but will simply be a listing of jobs for a particular date range.

From the example above, you may notice that Print Invoices By Date has some of the same options as Mid-Month Billing. It doesn't have all of the same options because Print Invoices By Date is not meant to be a true invoice or statement.

Bill Minimum Charge Jobs are set up to bill the minimum charge jobs that are setup in CLIP. This menu option is setup in order to process billing for minimum charge jobs that were setup via Min. Charge menu on the jobs. For more information on setting up Min. Charge jobs, click below:
​https://help.clip.com/en/articles/405600-clipxe-qclipxe-bill-minimum-charge-jobs

Last Time Minimum Charges Billed – The menu will ask you to enter the last time you have processed minimum charge jobs. If you do not know that last time you have processed minimum charges jobs or if this is the first time using this feature then leave the date blank for Last Time Minimum Charges Billed.

​Jobs Performed During the Period – this is where you would enter the start and stop dates for the period in question. If you are doing this monthly, it would be the beginning of the month and end of the month. However, if it were seasonal it would be the beginning of season and end of the season.

Post Date – This is the date that will be placed on the transaction for the customer.

Remind Me to Process Again in – Enter a number of days that you want CLIP to remind you.
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​Processing the Minimum Charge – CLIP will first check each customer’s record to see if they have a minimum charge set up on their record. If they do, CLIP will add up all of the jobs listed in the Minimum Charge Setup for that customer that were charged during the period specified.
If the total is less than the minimum charge, CLIP will generate a debit for the remaining amount. This will be placed in the customer’s journal and will be available for billing immediately.
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​Example: The description on the debit will be the name of the minimum charge setup with the date that you specified. This will enter into the transaction portion of CLIP and you will get a final list of transactions report for these transactions. Select it to remind you to process again. 

Click Process Minimum Bill.

You will receive a confirmation that all transactions posted successfully.

Click Yes if you want a report to show the transactions that were posted.

You should see a list similar to the screenshot above.