Automatically Apply Inactivity Fees to Invoices

If your roll-off or rental business charges customers for inactivity, you no longer have to calculate and add those fees manually. With inactivity fee automation, ServiceCore makes it easy to apply extra charges, like for time your inventory is sitting idle, directly to invoices based on rental details.

Once configured, ServiceCore calculates and add inactivity fees for you, helping reduce manual work and billing errors while keeping invoices consistent.

Please Note: This video focuses on using a rental rate as the Trigger Line Item, but a service can be used as well following the same basic workflow.

Before You Start

Here are a few things to know before you continue:

• The inactivity fee automation is triggered by a Trigger Line Item, which can be a rental rate or service.
• This article covers several features in ServiceCore. If you are new to any of them, we suggest reviewing the linked article(s) for more details. 
  • Add a Product 
  • Add Rental Rates
  • Add Services
  • Price Books Overview
• To see if you have access to these features in ServiceCore, please check out this article on user permission levels.

How it Works

You’ll set a rule that follows something along the lines of:

•  “If I haven’t hauled a dumpster rental for some period of time, then charge the customer for the lack of activity.”

Once the rule and related information are configured, ServiceCore will automatically calculate and add the inactivity line item to your invoices!

You’ll need to create the following for the inactivity fee automation:

• Trigger Line Item that ‘turns on’ the automation (e.g. 30 Yard Rental). 
  • Trigger line items can be either services or rental rates.
• Inactivity line item that appears on invoices to capture the inactivity charge (e.g. Inactivity Fee).

Add a Trigger Line Item

The first step in setting up your automation is to determine the line item should activate the inactivity fee rule when it appears on an invoice. 

Trigger Line Items can be either:

• Rental Rates
• Services

The option you select should match how you bill your customers.

• Use Rental Rates if you have added rental rates to the products you rent and use recurring invoices.
• Use Services if you do not connect rental rates to the products you rent would like the automation to work for one-time invoices. 

Rental Rates as a Trigger Line Item

You’ll need to create a trigger rental rate for your inactivity fee automation that ‘turns on’ the automation for one of your products, like a 30 Yard Dumpster.

If you have been using ServiceCore for a while, and you use batch billing for your roll-off billing, you may have a trigger rental rate (e.g. 30 Yard Rental) already set-up.

Add a Product

To create a product for your rental rate:

1. Go to “Settings.”
2. Click “Inventory.”
3. Select “Products.”

4. Click the “Add Product” button.
    

   

5. Enter important information about the product, including Name and Quantity. 
6. Click “Save.”

Add a Rental Rate to a Product

In order to create a recurring invoice for batch billing, you will need to have a rental rate connected to your product such as a 30 Yard Dumpster. 

To add a rental rate to a product:

1. Go to your product’s detail page.
2. Click “Services.”

3. Click the “Add Service” button.
    

   

4. Enter important information about the service, including Name, Short Code, and Billing Period, and Rate. 
5. Click “Add New Service.”

Please Note: For rental rates added to roll-off rentals, feel free to leave the Billing Period and Rate as they appear (Flat Rate, $0.00 respectively) as the rental rate is just a placeholder to allow for batch billing. As a reminder, $0 invoices will get created but will not get sent to customers through the batch billing process.

Invoicing and Billing for Rental Rate Trigger Line Items

Refer to this Create a Rental Invoice With Recurring Billing article for more detail on how to:

• Create a rental
• Add rental rates
• Create recurring invoice

If you are unfamiliar with batch billing, please refer to our article, Use Batch Billing for Recurring Invoices article, for more detail.

Services as a Trigger Line Item

You’ll need to create a trigger service for your inactivity fee automation that ‘turns on’ the automation. As an example, you could use a haul service as your trigger line item that you would add to an exchange job that would trigger the automation. This service must be added to a job on a rental in order for the automation to work.

If you have been using ServiceCore, you will most likely have services that you can select as the Trigger Line Item. 

If you are new to services in ServiceCore, please review this article on creating services.

Invoicing and Billing for Service Trigger Line Items

Using a service as a trigger line item allows you to have your automation work on one-time invoices. 

If you are not familiar with creating one-time invoice, please review this article.

Add an Inactivity Fee Line Item

You’ll need to create a service for the inactivity line item that appears on invoices when the inactivity fee occurs (e.g. Inactivity Fee).

If you have been using ServiceCore for a while, you may have a inactivity line item (e.g. Inactivity Fee) already set-up. 

To add a inactivity line item service:

1. Go to “Settings.”
2. Click “Accounting.”
3. Select “Services.”

4. Click the “Add Service” button. 
    

   

5. Enter important information about the service, including Name, Short Code, and Billing Period, and Rate. 
6. Click “Save.” 

Please Note: You can leave the Billing Period and Rate as they appear as they will be overwritten by the rate set on the automation.

Create the Inactivity Fee Automation

Once your trigger and inactivity fee line items are ready, you can create your inactivity fee automation.

1. Go to “Settings.”
2. Select “Automations.”

3. Click the “+ Create New” button.
    

   

4. Select “Inactivity Fee” for Automation Variable. 
5. Enter Automation Name (e.g. 30 Yard Inactivity.)
6. Under Trigger Line Items, search and select the rental rate or service that you would like to trigger this rule. 
   • You can select more than one rental rate and/or service to trigger your inactivity fee automation. 
7. Enter the number of days before you want to charge for inactivity of your rental (i.e. a grace period). (e.g. Charge a fee after 14 days of inactivity.)
8. Enter a Rate. This is the amount you’ll charge for the inactivity (e.g. $15)
   • This rate will override the rate that you have associated with the inactivity line item service.
9. Enter the number of days for how frequently you want to re-charge your customer for lack of activity on your rental. (e.g.. Charge a fee every 7 days of inactivity after the first 14 day grace period)
10.  Add the Inactivity Line Item service that you would like to appear on invoices for the inactivity fee.
11.  Click “Save.”

Invoice with Inactivity Fee Added

If your rental has no Exchange, Pick Up, or Service jobs completed (or partially serviced) during the period of time set in the Inactivity Fee Automation, you will see that the inactivity line item will be added to the generated invoice.

In the example below, a 30 Yard Dumpster was delivered on 10/4 with a 14 day grace period before a $15 inactivity fee was charged with an additional $15 charge every 7 days thereafter. 

Please Note: A separate inactivity line item will populate for each different time period and number of units (quantity) that the inactivity fee will be charged for.

For example, if a rental is for 3 units and there was only 1 unit picked up over the course of a month, there may be a period of time where the inactivity fee will apply to all 3 units and a period of time where the inactivity fee applies to only 2 of the units.

Use Price Books to Customize Inactivity Fee Automation

In some cases, you might want to create customer, territory, or customer/site type specific pricing for this automation. 
To use a price book for customizing automation settings:

1. Go to “Settings.”
2. Select “Price Books.”

3. Click the “Add Price Book” button.
    

   

4. Enter a Name.
5. Select Category. 
6. Select Sub-Category. This will either be a customer name, territory, or one of your created Customer/Site Types. 
7. Click the “Add Services” button. 
8. Find the service for your fee. 
9. Add Adjusted Rate information. 
   • You can make the Adjusted Rate either higher or lower than you created for your overage fee automation. 
10.  Click “Save.”

As an example, we could have the automation be $15 per 7 days of inactivity after a grace period of 14 days, but could have it be $10 for a specific customer. After adding the inactivity fee automation to a rental for this customer, we can see that the Inactivity Fee is now $10  instead of the $15 on the invoice example shown earlier in the article.

If you have any questions, please reach out to our Support team through the chat widget on the bottom of this page or by sending an email to support@servicecore.com!