The technician has finished the job. Why is the invoice waiting for the office?

Half past three in the afternoon. The technician has finished installing an air conditioner in an accountants’ office. He has tested the unit and packed his tools, and the customer takes out the company card: “What do I owe you? I need an invoice.”

And that is where everything stops.

He does not have the invoice with him. The card terminal in the van only accepts cards for retail receipts. He calls the office, the office looks up the company’s details, and the customer waits, card in hand. In the end they agree: “We’ll send it over, and you can pay by bank transfer.”

The job was finished at half past three. The payment will arrive whenever it arrives.

How we got here

This is not bad organisation. It is how things were set up when receipts came out of a cash register or out of software with a fiscal device.

Our customers who came from that setup worked like this: invoices and receipts were prepared in advance at the office, and the technician took them along. The card terminal was connected to the cash register or the fiscal device, so it only accepted cards for retail receipts. For a private customer that was enough. For a business that wanted to pay by card and get an invoice, it was not.

That left two options, and neither was good. The first: issue a retail receipt so the card could go through, cancel it, and then issue an invoice on credit. Two documents and one cancellation for a single payment. The second: a second card terminal, from the same bank, used only for invoices. Two terminals for the same payments.

What the wait costs

The cost never arrives as a bill, which is why it usually goes unmeasured. It shows up elsewhere.

In collection. A customer who pays by card on site has paid. A customer waiting for an invoice by email will pay when they find it, when they approve it, when they remember. The job was done today, the money may arrive weeks later.

In the invoice issued in advance. It records what you assumed would be done, not what was done. If the job needed one more part or one more hour, the invoice is already wrong before the customer even sees it. And every wrong invoice needs a correction.

At the office. Someone answers the phone in the middle of other work, looks up details, issues, sends. In the afternoon someone enters into the software everything that happened during the day. It is the same double work we described in “Are you typing the same order into three programs?”, except that here it goes through the phone.

In how you come across. Your customer saw a technician who knew his job, and then a technician who could not issue an invoice. They will remember both.

When the job closes where it was done

The same customers of ours work differently today. Receipts and invoices come out of one application, LogicInvoice. It runs on the technician’s phone, and the card terminal connects to it.

Let us replay the scene. In the morning, the assistant at the office prepared the invoice for the installation: customer, work, materials, price. She did not issue it. She left it ready, and the technician found it in the app when he arrived at the customer’s.

Half past three, the air conditioner is running. The job needed an extra length of pipe, so the technician adds it to the invoice, checks the price and taps issue. The customer puts the card in the terminal, and the invoice goes to their email at the same moment. Payment and invoice, in the same minute. Had it been a private customer, they would have received a retail receipt the same way. And had nothing been prepared, the technician would have created it himself from scratch, on his phone.

The office did its part in advance, but the invoice was issued at the end, with what was actually done. Nobody called anyone, nobody cancelled anything. One document, one card terminal. The technician needed nothing more than a phone with an internet connection and his card terminal. And the cash register or fiscal device is no longer needed, because LogicInvoice does their job.

There is also a reason to look at this now. E-invoicing for invoices to other businesses now applies to every business in Greece, with a transition period until the end of 2026, and the card terminal has to be connected either to a cash register or fiscal device or to invoicing software. Since many businesses are changing the way they invoice this year anyway, it is the right moment to change where the invoice is issued too. What is required of a technical contractor today is gathered on our page for technical contractors.

What changes in your company

That depends on how you work today, and it is not the same for everyone. A company with two technicians doing jobs in homes has different needs from a maintenance company with contracts at businesses. Some have a cash register, others a fiscal device, others two card terminals from different periods.

That is why we do not start from the software. We start from your day. We look at how invoices and receipts are issued today, who issues them and when, how private customers pay and how businesses pay. Then we tell you what changes, what stays as it is, and whether the card terminal you have can be connected. If it is a fit, we set up LogicInvoice, connect it to the terminal, and you try it in practice before you decide.

The job ends when it is paid

For your customer, the job ended when the air conditioner started running. For you, it ends when it is paid. As long as those two moments are apart, you pay the difference in time, in phone calls and in invoices waiting to be settled.

If you finish the work at the customer’s premises but invoicing waits for the office, tell us through the form which software and which card terminal you use today, and whether you have a cash register or a fiscal device. We will look at whether and how the process can be completed on site for your business, and you can ask for a free trial of LogicInvoice in the same message.