PBJ CRM 7.52 and PBJ Invoicing 7.32 — a Manager area, and late fees you can delete

PBJ CRM 7.52 and PBJ Invoicing 7.32 are out — free updates for everyone who owns the 7.x versions. Update PBJ CRM first, then PBJ Invoicing. The CRM has no database change. Invoicing has one, and it has already run on a live MySQL host — take a backup before you update, as always.

Late fees are lines you can delete

A late fee used to be a figure on the invoice with nothing you could do about it. It is a line now. Open Edit invoice and it sits with the work, titled “Late fee”. Delete the line, save, and the fee is gone from the invoice and from what the customer owes. That is the whole of waiving a fee — there is nothing else to switch off, and no figure to correct by hand.

• Your totals do not move. A late fee is never discounted and never taxed — it is added after the discount and after the tax, exactly as before. Updating does not change a single total on a single document.
• Fees you have already charged are written out as lines when you update, so the fee you can see is the fee you can remove.
• Waiving a fee does not stop the next one. If the invoice is still late when the next fee falls due, it is charged. You are forgiving a charge, not the schedule.
• Duplicating an invoice, or turning an estimate into one, leaves the fees behind. A new document starts with the work.

A Manager area, with a walk-through

Managers and owners get a sixth area that explains the manager’s job in plain words instead of assuming it: Start here, Add an employee, and See it as they see it. Anyone below manager level never sees the tab at all.

• Adding an employee is a full screen now, not a cramped dialog — the same fields, laid out the way every other new record is.
• “See it as they see it” lets you look at the suite through an employee’s eyes. It is read-only, it is time-limited, and it ends the moment you leave it.
• “Who can do what” lays out the whole permission grid a rung at a time, so you can check what a job title carries before you hand it to someone.
• On a phone, Manager is the sixth button along the bottom — and only for the people allowed it.

Invoices and estimates read like their edit screen

Open a saved invoice or estimate and the kind, number, customer, agent and dates sit in a head that stays put while you scroll the lines, with the buttons down in the action bar. It is the head the edit screen already had; the two no longer disagree. Tickets, jobs, tasks, conversations and calendar events are untouched — they keep the header they have always had.

Full details are on each plugin’s changelog: PBJ CRM and PBJ Invoicing.