Doing one for nothing, and knowing what it cost you

Issue an invoice at zero for a warranty redo, a comeback or a goodwill job. The customer is billed nothing; the shop's cost stays in the numbers.

For owner, manager · checked against the product on 2026-09-14

A car comes back for the same fault and you eat it. The customer pays nothing, and the parts and the hours were real. Issuing that at no charge keeps both halves true: the invoice the customer holds says zero, and the month's margin still carries what the job cost you.

It is the same invoice mechanism as any other — same numbering, same snapshot, same move on the board. What changes is that every customer-facing figure is zeroed down to the line, and the retail value of the work is frozen on the document as what you gave away.

Issuing one

On a ticket that has not been invoiced yet, the invoice panel offers a second form beside the ordinary one, behind a line reading Issue at no charge…. Open it and the form is under a line reading Doing this one for nothing? You need the refunds key — owners and managers hold it out of the box. That is deliberate: an advisor who can ring up a four-thousand-dollar ticket cannot give one away.

Step 1: Pick the jobs
Under Jobs going out at no charge every approved, uninvoiced job is ticked. Untick any that the customer is still paying for — a part-write-off is a normal thing to do.
Step 2: Say why
Four reasons and no more: Warranty — our own work, redone, Comeback — it came back for the same fault, Goodwill — we chose to eat this one, and Other — say what it was. You cannot add a fifth. There is a note box beside it, required on Other and kept on every one of them.
Step 3: Press Issue at no charge
The invoice is created and settled in the same moment — there is no payment to take, so it is paid the instant it exists. The ticket then carries a stamp reading like No charge · Warranty and $318.00 of work given away by Sam Ortiz with your note under it.

Where the given-away figure shows up

On Reports, in the card headed Given away · month to date. Its headline tile is labelled Work given away and it is the retail value of the work — what you would have billed. Beside it are Invoices and What it cost us, and under them a table broken down by reason with the columns Reason, Invoices, Worth and Cost to us.

The retail value here is before tax. You charged no sales tax on the job, collected none and owe none, so putting it in the figure would make what you gave away look bigger than the work is worth by your own tax rate. It is the same basis as the cost beside it and the same basis revenue is read on everywhere else.

Be careful which figure you are reading. There is a second thing on that page called "given away", inside the card about discounts, and it is a different number over a different window — discounts over thirteen months, not write-offs this month. Go by the card heading, not the word.

A quiet month says so rather than showing nothing: Nothing went out at no charge this period. Warranty redos, comebacks and goodwill land here with what they cost the shop, so a quiet month is never a mystery.

The card needs the shop-figures money dimension as well as the reports key, and it is hidden behind the customer-view curtain with Write-offs are hidden while customer view is on. Seeded practice data never counts towards it.

Why it sometimes says the cost is not known

What the work cost you is only knowable when the part costs are on file and somebody clocked the time. If a single invoice in the period is missing either, the whole figure reads not known rather than shrinking to a smaller number, and the card explains itself: 3 of these have no cost on file — part costs or clocked time are missing, so the shop's side of the figure is not known rather than understated.

That is the same rule the ticket's own profit panel follows, and the reason is the same — an understated cost is a worse answer than a missing one. What a job made covers how to close the gap.

Where this stops

You cannot turn an invoice you already issued into a free one

This is a way of issuing an invoice, not a way of editing one. If the work is already on a document the refusal reads every job on this ticket is already on INV-0042, and nothing un-issues an invoice — if the work is going out at no charge, refund what was taken on it with a reason. The no-charge route itself is closed once the work is on a document, so decide before you invoice. That refusal's own wording is behind the product, though, and you should not read it as the whole answer: there is a void. Somebody holding the refunds key can withdraw an issued invoice from revenue and receivables with Void this invoice… on the order's invoice panel, once all the invoice and tip money recorded on it has been returned. Voiding and reissuing an invoice is the page for that. What is true is that voiding does not turn the work into a no-charge job — it withdraws the claim, and the work then needs invoicing again, at zero or otherwise.

This is separate from Settings → Order checklist, where Issue the invoice when the order is paid in full controls ordinary paid invoices. When that rule is on and a full deposit lands before the work is finished, Torqix waits; it checks again when the order reaches Ready and issues the ordinary paid invoice then. Turning the rule off leaves invoicing to the person at the ticket.