Billing entities

Billing entities (Settings → Workspace → Billing entities) is the home of the legal identity your finance documents are issued under: legal name, CIPC registration, VAT registration, VAT number and VAT rate, and the accounts contact printed on quotes, invoices and statements. It is visible to anyone who can manage billing — every control room has it.

An amber dot appears on the Billing entities entry in the Settings navigation when VAT registered is on but no VAT number has been entered — that combination would print a blank VAT number on your documents.

VAT registration

Every entity carries a VAT registered toggle with a VAT number and VAT rate (%):

• On — documents issued by this entity are headed "Tax Invoice", print the VAT number, and every quote, invoice and statement figure a customer sees is VAT-inclusive, with a full Subtotal → VAT → Total breakdown. The rate drives the VAT on new invoice lines, quote totals, and the monthly billing run.
• Off — documents are headed plain "Invoice" and show no VAT anywhere (the correct treatment for a business that isn't VAT-registered).

Why the VAT toggle matters

Under the South African VAT Act only a VAT-registered vendor may issue a document headed "Tax Invoice." Leaving this toggle off keeps your invoices correctly titled "Invoice" and stops VAT being added to new lines and the monthly billing run.

Multiple legal entities (optional module)

Some security companies trade as more than one legal entity — for example an armed-response company and a separate technical / installations company, each with its own CIPC registration, VAT number and letterhead. With the Multiple billing entities module on, one control room can invoice from all of them, while everything else — one customer list, one site list, one customer portal — stays exactly as it is.

Adding entities is the module — the page isn't

This page (and your default entity's identity, including VAT) is available to every control room. Only the Add entity button appears when CleverCam has switched the Multiple billing entities module on for your control room (it also requires the CRM module). See Modules & Capabilities.

How it works

Every control room has exactly one default entity, whether or not the module is on — it is what every existing invoice, quote and statement was issued by. Its identity is shared with the company profile under Settings → Branding: edit it on either page and the other updates automatically. Turning the module on doesn't move anything — it simply lets you add more entities alongside it.

Once a second entity exists:

• Every document belongs to exactly one entity. An invoice, quote or statement is issued by a single legal entity and renders under that entity's letterhead — its legal name, CIPC registration, VAT number, accounts contact, logo and brand colours. This is a legal requirement, not a preference: a tax invoice has one issuer.
• Each entity numbers its own invoices. The default entity keeps its existing numbering (INV-1-00042 and so on) with no renumbering; a new entity starts its own series from 00001, with a prefix you choose (e.g. INV-TECH-). The counter is padded to five digits and simply grows wider past 99 999 (INV-1-100001), and if a number is somehow already taken — most often after a migration that carried old numbers across — the next free one in the series is used instead.
• "Tax Invoice" follows the entity. A document is headed Tax Invoice only when the issuing entity is VAT registered — so a VAT-registered response company and a non-registered technical company each print correctly from the same control room.
• Statements are per entity. A statement is one creditor's ledger, so each entity produces its own — with its own running balance and aged-debt buckets.
• Each entity connects its own accounting organisation. See Accounting sync.

Managing entities

Open Settings → Workspace → Billing entities.

The default entity is listed first with a Default badge, and this is where your control room's legal identity is edited — legal name, trading name, CIPC registration, the VAT profile, accounts contact and address, plus its invoice number prefix. Changes mirror back to the company profile and the document masthead automatically, and new documents render with the updated identity immediately. It is the only editor for these fields.

The default entity does not carry its own logo or brand colours — those come from Branding, and a letterhead override is only meaningful on an additional entity, so the fields aren't shown.

Add entity (module on only) creates an additional entity. Fill in:

• Legal name (required) and optional trading name — the trading name is what appears on chips and pickers in the app, and it is the name customers see emails come from; the legal name is what prints on documents.

When the email should read differently to the document

The From name on emails prefers the trading name and falls back to the legal name, while documents always print the legal name. So if your control room trades under one name but invoices under a parent company, set the trading name and customers see the familiar name in their inbox while the invoice still renders under the legal entity.

This matters most for a control room whose default entity was created from a parent company's name — without a trading name, its emails introduce themselves as the parent.

• CIPC registration and VAT registered / VAT number / VAT rate — these drive the "Tax Invoice" heading and the VAT applied by the monthly run.
• Accounts contact, email, phone and address — the contact block on that entity's documents.
• Invoice number prefix — e.g. INV-TECH-. Leave it blank for an automatic prefix.
• Logo — optional. Click Upload logo and pick an image file; it is stored for you and shown in the preview beside the button (large images are shrunk automatically). Replace logo swaps it, Remove clears it. Leave it empty and the entity's documents use your control room's logo from Branding.
• Brand colours — optional; anything left blank falls back to your control room's branding.
• Bank accounts are not set here — they live under Billing → Config → Banking, where each deposit account names the Billing entity it belongs to and each entity has its own Default. An entity with no account of its own prints no banking details (never another entity's), so add one as soon as you add the entity. See Several legal entities: each account belongs to one.
• Document footers — optional; the closing note printed at the foot of each document type this entity issues — Quote, Invoice, Credit note, Statement, Receipt, Service report and Job card. Legal wording, banking and desk hours usually differ per legal entity, so this is letterhead like the logo. Any field left blank falls back per document type to the control room's own footer for that type on Branding, and the fields take the same markdown (and the same Preview) described there. Only additional entities have these — the default entity's footers are the control room's.

The email matches the document

An email carrying an entity's document is branded by that entity throughout — the header band, the logo, the brand colours and the accounts email and phone printed at the foot all come from the issuing entity, not from the control room. That covers invoices and quotes you send, statements and receipts, overdue and deposit reminders, and the appointment, completion, cancellation and review notices for a job booked to that entity.

Anything the entity leaves blank falls back to the control room, so an entity that sets only a logo keeps your control room's name and contact details.

Archive retires an entity you no longer issue from. Archived entities are never deleted — documents they issued must keep rendering their original letterhead forever. Restore brings one back. The default entity cannot be archived, and the module cannot be switched off while additional active entities exist.

Default entity per document

With more than one active entity, this page gains a Default entity per document card: one row per document flow, each with a dropdown of your active entities. It answers "who issues this kind of document when nobody picks?" — for example subscription invoices from the response company by default, while job cards and job invoices default to the technical company.

• Quotes — new quotes start issued by this entity (changeable on the quote itself).
• Manual invoices — invoices created by hand on the invoice form start issued by this entity.
• Subscription invoices — the monthly billing run issues subscription (and roster-extra) invoices from this entity, unless the billing plan names its own entity.
• Service jobs — job cards, service reports and job invoices, unless a source quote or the job's own pick names an entity.
• Statements — the ledger a statement renders when no entity is chosen.

Every row's "Control-room default" option keeps today's behaviour (the default entity). These are fallbacks only — an explicit pick on a quote, invoice or job always wins, and each row saves as soon as you change it. A default pointing at an entity you later archive is simply ignored until you update it.

Which entity issues what

Document	Entity used
Subscription invoices from the monthly run	the plan's entity (set on the plan under Billing → Plans) → the Subscription invoices default → the default entity
Job invoices, job cards and service reports	the source quote's entity → the job's own pick (the Issued by picker in the job workspace's Invoicing card, or under Invoice preview in the review drawer) → the Service jobs default → the default entity
Quote invoices	the quote's entity, chosen with the Issued by selector in the quote header (new quotes start on the Quotes default)
Manual invoices	picked on the invoice form; starts on the Manual invoices default
Statements	the entity chosen in the Billing entity switcher (on the Billing page or a customer's Billing tab); under All entities the on-screen ledger, its balance and any download use the Statements default — a statement is never a merged ledger
Payments, receipts, credit notes	inherited from the invoice they settle

One invoice per entity

If a customer has subscriptions from two entities and you have invoice clubbing on, the monthly run produces one invoice per entity rather than one combined invoice. The customer still sees everything together in their portal — the split is a legal requirement of the document itself.

Once a document has been issued (an invoice past draft, a quote past draft), its entity is locked. Correcting the issuer means crediting the invoice and reissuing it — the same thing your accountant would do.

What the customer sees

Nothing splits. Your customer keeps one portal, one login link and one view of everything they owe. Inside it, each document carries the letterhead of the entity that issued it and statements are downloadable per entity.

The one place the companies are kept visibly apart is the portal's Pay tab, because money paid into the wrong company's bank account cannot simply be moved across. With more than one active entity, the tab shows one card per company: that company's unpaid invoices, that company's bank accounts (the accounts bound to it under Billing → Config → Banking — an unbound account belongs to the default entity), and a Pay online button only when that company has its own Netcash Pay Now key, covering its invoices alone. A customer who owes only one company sees only that company. A company with no bank account of its own shows its invoices with "Please contact us for the … payment details" — never another company's account. The proof-of-payment upload stays one form, with its invoice list grouped by company. See Getting paid.

Working across entities in Billing

With more than one active entity, the Billing page gains an entity switcher above the tabs — All entities, then one button per entity.

All entities is the default, because most day-to-day work is customer-shaped — a call about an overdue account covers both companies at once. Switching to a single entity narrows the Overview money tiles and charts, the invoice and payment lists, the plan list, statements and the accounting connection to that entity's books, which is what you want when doing that entity's accounting. Your choice is remembered per control room.

Recurring / active-subscription tiles stay account-wide in every scope, because a subscription takes its entity from its plan rather than carrying one of its own.