Billing Charges and Estimates
Charges are the line items that make up what a researcher owes on a request — a copy fee, a per-page scan rate, a shipping charge, and so on. They live on the Billing tab of a request's detail view, in the Charges section.
Most of the time you don't build charges from scratch. Aeon already knows your fee schedule (your billing defaults), so when a photoduplication request has a Format, Service Level, or Shipping Option set, the Billing tab shows the matching charges automatically as an estimate. The estimate is Aeon's best guess at the cost based on those fields; it isn't saved to the request yet and updates as the request changes. You add a charge by hand only when the standard fee schedule doesn't cover something — a manual adjustment, a one-off item, a correction.
- A researcher asks "how much will this cost?" — read the estimate on the Billing tab; you don't have to do anything to produce it.
- The fee schedule doesn't cover a particular charge — click Add Charge to enter it yourself.
- A charge is wrong (wrong quantity, wrong rate, wrong page count) — edit or delete it before the invoice is generated.
Generating the invoice, taking payments, and refunds each have their own pages. This page covers only the Charges section: the estimate, and adding / editing / removing individual charge lines. See Request Billing Tab for the whole tab, Payments and Refunds, and Invoices and Outstanding Balances.
Where charges come from
Open request #12345 and select the Billing tab. The top of the tab shows a three-box summary, and below it the Charges section lists every line:
| Summary box | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Estimate Total / Invoice Total | The sum of all charges. Reads Estimate Total until you generate the invoice, then Invoice Total. |
| Payments | Total paid so far. |
| Balance Due | Charges minus payments — labeled Outstanding, Paid in full, or Overpaid. |
Each charge line is a card showing the Billing Context and Billing Type (for example, Format / PDF), a breakdown of Base Fee, Unit Fee, Qty, and Tax, and the line subtotal. A colored badge on each card tells you what kind of charge it is:
| Badge | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Estimate | A charge you've added by hand, but the invoice hasn't been generated yet. Still editable. |
| Default | An automatic estimate Aeon computed from your billing defaults. Not yet saved to the request. |
| Invoiced | The invoice has been generated. The charge is locked in and dated. |
The automatic estimate (Default charges)
When a request has a Format, Service Level, or Shipping Option filled in, Aeon looks up the matching entry in your billing defaults for the researcher's billing category and shows it as a Default charge — even though nothing has been saved yet. This is how the Billing tab can quote a price the moment a request comes in.
A few things worth knowing about these automatic estimates:
- They recalculate on their own. Change the request's Format or page count and the estimate updates to match. You never edit the defaults from here.
- If a default uses a per-page rate, its quantity comes from the request's page count, so the estimate reflects the actual size of the job.
- If you've already added a real charge for the same context (say you entered your own Format charge), Aeon won't also show the automatic one — your charge wins.
A Default charge is a preview, not a stored record. It becomes a real, saved charge in one of two ways: you generate the invoice (Aeon writes the estimate in as part of that), or you click its edit button and save it. If you want to remove a single automatic estimate from the quote without touching the others, click the trash icon on its card — it disappears from the view but, because it was never saved, nothing is deleted from the request. It will reappear if the underlying field changes.
Adding a charge by hand
Use this when the fee schedule doesn't already cover what you need to bill.
- On the Billing tab of request #12345, in the Charges section, click Add Charge.
- An edit panel opens on the right titled Add Charge. Fill in:
- Billing Context — choose from the contexts defined in your billing defaults (for example, Format, Service Level, Shipping Option).
- Billing Type — the options narrow to the types valid for the context you picked (for example, PDF under Format).
- Base Fee, Unit Fee, Quantity, Tax Rate (%) — these fill in automatically from the matching billing default once you've chosen a context and type. Adjust any of them if this charge differs from the standard.
- The Subtotal at the bottom of the panel updates live as you type, so you can see the line total before saving.
- Click Add. The charge appears in the Charges list with an Estimate badge, and the Estimate Total and Balance Due boxes update.
A line total is (Base Fee + Unit Fee × Quantity), plus tax. So a $5.00 base fee with a $0.25 unit fee at quantity 10 and a 7% tax rate comes to (5.00 + 0.25 × 10) × 1.07 = $8.03. The Unit Fee × Quantity part is what makes per-page pricing work: set the unit fee to your per-page rate and the quantity to the page count.
Editing a charge
- In the Charges list, click the pencil icon on the charge you want to change.
- The edit panel opens titled Edit Charge with the current values loaded.
- Change whatever's wrong — context, type, fees, quantity, or tax rate. The Subtotal updates as you edit.
- Click Update.
Editing an automatic Default estimate works the same way, except saving it turns the preview into a real saved charge (the panel is still titled Edit Charge).
Deleting a charge
- In the Charges list, click the trash icon on the charge.
- Confirm in the Delete Charge? dialog — it warns that "This action cannot be undone."
- The charge is removed and the totals recalculate.
Removing an automatic Default estimate doesn't show a confirmation dialog and doesn't delete anything stored — it just drops that line from the current quote (see the note above).
Charges and the invoice
Charges are fully editable while they're Estimate or Default. The point of no return is generating the invoice: that stamps every charge with a billing date, flips the badges to Invoiced, and locks the line totals. After that, the page-count and field-driven estimates stop updating the charges. If you need to change something on an invoiced request, you generally delete the invoice (which clears all charges and payments) and start the charges again — covered in Invoices and Outstanding Balances.
For per-page charges, the quantity is driven by the request's page count. Confirm the page count is accurate before you generate the invoice — once charges are invoiced, changing the page count no longer adjusts them, and you'd have to edit the invoiced quantity directly or redo the invoice.
Working with charges is governed by the Billing capability on your role:
- View lets you open the Billing tab and read charges, the estimate, and totals. With only View, the Add Charge button and the per-card edit and delete controls don't appear.
- Edit is required to add a charge and to edit an existing one.
- Full is required to delete a charge.
If your role is Billing View, you can see the numbers but can't change them.
A few things an SME should confirm on this page:
- "Default" vs "Estimate" terminology: the UI uses Default for the auto-computed (unsaved) lines and Estimate for hand-added lines that aren't yet invoiced. That distinction is real in the code but subtle for staff — confirm it reads clearly, or whether we should simplify the framing.
- The price-quoting workflow: is reading the auto-estimate to quote a researcher the intended day-to-day use, or do most sites apply a service package first? (Service packages are a separate page; flagging in case the framing here should point there sooner.)
- Screenshots needed: (1) the Billing tab Charges section showing a mix of Default, Estimate, and Invoiced cards with the summary boxes; (2) the Add/Edit Charge side panel with the live Subtotal.
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