Request Billing Tab

When a researcher orders copies — scans, photocopies, prints — the money side of that request is handled on its Billing tab. This is where you see what the order costs, record what the researcher has paid, and generate the invoice that drives the request through the photoduplication workflow.

The Billing tab lives inside the request detail view, alongside History, Notes, and Attachments. It only appears on requests that are part of the photoduplication (copy) workflow — a plain reading-room request has nothing to bill, so it has no Billing tab. The normal path is: a copy request comes in, charges are calculated automatically from your billing defaults, you confirm or adjust them, you generate the invoice, and then you record the researcher's payment as it arrives.

When you'll use this

• A photoduplication request is ready to be billed and you need to generate the invoice.
• A researcher has paid and you need to record a payment (or a refund).
• The order changed — extra pages, a different format — and you need to add, edit, or remove a charge before invoicing.
• You want to print or email the invoice to the researcher.

The Billing tab only shows on photoduplication requests

You'll see the Billing tab on a request only after that request has entered the photoduplication workflow (it has a photoduplication status). A standard request doesn't have one. If a copy request is missing its Billing tab, it hasn't been initialized for photoduplication yet — open the request's action menu and choose Initialize Photoduplication first. See Photoduplication Initialization for that step.

Opening the Billing tab

1. Open the photoduplication request — for example, request #12345.
2. Click the Billing tab in the request detail view.
3. The tab loads three things, top to bottom: a summary of the money, a toolbar of invoice actions, and two lists — Charges and Payments.

Reading the summary

The summary strip across the top gives you the whole financial picture of the request at a glance, in three figures:

Figure	What it tells you
Invoice Total / Estimate Total	The sum of all charges. It reads Estimate Total before you've generated an invoice, and Invoice Total afterward.
Payments	The total the researcher has paid so far.
Balance Due	Total charges minus total payments. Shown in red when there's an amount Outstanding, green when Paid in full, and amber when the account is Overpaid (for example, after a refund).

Charges

The Charges list shows every line item on the order. Each charge card shows its billing context and type (for example, Format / Photocopy), the base fee, unit fee, quantity, and tax rate, plus the line subtotal.

Estimates vs. invoiced charges

Before you invoice, charges are estimates and can be changed freely. Aeon helps you here: based on the request's Format, Service Level, and Shipping Option, it pulls the matching prices from your billing defaults and shows them as suggested charges, tagged Default. A charge you've added or saved yourself is tagged Estimate. Once the invoice is generated, every charge is locked in and tagged Invoiced with the invoice date.

Where the prices come from

The fees on each charge come from your Billing Defaults configuration, matched on billing category, context, and type. If a charge's quantity should track the number of pages, Aeon fills the quantity from the request's page count automatically. See Billing Charges and Estimates and Billing Defaults Configuration for the underlying setup.

Adding a charge

1. On the Charges card, click Add Charge.
2. A panel opens on the right. Choose a Billing Context, then a Billing Type.
3. The Base Fee, Unit Fee, and Tax Rate (%) fill in automatically from your billing defaults; adjust any of them, plus Quantity, if you need to. The running Subtotal updates as you type.
4. Click Add.

To turn a suggested Default charge into a real one, click its edit (pencil) icon — the same panel opens pre-filled, and saving adds it to the order.

Editing a charge

Click the pencil icon on a charge card, change any field in the panel, and click Update.

Removing a charge

Click the trash icon on a charge card and confirm in the Delete Charge? dialog. To dismiss a suggested Default line without it becoming a charge, just click its trash icon — it disappears from the list without a confirmation prompt.

Payments

The Payments list records everything the researcher has paid. You don't have to wait for any particular status — a payment can be recorded against any request with an outstanding balance.

Recording a payment

1. On the Payments card, click Add Payment.
2. In the panel, choose a Payment Method (the options come from your CustomDropDown values), enter the Amount, an optional Reference (a check number, for example), and the Date (today's date is filled in for you).
3. Click Add.

A full payment can move the request forward

If recording a payment brings the balance to zero while the copy order is awaiting approval, billing, or processing, Aeon routes the request on to Awaiting Item Delivery for you and shows a brief confirmation. You don't have to route it manually.

Recording a refund

To record money returned to a researcher, add a payment with the amount entered as a negative number. The balance adjusts accordingly and the summary shows the account as Overpaid if the refund pushes payments above charges.

Editing or removing a payment

Click the pencil icon to edit a payment, or the trash icon to remove it (confirm in the Delete Payment? dialog).

Credit card payments are protected

Payments taken by credit card through the web interface carry an authorization code and are marked Credit Card. You can edit only their Reference — the amount, method, and date are locked — and they cannot be deleted (the delete icon is disabled with the note "Credit card payments cannot be deleted"). To refund a card payment, process the refund through your payment processor and record it here as a negative payment.

Generating and managing the invoice

Generating the invoice is what finalizes the charges and starts the copy order moving through its workflow.

Generate the invoice

Once the request has at least one charge, a Generate Invoice button appears in the toolbar. Click it to lock the charges in. Aeon stamps each charge with the invoice date, then routes the request to Awaiting Order Approval (or straight to Awaiting Item Delivery if the total is zero and your site auto-processes zero-balance invoices). A confirmation tells you where it went.

A request needs a user before it can be invoiced

You can't generate an invoice for an anonymous request — it must have an associated user. Aeon will refuse with an error if there's no user on the request.

After the invoice exists

Once an invoice has been generated, the toolbar changes. You'll see:

• Print Invoice — open the print dialog to print a copy of the invoice statement.
• Send Email — email the invoice to the researcher. Aeon opens a composer pre-filled from the ItemInvoice email template, so you can review and edit it before sending.
• Invoice (a dropdown) — containing Update Invoice (re-stamp the charges after a change) and Delete Invoice.

Applying a service package

If your site has service packages set up for the request's billing category, an Apply Package button appears in the toolbar. Choose a package to add its bundle of charges to the order in one click. See Service Packages.

Deleting the invoice

In the Invoice dropdown, Delete Invoice clears the billing on the request entirely.

Deleting an invoice removes all charges and payments

Delete Invoice deletes every billing charge and every payment on the request — it can't be undone, and you'll be asked to confirm. If the request has any credit card payments, deletion is blocked outright (the option is disabled and labelled "(has CC payments)"); refund those through your payment processor first.

Permissions

The Billing tab follows your Billing permission level:

• View — you can open the tab and see charges, payments, and the summary, but the Add Charge, Add Payment, edit, and toolbar action buttons don't appear.
• Edit — you can add and edit charges and payments and apply a service package.
• Full — additionally lets you delete charges and payments, generate and update the invoice, and delete the invoice.

Sending the invoice email requires Edit on Billing plus Edit on Email. If your role is view-only for Billing, the tab is read-only.

Editor review — remove this callout (and the HTML comment below it) before publishing

A few things only an SME can settle on this page:

• Confirm the workflow framing: is "Initialize Photoduplication makes the Billing tab appear" the way you want staff to think about it, or do most copy requests arrive already initialized (so the manual step is the exception)?
• Confirm the auto-route behavior in the "full payment moves the request forward" note (zero balance while Awaiting Order Approval / Billing / Processing → Awaiting Item Delivery) — and whether the zero-balance auto-process-on-invoice behavior is common enough to mention as it's currently worded.
• Screenshots needed: (1) the Billing tab showing the summary strip, charges, and payments; (2) the Add Charge / Add Payment side panel; (3) the toolbar after an invoice exists (Print Invoice / Send Email / Invoice dropdown).

The full generation metadata — sources, files read, and verifications, i.e. the detail a tool like Claude would need to regenerate this page — is in the HTML comment directly below this callout. When this page has been reviewed and approved, delete both this callout and that comment; a page with no Editor-review callout is one that's done.