Sometimes the person or company that receives your goods and services isn't the one who pays the bill. A child is looked after by a parent, an employee's expenses are settled by their employer, a patient's treatment is covered by an insurer. NexerIQ handles this with a paying customer relationship: you keep doing business with the customer as usual, but their invoices are automatically billed to the customer who is actually responsible for payment. Don't worry — once it's set up, NexerIQ does the switch for you every time you invoice.
Paying customer relationships are off until you enable them, so the option stays out of your way if you don't need it. To switch it on, go to Settings → Customer Relationships and tick Enable customer relationships, then save. From that moment the Relationships section appears on your customers and the billing switch becomes available when you invoice.
A relationship type is simply the label that describes why one customer pays for another — for example Paying Customer, Guarantor, Employer, Insurance Provider or Sponsor. NexerIQ starts you off with a ready-made Paying Customer type, and you can add as many of your own as you like under Settings → Customer Relationships → Relationship Types.
Each type has a Billing switch. When it's on, choosing that type on a customer redirects their invoices to the related customer. Leave it off and the type is just a label for reference, with no effect on billing.
That's it. The relationship is one-to-one — each customer points to a single paying customer — which keeps things clear and easy to follow. NexerIQ won't let a customer point to themselves, and it will stop you creating a loop where two customers each try to pay for the other.
When you raise an invoice for a customer who has an active paying relationship, NexerIQ automatically issues the invoice to the paying customer instead. The paying customer's billing details — their tax number, payment terms, currency and billing address — are the ones used, and the amount is owed by them. The original customer is still recorded on the invoice as the one who received the goods or services, so nothing is lost from your history.
If you ever need to bill the customer directly for a one-off invoice, just clear the Use billing relationship tick on the invoice before you create it. The invoice then goes to the customer in front of you, and the relationship is left untouched for next time.
Every invoice keeps two names: the service customer (who received the work) and the invoice customer (who pays). Outstanding balances and statements follow the paying customer, because they're the one who owes you — exactly what you'd expect. When you report on your sales, you can group or filter by either side, so you can see both "everything we delivered to this customer" and "everything this customer is paying for".
To stop redirecting a customer's invoices, open them, untick Active in the Relationships section (or clear the related customer entirely) and save. Future invoices go back to the customer themselves; invoices already issued are unaffected.
Tip: use Active when you want to pause a paying arrangement for a while without losing the link — handy when, say, an insurer's coverage lapses and then resumes.