Charges, Levies & the Consumables Charge

Inventory → Charges holds everything you charge that is not a part and not labour: the consumables / sundries charge, and your charges & levies -- a CVRT test fee, the tyre disposal levy, a disposal fee. This is the one place they are set. The garage admin changes them; the front desk can see them but not change them. Everything saves with the Save bar at the bottom of the page.

Charges & levies

A charge is billed like a part on quotes, jobs, approval pages, invoices, credit notes and the accounting export -- at its own price and its own VAT rate. But a charge is never stock:

  • It is never stock-checked and never shows To order, From stock or On order.
  • It is never in Order parts, a purchase order, goods-in, the stock check, the reorder list or the value of your stock.
  • It has no fitment check, no supplier suggestions and no markup -- its price is the price you set.
  • Reports show it as charges & fees, never as parts sales or parts margin.
  • It is not part of the consumables charge: a percentage consumables charge is worked on the work without the charges, and a job or quote with only charges has no consumables charge.
  • In the accounting export, a test fee (named like one -- CVRT, NCT, MOT, "... test" -- or on a CVRT / NCT / MOT job type) posts to your MOT / NCT sales nominal; the tyre levy posts to Tyre Sales. Set those codes in Settings → Accounting.
  • In the part search, a charge is listed after the parts that match the same words.

Each charge has:

  • Name -- what the customer sees on the quote and the invoice ("CVRT test").
  • Price -- ex VAT, for one. No markup is ever added.
  • VAT rate -- the rate the charge bills at. Garage default (23%) = your garage's standard rate.
  • On / Off -- an Off charge is never added by its rules and is not offered to the desk.
  • Add with every tyre -- added automatically to any quote or job with tyres, one per tyre. Use it for the tyre disposal levy.
  • Add to every job of type -- tap a job type to add the charge every time that job type is booked or quoted ("CVRT" adds the CVRT test fee).

Under each switched-on charge, one line says what adds it: added with every tyre, added to CVRT jobs, or not added by any rule — only when someone adds it to a job.

Add charge adds a row; the bin removes one. A charge that is already on a job or a quote cannot be removed -- switch it off instead.

The two examples

Every garage starts with two charges: CVRT test and Tyre disposal levy (with Add with every tyre ticked). They are on, at a price of 0.00, at your standard VAT rate -- MechIQ never guesses a price. Set your price, or switch them off.

A charge with no price

While a switched-on charge has no price, it is still added by its rules, so you can see it work. The desk sees Price not set -- set it in Inventory → Charges on the line. The customer never sees the line: it is left off the quote page, the approval page, the PDFs and the invoice. It carries no money, so no total changes. A banner on this tab and a note above the Inventory list say which charges have no price, and what adds each one.

What the front desk sees

The front desk sees this tab read-only: each charge with its price (or Price not set), VAT rate and what adds it, and the consumables charge in one sentence. The banner tells the desk to ask the owner to set a price. To bill a charge on one job, the desk adds it on the job like a part -- by searching its name.

Charges added with tyres

When tyres are added to a quote, a job or an online tyre booking, each Add with every tyre charge is added as one line whose quantity is the number of tyres. It follows the tyres: more tyres, a bigger quantity; fewer tyres, a smaller one; the last tyre gone, the line goes. A line is a tyre when its part is in a Tyres category in your parts list, or it came from the online tyre booking.

The front desk can remove the levy from a quote or a job (like the consumables charge). It then stays removed for that quote or job, whatever happens to the tyres -- and a quote booked as a job keeps it removed. To charge it again, add the charge to the job by hand.

On a job with extra work waiting for the customer's answer, a levy for tyres in that extra work waits with them, so the customer approves the tyres and their levy together.

Charges added with a job type

A charge with job types ticked is added once when one of those job types is booked (by the desk or online) or quoted, at a quantity of 1. Applying the job type again does not add it twice. If the desk removed it, it is not added again. The online booking price shows it, so the price the customer books at is the price on the invoice.

A charge bills on top of a fixed-price (menu) job type -- a fixed price never includes it.

The consumables / sundries charge

Seals, gaskets, clips, washers, fluids. No charge (default; covered by labour margins), Percentage of job total (with an optional cap in €, ex VAT), or Flat fee per job (ex VAT). Added as its own line on every quote, every online-booking price and every invoice -- worked out the same way on all of them (a percentage is worked on labour and parts only, never on your charges and levies), so the price a customer is given and the invoice for the same work agree. It goes on top of a fixed menu price. It is charged once per job: extra work the customer approves later adds only what it raises the charge by -- nothing for a flat fee, its share of a percentage up to your cap. The front desk can remove it from a single quote or job (before it is invoiced) -- see Invoicing & Checkout and Quoting.

VAT rate on the consumables charge -- shown once a charge is set. Standard (default) keeps it at your default VAT rate; pick another of your rates if you charge consumables with your labour (13.5% in Ireland, say). When the front desk puts a whole job on one VAT rate, the consumables line on that job goes with it.

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