---
title: Payments and billing
description: A catalogue, charges and subscriptions, invoices, and payments online, by transfer or in cash.
section: Server
order: 7
---

# Payments and billing

<p class="lead">Sluurp includes billing: what you charge for, who owes what, invoices, and payments, online, by bank transfer or in cash. Anyone who bills people can use it, from a school's canteen to a club's membership.</p>

## The pieces

| | |
|---|---|
| **Issuer** | Who bills: a school's committee, the club that runs after-school care. Each has its own bank account, invoice numbers and online payments |
| **Item** | A thing in an issuer's catalogue, with a price and a unit: each, day, month or year |
| **Account** | Who a charge is for, such as a pupil. Who pays for an account comes from the app's own data (`custodies` by default), so billing keeps no second list of families |
| **Charge** | One thing billed to one account: posted by hand, for a whole class at once if need be, or made from a subscription |
| **Subscription** | Charged each period: hot meals on Mondays and Thursdays, a monthly fee, a year of chess club |
| **Invoice** | An account's open charges, with a number, a due date, and a structured reference that a bank transfer is matched by |
| **Payment** | Settles invoices: a transfer, cash at the desk, or online |
| **Wallet** | Money paid ahead and spent as it goes. A reserved meal is taken from it at once, and put back if cancelled in time |

Every amount is a whole number of cents, never a float.

## Billing a period

```ts title="app.ts"
const billing = sluurp.billing;

await billing.charge({ account: pupil.id, item: trip.id });   // one charge
await billing.run({ dry: true });                             // what a run would invoice
await billing.run({});                                        // count subscriptions, invoice open charges
```

`remind(id)` mails a reminder for an unpaid invoice, and `cancel(id)` cancels one.

## Being paid

- **Online,** with Stripe or Mollie, whichever the issuer uses; both offer cards and Bancontact. `billing.pay({ invoice, back })` answers a `url` to send the person to, and they come back to `back` with `?paid=<id>`. The provider's webhook records the payment.
- **By transfer:** paste the bank statement's lines into `billing.match(lines)`, and each is matched to its invoice by its reference. `dry` shows the matches first.
- **In cash:** `billing.record(payment)` at the desk.
- **Topping up a wallet:** `billing.pay({ account, issuer, amount_cents })`, between €1 and €1,000.

## Who may do what

Managing (the catalogue, charges, runs, recording payments) is a rule, `manage`, in the billing settings: without one, only superusers may. Everyone else sees the accounts they pay for, and their own. `billing.certificate(account, year)` gives what was paid in a year that may be deducted from tax, per issuer: in Belgium, childcare for a child under fourteen.

The admin UI's **Payments** screen sets up the Stripe and Mollie accounts.