Cashing Out a Repair Order, and Reopening One

On a repair order, the button that closes it is labelled Cash Out, at the bottom of the FINANCIAL SUMMARY panel. It stays disabled until a specific list of conditions is met, and on a Multitype RO each of the Retail, Internal and Warranty sections must be settled on its own before the whole RO can be cashed out. This article covers that list, and how to reopen a single section of a closed Multitype RO without disturbing the rest.

Questions this answers

• "I finished the repair order, the customer paid, but the Close button won't let me close it — what am I missing?"
• "This repair order has both retail and warranty work on it and it's closed, but I only need to reopen the warranty side to fix a mistake — can I do that without reopening the whole RO?"

This article is only about closing and reopening service and parts invoices in Parts & Service. It is not about voiding an invoice, and it is not about which statuses your dealership has set up — for that, see the invoice statuses article.

Hover the button first

When Cash Out is disabled, hovering over it shows the reason. There is no pop-up message and no failed save — the button simply does nothing until the reason is cleared. The messages you can see are:

• Save the invoice first.
• Service Writer is required. (On a parts invoice this reads Salesperson is required.)
• Invoice balance due must be zero.
• Aggregate and labor-type balances must be zero before cash out. (On a parts invoice, Invoice balance must be zero before cash out.)
• Cannot cash out: need customer, vehicle, line items, non-estimate status. — whichever of those four are missing are listed.

The full checklist

1. The RO has been saved and has an invoice number. A brand new RO cannot be cashed out until it is saved once.
2. A Service Writer is assigned. On a parts invoice this is the Salesperson instead.
3. The status is not an estimate. Statuses are set up per dealership under Settings, and each one is tied to a type. Any status whose type is Estimate blocks cash out, whatever you have named it. Move the RO to an Open-type status first.
4. A customer and a vehicle are attached, and there is at least one line item. A service RO needs all three. A parts invoice needs at least one part instead.
5. The balance due is zero. Take the remaining payment with Collect Payment until the balance reads zero. Rounding is allowed only to a fraction of a cent, so a balance of one cent still blocks it.
6. On a Multitype RO, every applicable section's balance is zero too. This is the one that catches people out — see below.

Multitype repair orders: each section cashes out separately

When the RO Type is Multitype, the FINANCIAL SUMMARY panel splits into tabs: Multi Cash Out, Retail, Internal and Warranty. Each tab has its own totals and its own balance.

On an individual tab the button reads Cash Out Retail, Cash Out Internal or Cash Out Warranty, and settles just that section. The whole-RO Cash Out button only appears on the Multi Cash Out tab, and it will not enable while any applicable section still carries a balance — even if the overall total happens to net to zero.

So when the customer has paid their retail portion in full and Cash Out is still grey, check the Internal and Warranty tabs. A warranty section with an outstanding balance and no payment applied is the usual culprit. Settle each tab, then return to Multi Cash Out.

Reopening a closed repair order

When an RO is closed and you have permission to reopen it, a Reopen button appears in the toolbar at the top of the screen. Two things control whether you see it: your user record must have the reopen permission for that document type, and you must be switched to the lot the RO belongs to. If the button is not there and the RO is closed, see the Parts & Service access article.

Clicking it opens CONFIRM REOPEN, which names the invoice and its RO Type and warns that reopening sets the status back to Open and allows further changes. Click Yes.

Reopening only one section

On a Multitype RO, Yes does not reopen anything yet — it moves you to a second step listing a checkbox for each section that is currently closed: Reopen Retail, Reopen Internal, Reopen Warranty. All of them start ticked. Untick the ones you want left alone, leave Reopen Warranty ticked, and click Reopen. At least one must stay ticked.

Only the sections you tick are reopened. A section you leave unticked stays closed, and its lines and payments are untouched. The RO itself goes back to an Open status so you can edit, and you get a confirmation naming what was reopened and telling you the lines for that labor type are editable again.

You do not have to do this from the reopen dialog. As the dialog itself says, you can also reopen a section later from the Financial Summary tab — switch to the closed section's tab and use the Reopen Retail / Reopen Internal / Reopen Warranty button there.

After reopening

Payments already taken on a reopened section stay on the RO; reopening does not reverse them. Fix the lines, then cash the section out again from its own tab, and finish with Cash Out on the Multi Cash Out tab once every section is back to a zero balance. If your correction changes the amount owed, collect or refund the difference through the payment controls rather than editing a taken payment.

An RO that has never been saved cannot be reopened — you will see a message that the invoice cannot be reopened until saved.