SOP: paying techs (End-of-Day)

Two paired tools under Admin: End-of-Day Summary (pay techs daily) and Tech Balances (rolling cash each tech owes us).

The model in one picture

flowchart TD
  CASHPAY[Tech collects CASH on a job] -->|Immediately at recording| BAL[Tech's cash balance goes UP<br/>they owe us that cash]
  JOBS[Tech completes jobs today] --> OWED[Labor owed for the day<br/>plus any tech-fronted parts]
  OWED --> EOD{End-of-Day: Mark paid}
  BAL --> EOD
  EOD -->|"payout = max(0, owed − balance)"| PAYOUT[We pay the tech the difference]
  EOD -->|"balance = max(0, balance − owed)"| NEWBAL[Balance pays itself down]
  HANDBACK[Tech hands cash back] --> CLEAR["Clear balance (Tech Balances page)"]

Example: tech’s balance is $100 (cash they collected), today’s labor is $120 → we pay $20 and the balance clears to $0.

Daily SOP — End-of-Day Summary

1. Open Admin → End-of-Day Summary (defaults to today; you can step back days).
2. One row per tech who completed a job that day — jobs count, pay owed, their cash balance, to pay, and a Paid/To-pay badge.
3. Click a row (View jobs) to see the per-job breakdown — a Work line plus a Parts (tech paid) line when the tech fronted parts. It reconciles to the Pay-owed column.
4. Hit Mark paid per tech. That settles the day: pays labor net of their cash balance, stamps the jobs tech-paid, and writes an audit row.

Notes:

• We pay techs for jobs they complete — customer payment does NOT gate the payout.
• Settled techs stay visible (marked Paid), so stepping back a day or two is safe.
• There is no per-job “mark tech paid” — payouts only happen through End-of-Day.

Cash balances — Tech Balances page

• Cash a tech collects rides onto their balance the moment the payment is recorded — not at settle time. Editing a payment amount or switching to/from cash adjusts the balance (never double-counts, never goes below $0).
• Tech Balances shows every tech with a balance > 0. When a tech physically hands cash back, use Clear balance there.
• Every movement (cash collected, EOD payout, balance clear) writes an audit row, so any balance can be explained job-by-job.
• We never refund customers out of a tech’s pocket — refunds go out by Zelle from us.

Tech-fronted parts

Normally we buy parts. When a tech pays out of pocket:

1. On the job’s Money section, tick the “Tech paid” checkbox next to that part in the parts list — no re-typing amounts.
2. The part cost is reimbursed on top of labor at End-of-Day and shows as its own Parts line in the breakdown.
3. Margin/ROAS never double-count it — the part cost was already a job cost; it’s just flowing through the tech.