Invoice and Fiscalise Without an Accounting System
What it is. Billing Studio is a small-business billing system built into your ThatFiscal portal. Every other guide on this page connects ThatFiscal to software you already own. This one is for businesses that do not own any — you raise the invoice here, and it is fiscalised the moment you issue it. Nothing to install, nothing to map, no webhook.
Where it lives
Once it is on, a Billing Studio group appears in your portal sidebar, directly under Dashboard. It holds:
| Screen | What you do there |
|---|---|
| Overview | This month at a glance — invoiced, collected, outstanding, and what is overdue. |
| New Invoice | Raise a tax invoice or a credit note. Save it as a draft, or issue it and fiscalise. |
| Quotes | Quote first, convert the accepted ones into invoices in one click. |
| Recurring Invoices | Rent, retainers, subscriptions — raised on schedule without you remembering. |
| Expenses | Record what you spend and the input VAT on it, so your VAT position is real. |
| Customers | Your customer book — VAT number, address, and every invoice you have ever raised for them. |
| Financial Reports | Sales, VAT, profit & loss and a balance sheet. |
| Money In & Out | Receivables and payables side by side, aged, with your net position. |
| Statements & Reminders | Customer statements as PDFs, and automatic chasing of late payers. |
| Bank Reconciliation | Import your bank statement and match deposits to invoices. |
| Stock | Quantities on hand and cost of goods sold, updated by every invoice. |
| Chart of Accounts | The account codes your reports group by. Set once. |
| Financial Settings | Payment terms, numbering, reminder wording. Manager access only. |
Raise your first fiscal invoice
Add the customer once
Go to Billing Studio → Customers → New Customer, or use the + New option in the customer dropdown while you are already writing an invoice. Capture their VAT number and business address — ZIMRA wants both on a tax invoice to a registered buyer, and after this you never type them again.
Write the invoice
New Invoice, pick the customer, add lines. Prices are VAT-inclusive by default, which is how prices are quoted in Zimbabwe: enter $115.50 and the VAT inside it is $15.50, not $17.90 added on top. Pick an item from your Item Master and the HS code fills itself in.
Save as draft, or issue it
Not finished? Save as Draft. A draft has no invoice number, has not been signed and has not been sent to ZIMRA — you can change or delete it freely. When it is right, press Issue.
The proof comes back
Within seconds the invoice carries its ZIMRA fiscal number, verification code and QR. Download the fiscal tax invoice PDF, or email it to the customer straight from the screen.
The name your customer sees
A walk-in sale used to print as Cash Sale. Every customer now has a Display Name — an editable field that is what actually prints on the receipt and the invoice. Leave it blank and the customer's name is used; set it to Cash Sale, a trading name, or the branch, and that is what appears. The customer list shows a Name on the Receipt column so you can see at a glance what each one prints as.
Getting paid
Money In & Out shows both halves of your ledger on one screen: what customers owe you, aged into current / 1–30 / 31–60 / 61–90 / 90+ days, and what you owe suppliers, from the bills you record there. The difference is your net position.
Statements & Reminders produces a customer statement PDF — every invoice, credit note and payment in date order with a running balance — and runs the reminder ladder for you:
| Days overdue | What is sent |
|---|---|
| 7 | Payment reminder — friendly |
| 30 | Overdue notice |
| 60 | Final notice |
A customer climbs one rung per run. They never get the same letter twice and never skip from friendly straight to final, no matter how long the invoice has been sitting or how often the run happens.
Bank reconciliation
Import a CSV of your bank statement and Billing Studio proposes matches against your open invoices — by reference, by amount and date, or by amount alone. Each proposal is labelled exact, likely or ambiguous. Nothing is settled on import. You review the list; Apply all applies only the exact matches, and everything else waits for you to decide. A wrongly settled invoice stops being chased, so this errs towards asking.
Stock and cost of goods sold
Tick Track stock on an item, give it a cost price, and every invoice you issue moves the quantity and posts the cost of the sale; every credit note moves it back. Costing is weighted average — buy 10 at $8 and 10 at $12 and the cost of the next sale is $10, not $8. Stock is allowed to go negative and is flagged rather than blocked: a sale that has already happened should be fiscalised on time, and the counting problem fixed afterwards.
Leaving? Take everything with you
If you ever move to another system, Billing & Plan → Export My Data gives you one ZIP containing a CSV of every table — customers, items, invoices, invoice lines, quotes, expenses, supplier bills, payments, statements — plus the PDF of every fiscal receipt and Z-report. Standard CSV, opens in Excel, imports into anything. No notice period, no support ticket, no charge. Your device's private signing key is the one thing deliberately left out, and the README inside the ZIP explains why: it is bound to your ZIMRA device registration and copying it out would let somebody sign in your name.