Financials

Financials is the admin-only money view. The period menu at the top holds the presets (Today, Yesterday, 7 days, 30 days, Month, Last month, Quarter, Year), a custom range up to two years back, and the comparison: the previous period of the same length, the same dates last year, or none. Every number shows its change against that comparison. An open period says "so far" so an in-progress month is never mistaken for a closed one. Switching the period, a metric or a breakdown is instant: the page already holds the rows and recomputes in place, and it re-reads the period you are looking at whenever you open it, come back to the tab, or money moves anywhere in CarSignal, without a loading screen.

Every metric carries a definition. Hover or tap the dotted label to read exactly what it counts.

Overview

One card leads: Sales for the period, its change, the chart by hour (Today, Yesterday or a two-day range), day, week or month with the comparison ghosted behind it, and beside it Gross profit (with margin), Cars (with average repair order), Close ratio, and your effective labor rate against the rate you post. Tap any of those figures to open it in Explore. The other money screens (full profit report, customer payments, expenses, tech pay, end-of-day close) sit behind More.

Under the chart:

• Profit statement. Sales split into labor, parts and fees, refunds on the day they happened, net sales, parts cost, technician labor cost, sublet cost, gross profit, shop expenses and net profit, each with its "was" figure from the comparison period. A line whose source is missing says "Not tracked" with a link to set it up; the statement wears an "estimate" tag until parts cost and tech pay are both known. Under it, Store credit outstanding is the credit your customers hold right now: money you owe as future work, never counted as sales or collected.
• Needs attention. Money facts that want a human: invoices past due and the total, invoices waiting to be paid, refunds given, discounts running high, quotes sent and never opened, and setup gaps. Each row has one action. It also carries what you owe vendors ("You owe vendors · N bills · $Y overdue" with the total at the right, hidden when nothing is owed); Bills opens Inventory > Vendors > Bills, where bills are marked paid. A vendor is anyone you pay for a job (parts suppliers, sublet shops, towing); the list and the bills live on Inventory, and Financials shows only the total.
• Who is selling. One row per service writer and per technician: quoted, approved, declined, close ratio, sales, average repair order and hours. A quote or invoice counts for whoever carries the most jobs on it.

Explore

Pick what to show and what to break it down by. Metrics: sales, gross profit and margin, net profit, cars, average repair order, close ratio, effective labor rate, hours billed and clocked, efficiency, discounts, fees collected, refunds, parts cost, labor cost, collected, quoted, approved and average quote. Breakdowns: technician, service writer, job type, labor versus parts versus fees, payment method, vehicle make, customer, source (how the visit found you: a reminder text, a campaign, or the source on the customer's file), inspection (with versus without), expense category, or over time. The period and comparison come from the menu at the top right, the same one every screen uses; Explore adds no filters of its own.

Explore opens on sales by job type. Any breakdown is one ranked list, biggest first, twelve rows then Show all. Over time is one chart: this period in solid bars, the comparison ghosted behind it, red where refunds outweighed sales, with a legend that says so; the grain (day, week or month) follows the length of the period. The paid invoices behind the number wait under one line below; Show them opens the list, and clicking a bar or a row narrows it to that group. Any invoice opens its car. Download the rows as CSV.

Payments

The payments center: one place for payments, refunds, deposits and disputes. The period menu at the top right does not apply here; the list has its own.

The top is a short list of now figures, each with one door:

• Collected today, with how many payments. Collected is money in by any method except store credit, after refunds; refunds and store credit used print beside it as their own words, and the Dashboard shows the same Collected for the same days. Day close opens any day's close: sales rung up (labor, parts, fees, tax on invoices paid in full that day) beside everything collected that day by method, refunds, deposits on open work, store credit used as its own line, plus the cash drawer sessions and their printable close reports.
• On the way to your bank (when you take cards): what the processor holds for you, with the next deposit or payout date. Deposits opens the full list with dates and statuses; on CarSignal Payments a deposit opens to what it was made of (payments, refunds, disputes, bank returns and the fee on each). A day when refunds outran card money shows as a Refund debit.
• Owed to you: open invoices with how many are past due. Each bill owes its total minus the money held (payments minus refunds), the same figure the Dashboard calls Balance due and the customer's statement shows. Receivables opens the list, aged from the due date when the bill carries payment terms and from the day it was issued when it does not (due on receipt), the same ageing as the statement, so a bill without terms is past due after a day; a row opens the car to record a payment, the customer's name opens their account.
• Needs attention rows appear only when something does: disputes open (with the soonest deadline), bank payments that failed, bank transfers still clearing from a customer, refunds still going back, and a cash drawer that closed short or over. Each row says the count and the amount and has one door. Nothing reads "n/a": a row shows a number or is not there.

One list below: Payments. Pick the period (Today, 7 days, Month, or a custom range), what to show (All, Refunds, Disputes, Failed, Pending bank) and the method; the method menu offers only the methods you actually took, by name ("Visa 4242", "Bank transfer", "Cash", "Venmo"), never a code. Each row: when, who and the car, the invoice, the method with its last four, the amount, the net after fees (faint) and the status in a word ("Paid", "Paid · deposit" on work still open, "Voided" when the bill was voided afterwards, with the refund that followed as its own row). The footer says the count and the total for exactly what is on screen. Download CSV of the same rows.

Click a row and it opens in place, as a sheet at the right (a bottom sheet on a phone), never a jump to the car: the amount, the receipt facts (customer, invoice, reference, fee, net to you, status), the actions that exist for that payment (Resend receipt by email, text or both; Record refund, the same refund flow as the invoice, online or counter money; Edit details for a forgotten check number or a corrected method; Collect another way on a failed bank payment), the dispute on it with Respond, and the invoice's own timeline: every payment, refund, pending bank transfer and dispute on that bill. Open invoice is a quiet door inside the sheet.

Disputes (chargebacks) live here, not in Settings. Show: Disputes lists every dispute on file with its state in words ("Needs your response · respond by Nov 2", "Bank is deciding", "Won", "Lost") and the amount; the Needs attention row above counts the open ones. A disputed payment reads Disputed in the list. Respond opens the dispute page under Financials, where you upload the signed invoice and approval record or accept the dispute. See Getting paid for how the money moves.

The method split for a period is a reporting question: Explore, Collected by Payment method. Sales tax is there too: Explore, Sales tax to remit (collected on paid invoices minus tax returned with refunds), by any breakdown or over time.

Commission

What each person earned, for payroll. Pick a person and a pay period (this week, last week, last two weeks, this month, last month): the total, the formula in words, and every job that earned: the paid date, the job and vehicle, the invoice number, the labor and parts it billed, and the commission. It counts invoices paid in the period, from the same rows every other screen reads. The rules themselves (percent of labor, percent of parts, or a flat amount per job, per job type) are set on the member's row in Settings, Team. Hours are on the Dashboard.

Members who are not admins see their own as My commission in the account menu.

The other tools

Open them from More at the top right. They wear the same page as Overview, Explore, Payments and Commission: the period in words at the top left, one period pill at the top right (recent months, quarters or years, with "Show by" to switch between them, and arrows to step), Export Excel beside it, and the three screen tabs to get back. End-of-day close swaps the period pill for a day stepper and a date field.

• Full profit report. The complete P&L with job profitability and a sales-tax card (taxable versus non-taxable sales, tax collected, tax to remit). Its sales, refunds, gross profit, expenses, card fees and net profit are the Overview's figures for the same month, computed the same way. Every job also carries a live estimated gross profit figure on the issue page and on each job row of the vehicle page.
• Customer payments. Your online money in motion on whichever rail you use (Stripe or CarSignal Payments): collected, on the way to your bank, next payout or deposit and the history, with invoice search and refunds.
• End-of-day close. One day at a time: sales rung up, payments by method and how receivables moved, on the shop's local day.
• Cash drawer (on the Dashboard; history under Payments > Day close). The Dashboard says whether the drawer is open and what should be in it; Open drawer takes the starting cash you counted, and CarSignal then expects that float plus every cash payment taken (after rounding), minus cash refunds, plus cash in and minus cash out you record with a reason (a parts run, a bank drop, change from the bank). Count drawer closes it with the counted cash and records the variance (short or over). Closed drawers list under Payments > Day close with a printable close report (Print gives you a clean document under your letterhead, with Counted by and Reviewed by lines), and a drawer that closed short or over shows as one Needs attention row on Payments. The cash figure matches Day close's Cash line for the same hours by construction: both read the same payment rows.
• Expenses and Technician pay. What CarSignal needs to turn sales into profit: recurring and one-time shop costs, and hourly or salary pay per tech.

Where the numbers come from

Sales come from invoices paid in full, on the day they were settled (a later refund never moves a sale off its day); payments and payouts from the payments ledger and the processor; refunds from the refund ledger on the day they happened; disputes and pending bank transfers from the processor's notices; quotes from what you sent; expenses and pay rates from what you enter. A refund reduces sales only when the refunded invoice is a sale, and only by its pre-tax share (the tax share comes off sales tax to remit); a refund on a voided or never-paid invoice is money out on Payments, not a reduction of sales. Card processing fees are what the processor kept on every payment taken in the period, shown as their own line under net profit, never taken out of sales. Average repair order is net sales divided by the invoices settled in the period, the same rule on the Dashboard. Overview, Explore, Payments and the Full profit report read the same rows through the same arithmetic, so a tile, a chart, a table and the report can never disagree. A percentage change is shown only when it can be stated honestly: no base in the comparison period, or a jump past ten times, reads "n/a" with the reason on hover.

Processor reports (CarSignal Payments). Under More, Customer payments, Open reports shows every payment and every deposit as the processor has them, with a CSV export for any 31-day range for your bookkeeper. Money roles can also refund a payment from that table; it lands in the same ledger as a refund from the invoice.