Settlements: The Spreadsheet Retires, the Contract Does the Math

A settlement is the financial close of an inbound order: what your team owes the client, or keeps, for a batch that came in under a contract — after processing, service fees, shipping and adjustments. In most ITAD operations that calculation lives in a spreadsheet one finance person maintains and nobody else dares open. On the platform it lives under /finance/settlements, it reads the contract, and it is visible to the admin, manager and finance roles — the same fence escrow already had.

Five pricing models

Each contract carries one pricing model: per unit, per kilogram, revenue share, fixed fee or hybrid. Per-unit, per-kg and fixed-fee contracts multiply their tariff; revenue share pays the client a percentage of what each device actually brought in; hybrid combines per-unit rates with a revenue-share percentage. The tariff fields sit on the create-contract screen. A model without its tariff gets a hint while you fill the form, a confirmation checkbox if you activate the contract anyway, and New settlement refuses to settle an order under such a contract. A settlement of zero euros is the kind of mistake that costs a client’s trust, so the platform declines to produce one.

Generated when the goods are done

A settlement is not fired by a trigger; someone asks for it. New settlement on the settlements list opens a picker of received or completed inbound orders that have a contract attached and no settlement yet — one settlement per order. Generate settlement on the inbound order does the same from the other side. Before writing anything, the platform checks that the assets are terminal (sold, shipped, recycled or scrapped) or past the stage that requires the settle action; an order still mid-processing is turned away with the reason. If a settlement already exists for the order, the existing one opens instead of a duplicate.

What a revenue share is a share of

Under a revenue-share contract the settlement shares what each device actually sold for — a direct sale, or its share of a closed market deal or a settled auction lot — not what it looked like worth at grading. A recycled device counts zero; only a device that has not sold yet carries its grading estimate as a stand-in, and the line says so. While the settlement is a draft, Calculate re-reads the sale prices. The full rule has its own article: Revenue Share: Paying Out on What the Laptop Sold For, Not What It Looked Like.

Draft to paid

Statuses run draft, calculated, pending approval, approved, invoiced and paid, with disputed off to the side. The next-action button walks that path one step at a time. Service lines are added or removed while the settlement is a draft, and that is where a substantive correction goes — not in the status button. On an approved settlement, Generate invoice creates a real invoice for the settlement’s client, links it and moves the settlement to invoiced. If an invoice already exists it is linked rather than duplicated, and a separate button lets you link one by hand. A draft settlement can only be deleted before an invoice exists; a settlement under an invoice stays.

Currency snapshot and the report

When the settlement’s currency differs from your base currency, the settlement stores the exchange rate it used, when that rate was taken and which source delivered it. Amounts are always shown in the settlement’s own currency, and a closed settlement is never quietly re-translated because the rate moved. The printable report at /finance/settlements/[id]/report carries the line items with their value basis, the services and the totals, and prints or saves as PDF from the browser. The spreadsheet is retired. The contract remembers what it promised.

Service charges for a processing order

For the data-destruction workflow, or an order whose devices all return to the client, a new settlement bills the service. Six devices at 12 euros plus an explicitly selected fixed fee of 10 euros total 82 euros before VAT. Services and shipping add to the amount. The saved device scope, prices and currency remain the basis when recalculating; historical settlements keep their original meaning.

Every applicable device category needs a tariff. Per-kilogram billing requires a measured weight for exactly these devices; an estimate cannot replace it. Contract service overrides take precedence over catalog prices. A catalog price is not relabelled in another currency. Linking an existing invoice checks the customer, currency and subtotal. Repeating creation reuses the existing record, and an audit failure also rolls back the financial change.