When your company moves to the new close-out flow, a Completed Meld is no longer finished. A Coordinator verifies each Meld whose work has ended, then closes it without a bill or bills it, and only then does the Meld reach Closed. This article explains what changes for AppFolio customers and what each role does to move over. Expenditures are now called Costs.
Availability: Rolling out to AppFolio customers first, with other integrations to follow.
Who This Affects
The move to verification and billing changes daily work for Coordinators, setup work for people who manage billing settings, and how Technicians record time and parts.
- Who this is for: Coordinators, people who manage billing settings, and Technicians.
- Applies to: AppFolio customers moving to the new close-out flow, whether or not your company bills Owners or its own entities for maintenance. Customers on the billing beta have one extra section below.
- Access needed: Agent (the platform role for property management company staff who coordinate Melds). The Verify and Bill pages also need the Add/Edit Bills permission. Technicians use the Maintenance role.
These changes are part of TrueCost, which captures the full cost of a Meld and confirms it before the Meld closes, so costs are recovered instead of absorbed.
What's Different
Knowing what changed keeps your team from relying on steps that no longer apply. The table below compares the old way with the new close-out flow.
| Area | Before | Now |
|---|---|---|
| Where a Meld ends | Completed was the last status of a Meld. | Completed, Canceled and similar statuses become the Meld's resolution. The Meld then moves through verification, then billing or No Bill Needed, to Closed, its final state. |
| Finished Melds | No pages for Melds whose work had ended. | Three pages under Melds in the sidebar: Verify (the Review & Verify page), Bill (the Ready to Bill page) and Closed. |
| Parts and other paid items | Tracked as Expenditures, with a cost and a price charged to the Owner on each line. | Added as Costs on the Meld's Costs tab, with Add Cost or Upload Receipt. What you charge, including any cost markup, is set on the bill. |
| Labor | Could be entered as an Expenditure line. | Comes only from Technician work logs: your shop rate sets its cost, and your billing rate sets what you bill. |
| Declined Vendor invoices | Counted toward a Meld's cost totals. | Don't count toward a Meld's cost totals. |
| Melds that don't need a bill | Nothing to mark. The Meld stayed Completed. | Marked No Bill Needed with a reason, by a Coordinator or by a No Bill Needed rule when a Coordinator verifies the Meld. |
Dashboard filters and workflows work as they did before the change.
Move Over to the New Flow
Setting up in this order, as soon as the new close-out flow appears for your company, gets your settings ready before Coordinators start verifying, so they don't fix bills or close Melds one by one afterward.
- People who manage billing settings choose how Melds close without a bill, under Account Settings > Billing Settings, on the Billing tab, in No Bill Needed Defaults. The right setting depends on whether your company bills for maintenance. Closing Out Completed Melds matches each situation to a setting, and Set Up No Bill Needed Rules has the steps.
- If your company bills Owners or its own entities for maintenance, people who manage billing settings also complete Set Your Labor Rates and Cost Markup and Set Up and Use Billing Profiles. They also decide how bills reach AppFolio, including whether to send them as bills with Export Bills as Bills. See Set Up Bill Sync to AppFolio. Whether your company creates bills, and how it exports them, is your choice. Verification applies either way.
- Coordinators work through the Review & Verify page, then bill each verified Meld or close it without a bill. See Verify Completed Melds, Bill a Verified Meld and Close Melds That Don't Need a Bill.
- Technicians check in and out of each Meld so their time counts as labor, and add parts as Costs in the Technician mobile app. See Check In and Out of a Meld to Log Your Time and Add Costs and Receipts in the Technician Mobile App. Coordinators add Costs on the web with Add Parts and Other Costs to a Meld.
What Happens to Melds You Already Have
Knowing what happens to existing Melds and Expenditures when the new flow starts tells Coordinators where to look first, so work in progress isn't lost or billed twice.
- Melds on the Review & Verify page: a setting controls the start month for the new flow, so your company decides which existing Melds appear on the Review & Verify page.
- Expenditures that hadn't synced or been approved: each one becomes a draft bill on its Meld, with the same lines, GL codes and markup. Its parts and other lines are also copied to the Meld's Costs tab. Labor and Vendor invoice lines aren't copied as Costs, because work logs and Vendor invoices already count them. A markup on an old labor line doesn't carry over to the draft bill, because labor is never marked up.
- Expenditures that had synced or been approved: they stay as finished bills.
Review each draft bill before you approve it, because your team didn't build it in the new flow.
If You Used the Billing Beta
Customers on the billing beta already use bills and Costs, so their data stays as it is and only the flow around it changes.
- Creating a bill: you no longer start a bill from the Meld. Verified Melds wait on the Ready to Bill page, or you choose Verify and Create a Bill in the Verify Work Completed flyout.
- Seeing costs: the cost total panel is gone. Costs live on the Meld's Costs tab.
- No Bill Needed: mark it from the Verify Work Completed flyout or the Ready to Bill page, or let a No Bill Needed rule mark it when a Coordinator verifies the Meld. To undo it, open the Meld details and select Mark as Bill Needed.
- Tracking Melds that need a bill: if your team used saved filters for this, the Ready to Bill page now lists those Melds.
What to Watch For
Watching for these after the switch keeps Melds from stalling and keeps the full cost of each Meld accurate.
- A Completed Meld isn't finished. If a Meld doesn't reach Closed, check that it's verified, and that it's billed or marked No Bill Needed.
- Open work logs: Technicians check out of their own open work log before finishing a Meld, on the web and in the Technician mobile app. In the Technician mobile app, another Technician's open work log must also be checked out before finishing. On the web, someone else's open work log shows Coordinators a warning but doesn't block finishing. Verifying a Meld with an open work log shows a warning and doesn't block billing or No Bill Needed.
- Labor entered as a cost: labor belongs in work logs. Adding it to Costs counts it twice in the full cost of a Meld.
- Draft bills your team didn't create: they come from Expenditures that hadn't synced. Review them before approving.
- The permission name: the permission for the Verify and Bill pages is Add/Edit Bills, which replaces Add/Edit expenditures.
Get Help With the Change
For the whole close-out flow, see Closing Out Completed Melds. For anything else about the move to verification and billing, see Contacting Customer Support.