A service claim is the money a workshop or service organisation recovers from whoever covers the work — the principal for warranty repairs and free services, an insurer for accident jobs. In xMatix the claim is not typed after the fact: it is generated from the service order's own lines, because the decision about who pays was already made, line by line, when the work was recorded.
The entitlement decides who pays
Every service order line carries a posting type, filled from the asset's service contract entitlement (falling back to the contract definition):
| Posting type | What happens at billing |
|---|---|
| Generate Invoices | The line bills the customer |
| Generate Claims | The line becomes a claim line on the paying account, created when claims are populated |
| Auto Generate Claims | As above, and the claim is created automatically from the service order |
Because the decision is per line, one job can mix payers: a warranty repair, consumables the customer pays for and an insurer-covered accident line can sit on the same service order, and each party is billed or claimed for exactly its own lines.
The three common lanes are all this one mechanism with different entitlements:
- Warranty — the asset's warranty contract covers the repair; covered lines claim the principal.
- Free service — the free services sold with a vehicle or asset are contract entitlements; when the second free service is performed, the labour the customer does not pay becomes a claim line on the principal.
- Accident job — accident and insurance repair lines follow their own payer lane on the job; whoever the entitlement names as payer is the account the claim is raised on.
Where entitlement is shared, up to three weightage contracts can split a line's value across payers.
Generating and populating claims
Claims marked Auto Generate Claims are created from the service order — one claim per service order, invoice group and contract. For the rest, the claim's Perform Populate Lines action fills claim lines either from a named service order or as an as-on-date sweep across a branch; only work that has been invoiced or delivered qualifies, so a claim can never run ahead of the work. That action is not on the shipped claim page; an administrator has to enable it first (see Trade claims).
Each claim line carries its evidence: the technician, the contract, the service order and the source service-order line, all copied from that line when claims are populated. Claim lines also have Complaint and Complaint Fault fields; populating does not fill them, so enter them by hand where the payer asks for the complaint and fault code. Claimed quantities are written back to the service-order line, so the order always shows how much of it has been claimed.
Deciding and settling
Decisions are per line: approved and rejected quantities, set through each line's Open Checklist dialog or by editing the line. The Approve All button on the shipped claim page runs nothing until an administrator enables it. A partly approved claim settles partially, from the approved figures only. Approval always happens on the claim itself; a claim batch carries rolled-up totals but no approval controls of its own.
The claim's older Perform Reconciliation action raises a sale invoice on the supplier from the approved reimbursement lines and marks the claim reconciled. Like Approve All, it runs nothing on the shipped page. Claims normally settle through the claim settlement setup for their type, as a credit note or invoice on the payer's account — one per claim, or one per batch when the setup groups claims into batches and the batch is settled with Settle Batch.
Submission formats vary by principal, so sending a claim or batch to an OEM's own claim system is handled through integration flows configured per principal, not by a built-in transmission step.
Common questions
Can one service order produce both an invoice and a claim?
Yes — that is the normal case. Posting type is decided per line from each line's entitlement, so the customer is invoiced for their lines and the principal or insurer is claimed for theirs, off the same order and the same visit.
How do free-service claims know what to claim?
From the contract. The free services sold with the asset exist as entitlements on its service contract; when one is performed, the covered lines carry a claims posting type and populate into a claim on the principal with the service order, service-order line and technician attached.
What stops a service line being claimed twice?
Populated lines flag their source and write the claimed quantity back to the service-order line, so a line that has been claimed does not qualify again — and re-running population picks up only what remains unclaimed.