Buying and booking
What happens after you order
The order reference, the confirmation, the invoice, and where to look when somebody asks.
On this page
An order is confirmed the moment you place it. There is no queue at City Council's end and nobody has to approve it there.
What you get
- A reference. Shown on screen and in the confirmation email. It is what to quote if you ever need to.
- A confirmation email listing the lines, net, VAT and gross, and your purchase order number if you gave one.
- An entry in the activity log saying who placed it and when. See the activity log.
Where to find it again
Your orders lists everything your school has placed, newest first, with its lines and its status. Anything with a term attached also appears on your contracts, which is the better page for "what do we currently hold".
What happens next, on the council's side
Order lines are gathered into a finance run and sent to the council's ledger, which is what produces the invoice. That happens on the council's own schedule rather than immediately, so a day or two between ordering and an invoice appearing is normal rather than a fault.
Your purchase order number travels with the line into that file. If you did not give one at checkout and your finance team needs it, a System Admin at City Council can add it to the order before the run — ask in the bubble with the order reference, and it is a small job rather than a re-order.
Paying
Most schools are invoiced. Where City Council has enabled card payment you will see a Pay button on the order, and a settled card payment is excluded from the invoice run so you are never billed twice for it. See purchase orders, invoices and paying by card.
Changing your mind
What is possible depends on what it was.
- A training place can be cancelled or the delegate swapped, with the charge shown before you confirm. See naming, substituting and cancelling.
- An annual agreement runs to the end of its term and the decision point is the renewal, not the order. See renewals.
- Anything already invoiced is corrected with a credit note rather than by deleting the order, because the accounts have to keep saying what happened. Ask in the bubble with the reference.
Orders somebody else started
City Council can put a proposal together for you — a quote you asked for, a package worked out over the telephone. It arrives on your proposals page as something to accept or decline. It is never an order until your school accepts it.
Not what you were after?
Ask City Council in the bubble at the corner of any page, or open your help conversation in full. It is one conversation that never closes, so there is nothing to raise and no subject line to invent.