Invoices & payments

An invoice bills your client, on its own, for an order's lines, or for one shipment. It tracks what's been paid and what's still owed.

Billing a project's time and expenses

On a project, the Ready to bill card lists the unbilled billable days, expenses and material. Tick what to bill, pick a new draft or an open invoice under Put it on, and press Add to invoice. Time goes on as lines, and expenses at their cost plus markup. Each is stamped with the line it went on, so nothing is billed twice, and billed time can't be edited or deleted under the invoice.

Creating an invoice

It works like a quote or an order: the client, lines (each with an optional discount), Bill to and Ship to (optional, or Same as Bill to), an optional document discount taken off before tax, tax on each line, an optional shipping charge with its own tax group, payment terms, public and internal notes, an invoice date and a due date.

The invoice date is today unless you change it. Set an earlier one for an invoice you're entering after the fact, so it carries the date it went out.

The due date follows the payment terms, counted from the invoice date. Pick Net 30 and it's 30 days after it, moved to Monday if it lands on a weekend. Picking a client fills in their terms, and the date follows. You can change the date whenever the deal is different, or clear it for no due date; the form then shows what the term would make it. Changing the payment term on an existing invoice saves the new term, prints its wording and works out the due date again from the invoice date.

The number is yours to set. Leave it blank and it comes from your format (default INV-000001), or type your own. You can rename an invoice later, including one raised from an order, as long as the new number isn't in use. The history records the rename.

A Client PO records the client's purchase order reference, up to 100 characters. Invoicing an order copies the order's PO. It prints on the invoice, the PDF and the share link, and you can search for it and show it as a column on the invoices list.

An invoice can have no lines as long as its total is more than zero, for example freight or tax on its own. Invoicing an order with no lines asks you to confirm first.

On the Free plan, your first 50 invoices are free. After that, New invoice, Create invoice and Mark sent are refused until you move to Unlimited. See Plans & billing.

The invoice page

The number, the status, the buttons and the Issued, Due and Balance due cards stay at the top. Everything else is on tabs: Details (the lines and totals, recording a payment, the card on file, credits and write-offs, the payments taken, the addresses and notes), Sharing (the share link, the reminders and the email), Messages, Attachments and History. The tab is part of the address, so you can bookmark an invoice open on a tab.

Statuses and payments

Draft → Sent, then the payment statuses follow from what's paid:

• Record a payment takes a Payment #, Amount, Method (cash, check, bank transfer, card, bank debit, marketplace or other), Date, Reference and Note. The payment number comes from your format (default PMT-000001) unless you type one. Amount boxes show your currency and tidy what you type when you leave the box, so 12.5 becomes 12.50. Today under a date fills it in.
• Clients can pay the invoice themselves on its share link, by card or US bank account. See Getting paid online. Those payments arrive by themselves, marked Online, with the processor's fee and the amount that reached your bank. The client gets an email receipt for an online payment. One you record by hand sends nothing.
• The invoice shows Partially paid or Paid from its payments and always shows the balance due.
• A paid invoice records the paid date: the date of the payment that cleared it. It shows on the invoice and as a sortable Paid date column on the list and in the CSV export.
• Refund (owners and admins) gives money back, through the processor for an online payment, or as a record for a manual one. A refund keeps the payment and nets it out. A part refund makes a paid invoice Partially paid; a full refund puts it back to Sent.
• Remove deletes a payment outright. It's on every payment that didn't come in online.
• Void cancels an invoice. If project time, expenses or material were billed on it, the Void button asks whether to release the work back to unbilled, ticked by default.
• The Status picker under the buttons offers Draft, Sent, Partially paid, Paid and Void. Choosing a payment status, or moving off one, Overdue or Written off, asks you to confirm and is logged.
• Duplicate copies the invoice into a new draft for the same client, dated today, for the client who buys the same thing every month. It keeps the lines, discount, shipping, addresses, terms and the notes the client sees, and works out the due date from the payment term. It starts with no payments, credits, late fees, client PO or project. The client's Sales tab has Duplicate next to their recent invoices. On the API it's POST /invoices/{id}/duplicate.
• Delete removes a draft. Anything further along can't be deleted, so use Archive to take it off the list. Archived invoices are under the list's Archived filter.

What settles an invoice

The balance due is the total less three things:

1. Payments on it. One payment can be split across several invoices (see Credit notes). A refund on a split payment reduces each invoice in proportion.
2. Credit applied from a credit note. An invoice cleared by credit is Paid.
3. Amounts written off as bad debt.

A deposit is its own invoice. The final invoice for the work takes paid deposits off as its own lines, inside its total. See Deposits.

Rebuilding from the order

When you correct an order after invoicing it, the invoice keeps its old lines. Rebuild from order, on an invoice raised from an order and on that invoice's row in the order's Everything tied to this job card, rewrites the invoice from the order as it stands now. It bills the same thing as before (the shipments it billed, or the whole order if nothing had shipped) at the order's current prices, with shipping and any deposit already paid handled the same way as when it was raised. The number, dates and terms stay, and both histories record what changed.

It works on an invoice that is a draft, sent or overdue, with nothing paid and no credit on it. A paid, part-paid, credited, void or written-off invoice says why it can't be rebuilt; raise a credit note instead. A deposit or progress invoice bills an amount rather than the order's lines, so it isn't rebuilt either. After rebuilding an invoice you've already sent, the invoice says Rebuilt on the date ; resend it until you send it again.

Correcting and writing off

Issue credit opens the line picker: what you're crediting, how much of each, and whether the goods are coming back. The invoice stays as it is and the credit note says what's given back. See Credit notes.

Write off records an amount as bad debt. Its Amount box takes all or part of the balance, and any write-off marks the invoice Written off. The sale and its revenue stay as they are, and the amount is reported as a bad-debt expense. Owners and admins only. Change write-off sets a different amount, up to what was owing, and Reverse write-off undoes it if the money turns up.

Void says the invoice should never have existed. Once anyone has paid it, filed it or reported on it, credit it or write it off instead.

When you void an invoice with billed project work, ticking release the work back to unbilled sends the hours, expenses and material back to Ready to bill on the project. Leave it unticked when the client really was charged and a credit note is the correction. The history records which you chose. Voiding from the Status picker releases the work without asking.

Voiding also frees the shipments and payment-plan steps the invoice billed, so they can be invoiced again. Credit applied to it from a credit note goes back to that note and onto the client's account, and the void dialog says how much.

Bringing a void invoice back with the Status picker claims the same work, shipments and plan steps again. If any of them has been billed on another invoice since, the change is refused and names that invoice: void it first. Credit that went back to the client's account stays there; apply it again if you mean to. Payments on the invoice count again, so its status follows them.

The wrong client on an invoice still in draft with nothing paid is fixed on its edit page: pick another client and the bill-to and ship-to addresses and the payment term follow them, with their tax exemption. Prices already on the lines stay as typed. Both clients' history records the move. After that the client is fixed: duplicate the invoice and change the client on the copy. Clear under an address empties it.

A paid or void invoice has Edit details instead of Edit. Its number, client PO, addresses, dates, notes and terms can still change, so a typo doesn't need a status change to fix. Its lines, prices, discount, shipping and totals can't, and the form says so. A void invoice can also be archived, and its payments can still be refunded or removed.

Editing an invoice you've already sent is allowed. The edit page warns that the client's share link will show the change (a PDF they downloaded earlier won't match), and the history records the save as changed after it was sent, with what changed. To change what's owed, issue credit instead.

Payment receipts

Every payment can be printed or emailed as a receipt of its own: what was paid, what it settled and what's still owed. Print receipt and Email receipt are on each payment in the invoice's payments section. The receipt prints on Letter-size paper. An 80 mm till-roll version is available through the API.

Payments & credits

Payments & credits in the Sales menu lists every payment in the workspace. Filter it by method, source (recorded, online or imported), client and paid date, and search it by payment number, reference, note, invoice number or client. It has the same columns, saved views and CSV export as the other lists. Each row links to its invoice.

Record payment there picks the invoice on the form. It lists sent and partially paid invoices, and fills in the amount with the total less what's been paid. Check the amount on an invoice with credit applied or a write-off.

Four kinds of invoice

Most invoices are standard. Three more come from work paid in stages:

• a deposit invoice, raised when a quote that asks for one is accepted;
• a progress invoice, for one stage of a payment schedule;
• a final invoice, which bills the whole contract and takes off what's been paid on the deposit and stage invoices as negative lines.

The deduction takes the deposit's tax off along with its amount, so the deposit and final invoices add up to the work once, tax included. See Deposits, installments and final invoices.

Billing the same thing every month

For a retainer, a maintenance contract or a subscription box, a recurring invoice bills itself on a schedule. Start one with Make recurring on an invoice you've written, or from the Recurring invoices card on the client's Sales tab. See Recurring invoices, cards on file and late fees.

Overdue, and chasing it

A sent invoice that's unpaid past its due date becomes Overdue on the nightly pass, by the date in your workspace's timezone. You don't set it. The invoices list has an Overdue filter and an Age column. Reports → AR aging shows the same money by client, in buckets of current, 1–30, 31–60, 61–90 and over 90 days. If you move a due date out, the nightly pass puts the invoice back to Sent. Recording a payment works as usual.

Payment reminders chase it on the schedule in the Reminders section of Company Settings → Email, once you turn them on: they start off. The steps ready to tick are 3 days before the due date, on the day, and 3, 7 and 14 days after. The Payment reminders card on the Sharing tab shows when the next one goes and what's been sent, with a Pause switch for this invoice and a Send now button. See Reminders, follow-ups and status emails.

Late fees

With late fees turned on in Company Settings → Sales defaults, an invoice past due by more than the grace period gets a fee added as an untaxed line. It's added at most once every 30 days and never past the cap you set. A client with Never charge a late fee switched on (on the client's Money tab) never gets one. The client is emailed when a fee is added. See Late fees.

On the invoice's Details tab a Late fee card says when the next fee goes and for how much, or what has been charged so far. Waive for this invoice (owners and admins) stops any more being added to that one invoice, and Charge late fees again undoes it. Under the card each fee added has Take off (owners and admins), which removes it and lowers the total, paid invoices included. The next fee still waits 30 days from the one taken off, so it doesn't come straight back; waive the invoice to stop fees altogether. Through the API, send lateFeesWaived on PATCH /invoices/{id}, and take a fee off with DELETE /invoices/{id}/late-fees/{lineId}.

Opening balances

Invoices → Add unpaid historical invoice records a debt from before you used OrderDen: a client, an amount and two dates, with no lines.

It arrives as Sent, shows on the AR aging report, gets reminders and takes payments like any other invoice. Three things are different:

• It never counts toward the free 50 invoices.
• It's left out of your revenue: the profit and loss statement, the tax report and the collection rate all skip it.
• It never gets a late fee.

The invoice date is required and has to be on or before the day you created this workspace. A later date is a sale you made in OrderDen, so invoice it normally. The same rule applies to the Issued column when you import invoices. A row that breaks it is reported on its own and the rest of the file still imports.

You can edit an opening balance's number, addresses, notes, customer PO and dates. It has no lines, shipping or discount. Its Amount can be corrected until something is paid, credited or written off against it. After that, if the amount is wrong, void it and enter a new one.

Stock has an opening balance too. See opening stock.

Margin

Under Balance due (or Paid), people who can see costs get the invoice's margin, such as 62.4% margin · $48.10 profit. It's worked out as an order's is, from the lines' costs, the shipping charged and the card fees on its payments; freight you paid is on the order. It says on 3 of 5 lines when some lines have no cost and Margin unknown when none do. It never prints and isn't on the portal or the share page.

What a finished invoice prints

Under the total, every printed, emailed and shared invoice shows Paid (when anything has been), Credit applied and Written off (when they apply), and Balance due. Once nothing is left to pay, the invoice carries a PAID mark under the totals. A written-off or void invoice never gets it.

An invoice prints its own terms and conditions after the lines, copied from Invoice terms under Signatures and terms in Company Settings → Documents when the invoice is raised. If that's blank, it prints the quote terms, and if both are blank it prints none. Changing the setting later never changes an invoice already raised. Set it on one invoice through the API with termsText. The invoice footer can differ from the quote footer too. See Documents & sharing.

Sending and sharing

Send the invoice from the page header with the PDF attached (no recipient is filled in for you, and the client's contacts and your workspace's members are one click each), or create a share link. The client sees the invoice, its balance and your payment instructions (set in Company Settings → Documents) without an account. With a payment account connected, they can pay it there. See Getting paid online. The PDF, the email, a deposit request and a credit note all lead each line with its item number, as the invoice page does.

The History tab records every edit, payment and send, with who did it. An emailed invoice records who it went to, the subject and how it was sent. See Activity & history.

Everything tied to a job

Quotes, orders, invoices, payments and credit notes show an Everything tied to this job card once a document is part of a job. It lists the client's purchase order, the quote, the order and its shipments with their tracking numbers, the deposit and progress invoices, the invoices raised from the order, the payments and credit notes on each one, and the project. Each line links to its page and shows its status. The document you're on is highlighted. The card is the same on every page, so you can go from a payment back to the quote, or from the quote to the payment. Team members who can't see costs see the documents and their statuses without the amounts.