Sales Invoices

An invoice is your bill to a customer. Confirming one records what they owe you and, if the invoice includes goods, takes those goods out of your stock.

Before you start

• The customer must exist — see Customers.
• If you are billing goods, the items must exist — see Stock Items.
• New to documents? How documents work explains draft, confirmed, and the buttons along the bottom of every document. Worth five minutes.

Create an invoice

1. Open Sales›Invoice and click Add.
2. Pick your customer. Their address, Payment Term and Currency fill in by themselves.
3. Check the Date. This is the date the invoice counts from, so it decides which month it lands in.
4. Leave Reference Number empty to have it numbered for you, or type your own.
5. Click Add First Item. Pick the item under Inventory, or leave that blank and just type a Description for something you do not keep in stock.
6. Fill in Qty and Unit Price. The line total and the tax work themselves out.
7. Add each further line with Add row.
8. Click Save Draft to come back to it later, or Confirm to finish it now.

A confirmed invoice shows Confirmed, counts in your reports, and appears on the customer's statement.

A new invoice: the customer and dates at the top, the lines below, the action bar pinned to the bottom.

Change an invoice

1. Open Sales›Invoice and click the invoice.
2. If it still shows Draft, change what you need and click Save Draft.
3. If it shows Confirmed, click Reset to Draft first. The invoice comes back out of your reports and your stock and becomes editable again.
4. Make your change, then confirm it again.

To correct a confirmed invoice you cannot unlock, raise a credit note instead — see Taking goods back and crediting a customer.

Delete an invoice

1. Open Sales›Invoice.
2. Use the … menu at the end of the row, choose to delete, and confirm.

Other things you can do

• Print or email it. Print along the bottom, or the arrow beside it for Email.
• Take payment. Create Receipt opens a receipt already filled in for this invoice. See Receipts.
• Send a payment link. Payment Link gives you a link and a QR code to send the customer. Needs PayNow QR on your plan
• Copy it. Duplicate makes a fresh draft with the same lines and no links to anything else.
• Bill it every month. Set Up Recurring turns this invoice into a repeating one. Needs Recurring Invoice on your plan
• Deliver the goods, or credit them back. Once confirmed, Generate Delivery Order and Generate Credit Note appear. See Turning one document into the next.
• See what it is connected to. Linked Documents lists every document created from this one or that created it.

What can stop you

• If the bottom of the page reads Period Locked, the invoice date falls in a closed month. Change the date, or ask for the month to be reopened. See Financial Periods.
• If you see DOC-0016This document has been used by a downstream document. Remove it first. something has already been created from this invoice. Remove that document first.
• If the bottom reads Locked — has linked receipts or payments, money has been matched to it. Remove the receipt first.
• If the invoice was sent over the InvoiceNow network, it can never be unlocked or deleted. Raise a credit note. See Activating and deactivating InvoiceNow.

Every other reason is listed in Why can't I edit or delete this?