Invoices: how one is created and when it is sent
By the end of this article you will know where every invoice in your list came from, what sending one actually does, and which button to reach for when one is wrong.
Where invoices come from
- From a job — the usual way. Open the job and click Create Invoice. The form opens with the customer, the vehicle and every line the job carried, and any deposit held on the job is applied to the invoice the moment it is created. Once a job has an invoice the button becomes View Invoice # with its number, and Create another invoice is there only for the rare case that genuinely needs two.
- By hand — Billing › Invoices › Add Invoice for work that never went through a job. Choose the customer, add lines from your catalog or type them, set the discount, fee and tax.
- Monthly, for customers you bill once a month — a customer set to Monthly invoicing is not invoiced job by job. Their completed jobs wait, and on their invoicing day the app builds one invoice for all of them and sends it. The job page says so: “This customer is invoiced monthly…”, with the date. Invoice now on the customer’s page builds it early.
An invoice from the field works the same way: the technician’s phone creates the draft from the job and settles it there.
Draft, Sent, Paid, Voided
- Draft — a working copy. Edit anything, or delete it. Nothing has been booked and the customer has not seen it.
- Sent — final. The lines are fixed, the amount counts as owed in your books and in Total Receivables, and past its Due Date it counts as Overdue.
- Paid — payments on record cover the total. The app marks it paid on its own; you never do.
- Voided — cancelled after it was sent. It stays in the list under the Voided tab and no longer counts as owed.
Sending
Sending is one click, and it is the only thing that puts the invoice in front of the customer:
- From the form: Create & Send creates the invoice and sends it in one go.
- From a draft: open it and click Send.
The customer gets an email with the line items and the total. If card payments are set up and the invoice has a balance, the email carries a Pay now button that takes them to a page where they pay by card; that link is listed under Payment Links on the invoice and expires after two days — see Send a payment link. A customer with no email address on file still moves the invoice to Sent; hand them the PDF instead.
When an invoice is wrong
- Still a draft: edit it, or delete it from the list. If a deposit already sits on the draft the app refuses to delete it and says so — edit it instead, so the deposit stays applied.
- Already sent, nothing paid: open it and click Void, then create the right one. A voided invoice stays on record.
- Already sent and paid, or partly wrong: leave it and issue a credit memo for the difference. Voiding never refunds money — that is a separate step.
Good to know
- Numbering runs in order across the business and is given when the invoice is created, drafts included, so a deleted draft leaves a gap. The Next Invoice Number and your Default Payment Terms are under Settings › Accounting › Invoicing.
- PDF and print. Download and the print icon are on every invoice. Share on a phone or tablet hands the PDF to any app; on a computer, download it and attach it yourself.
- Notes. Internal Notes never leave the app. Customer Notes print on the invoice and can be given a translation so each customer reads them in their language.
- Who. Creating, sending and voiding need billing edit access — the Admin and Accounting roles. A Manager or Viewer can open and download invoices.