Invoicing a customer

A customer invoice is the document that says “you owe us this much, by this date.” Use this page when you are billing for work rather than goods — a service, a callout, rent, a monthly retainer, a delivery charge billed afterwards.

Where

Financials → Customer Finances → Customer Invoices

Plan

Professional and above

Permission

Receivables → Customer Invoice

What’s new

• An invoice is now itemised. It carries lines — a description or a product, a quantity, a unit price, a discount and tax — and SaleSprint works out the subtotal, discount, tax and total itself. The PDF and the page your customer opens both show the lines.
• Credit sales raise their own invoice. You no longer invoice goods by hand; see credit sales.
• The customer can pay from the invoice, on a hosted page, with no login. See getting paid online.

The line-by-line invoice form in the app is still being built. Until it arrives, the form has one Amount box — see What the form does today below.

Invoice or credit sale?

There is one kind of invoice, and it reaches you two ways.

You are billing for	Do this
Services, fees, rent — nothing leaves your shelf	Raise an invoice here
Goods the customer takes away without paying in full	Make a credit sale. Its invoice is raised for you.

Stocked products cannot go on an invoice you raise here

An invoice raised on this screen never moves stock. So a line that names a product whose stock SaleSprint tracks is refused, with a message naming the product — “…is a stocked product; sell it through a sale”.

Products that are not stock-tracked (a service, a digital item) are fine, and so is a line that is just text.

Before you start

• The customer must be a saved contact. Give them an email address — it is how the invoice reaches them.
• If you charge tax, your tax settings and tax groups must be set up. See tax.
• To let the customer pay online, a payment provider must be available to your workspace. See getting paid online.

Create the invoice

1. Pick your company and branch in the top bar.
2. Go to Financials → Customer Finances → Customer Invoices and click New invoice.
3. Pick the Customer and check the Location.
4. Leave Number blank to have one generated.
5. Set the Invoice date. Set the Due date too, or leave it for SaleSprint to work out — see How the due date is decided.
6. Enter what you are billing.
7. Leave Invoice status on Draft and click Save.

A new invoice is always a draft

Choosing Sent, Paid or any other status while creating an invoice is now refused — “a customer invoice is created as a draft; post it to issue it”. That is deliberate: an invoice only becomes real money owed when you post it.

What the form does today

The app’s form currently has a single Amount box. An invoice saved that way is stored as one line, with no tax, described as Services. The total is the amount you typed.

If you need tax shown on the invoice, or more than one line, that needs the itemised form, which is on its way.

What an itemised invoice holds

Each line carries:

On a line	What it means
Description or product	Free text, or a product that is not stock-tracked. A line with no product must have a description.
Quantity	Must be more than zero.
Unit price	Entered the way your prices are set up — tax-inclusive or tax-exclusive, following your tax settings.
Discount	An amount off the line. It cannot be more than quantity × unit price.
Tax group	Which taxes apply. Left empty, your default tax group is used.
Tax exempt	Charges no tax on that line.

The invoice can also carry Notes, Terms and a payment term.

SaleSprint calculates the money — not the form

The subtotal, the discount, each tax and the total are worked out on the server from the lines, using the same tax rules as the till. Any total sent by the app is ignored, so the figure on the invoice is always the one the lines add up to.

No tax is charged when your workspace does not charge tax, when the customer is marked Tax Exempt, or when the line is.

How the due date is decided

SaleSprint uses the first of these that applies:

1. the Due date you typed;
2. the invoice’s payment term;
3. the Payment Terms (days) on the customer’s record;
4. otherwise the invoice date itself — due on receipt.

Post the invoice

A draft is a private working copy. Nothing is owed, and the customer cannot see it.

1. Open the invoice’s row menu.
2. Click Post to GL.

What happens when you post

• The invoice becomes Sent and the amount is added to what the customer owes. It now appears on their ledger, in AR Aging and on your dashboards.
• Your books are updated: receivables go up, and the total is split between revenue and tax owed — one tax entry per tax on the invoice — so tax is never counted as income.
• The customer is emailed an Invoice issued message with the amount, the due date and a link. See the next section.
• If your business uses approvals for invoices, the invoice waits as Pending approval instead, and all of the above happens when it is approved.

Once posted, the money is fixed

You can still change the dates, the notes, the terms and the payment term. You cannot change the lines, the amount or the currency. To correct a posted invoice, raise a credit note.

If your posting accounts are not set up, the invoice still posts and the customer still owes the money — only the accounting entry is skipped. See setting up your books.

Sending it to the customer

The automatic email

Posting sends the customer an email on its own, provided:

• the customer has an email address; and
• Email the customer about sales is switched on (it is, by default — see what gets sent).

The email shows what is still owed and when it is due.

• If your workspace can take payments online, it has a Pay now button that opens the payment page directly, and an Or view the invoice online link beneath it.
• If it cannot, the button reads View invoice and opens the invoice to view and print — there is no pay button.

Sending it yourself

Use Send from the invoice’s row menu to send it again, or to send it somewhere else. You can send by email, WhatsApp or SMS.

• The email carries the invoice as a PDF attachment, itemised.
• The message includes the same link to the invoice — with a pay button when online payment is available.
• If you name nobody, it goes to the invoice’s customer, using the email and phone on their record. If you type a recipient — your customer’s accountant, say — it goes only to the person you typed.

Print and Download give you the same itemised PDF for yourself.

Reminders carry the link too

Payment reminders, overdue notices and monthly statements all include a link the customer can pay from. They are off until you switch them on — see customer money.

Getting paid

Money can arrive against an invoice three ways, and all three reduce the same balance:

How	Where
The customer pays online from the link	Nothing to do — see getting paid online
You record a payment you received	Financials → Customer Finances → Customer Payments — see customer money
For an invoice from a credit sale, at the till	Add payment on the sale — see credit sales

The invoice moves to Partially paid and then Paid by itself as money is applied.

Related

• Credit sales
• Getting paid online
• Customer money — payments, credit notes, chasing
• Troubleshooting invoices and online payments
• What your customers receive