Adding a sales invoice

You can add and send sales invoices to your customers.  You can also use the facility to enter historic items if you are catching up with your accounts or are entering invoices relating to a previous year that need to be shown as debtors.  However, the main use is to provide the ability to create an invoice and either print the invoice from a PDF or send an email to your customer.

New Invoice

Navigate to the invoicing section by clicking 'Work > Invoices'.

Then click on the "Create New Invoice" button or "Create my first invoice" if this is your first time. 

Create a new invoice

Date

Today's date will be shown automatically when the new invoice is first loaded.  You can overwrite this and enter a new date - historic or future - to the invoice.  Date can be written in a variety of ways by typing 31052019, 310519, 31/05/2019 or 31/05/19 - these all would give a result of 31st May 2019, or selected using the calendar.

 

Due Date

The due date of the invoice is calculated by the setting within the invoice settings page.  The date will be pre-populated with the calculated date based upon number of days.  This date can be overwritten if needed.

 

Ref

Enter a reference for the invoice. This can either be one that makes you recognise what the invoice is without viewing it, (eg: Service provider for May 20XX) or a reference number provided by your client.  

Contact

You can search for an existing customer by typing part of the customer name - either the first or any part of the name will work. When searching, a drop down menu will appear with the results - this will slowly decrease as you type to filter the results. If the selected customer is showing click on the name with your mouse or hit enter on the keyboard.

If the contact does not existing click on the grey '+' to add new contact to enter limited information in order for you to create an invoice.

The account reference and account name fields are mandatory.  If you want to send the invoice via email immediately (though bear in mind you will not have an address), enter the contact name and email address as well.

Click on save, the pop up will close and the new name will be populated in the contact field.

 

Project

You are able to allocate projects to your invoice.  Projects are set up within another area of the software.  Only projects that have been allocated to a customer will be shown - thus once you have added in a contact the project results will update with the available projects to assign.

Invoice Number

The invoice number is automatically generated from the invoice settings page.  If you have used a previous invoicing system then you should use the last invoice number from this system. Alternatively, if this is your first invoice, you can leave this alone.

 

It is not advisable to regularly change the invoice number or prefix and my recommend they maintain a chronological order. 

Credit Note

To add a credit note, please click the options slider  in the top right and choose to

 

Invoice Items

There are two types of invoice lines you can add into the invoice.  

 A normal line e.g. the services or products you sell. This will display as default when creating an invoice, or adding a new item. 

or an expense you want to re-charge to your customer / client. This will only be visible, once an expense or bill item has been allocated to your customer / client in the Expense Claim or Bills sections. 

Line Items

Nominal Code

This is the account code that is used to assign the invoice line to an income category.

For sales the standard code is '2000 Sales - Type 1

Line Ref

Enter the invoice details you want your customer to see on the invoice you will send them.

Qty

You can enter a quantity to your invoice.  This could be used either with selling products or selling units/billable time for your services.

Amount

Price for the line item.  Again, this could be a product amount or a chargeable hourly rate. The system will automatically assume this is NET of VAT (excluding VAT). If the amount you have entered includes VAT, please change the NET field to GROSS. 

VAT Rate

If you are VAT registered then you will need to assign VAT to the invoice line.  The drop down will display all relevant rates.

If you are not VAT registered, you will not see the VAT options. 

VAT

The VAT calculated box will automatically calculate the VAT from the option you have chosen within the VAT Rate field.

 

Re-charge expenses

There maybe times you want to re-charge an expense you have incurred to your customer via the invoice - e.g. travel or equipment you have purchased on behalf of them.

Click on Add Recharge items

 

When you enter expenses or supplier payments you are given the option to allocate them as Recharge to Customer.

This can be accessed using the Expense Items Options button:

 

When you click on Add Recharge Items from the sales invoice page, all expenses that have already been allocated to the customer (from the supplier page) will be available to add in to the invoice.

To add in an expense, tick the box next to the expense you want to recharge, and select:

Once the expense has been added to an invoice (and the invoice saved) the expense will no longer be shown for claim. Make sure that you select the appropriate VAT rate. 

 

Approve Invoice

 

Clicking on Approve Invoice will save the invoice and it will be added to the sales ledger and various other reports.  The invoice can be printed and/or emailed at a later date.  Payments can also be allocated to it also.

If any of the mandatory fields are missing from the invoice, the approval will fail and you will be shown which fields need further attention

Email, View and Download the Invoice

  

To email, view or download the invoice click the options button and select the relevant option

Email

Email Addresses

The email address is taken from the contact details for the customer or can be added in the 'Send to Email Addresses box. Additional email addresses can be added by clicking the grey + icon. 

Email Subject

This is pre-populated for you using the invoice number and company name.  You can change the Email Subject if necessary.

Email Content

This is pre-populated for you using the invoice number, company name, invoice amount and payment due date.  You can change the Email Content if necessary.

Send Email / Cancel

If you are happy with the email, click on send.  This will send the email immediately to the customer and attach a PDF version of the invoice to the email.

Click on cancel to return to the previous screen.