4. Invoice lines | Micropedia

The lines are what the customer is paying for. There are three kinds, and only one of them counts towards the total.

Three kinds of line

Kind	What it is for
Product line	Something the customer is paying for. Has a quantity and a price, and counts towards the total.
Text line	A line of text with no numbers. Use it to explain something on the invoice itself. It has no effect on the total.
Section	A heading that groups the lines under it, with its own subtotal. Use it to break a long invoice into parts, for example one section per site or per phase.

All three are added from the New menu above the lines, or by right clicking an existing line. Right clicking also gives you Copy line.

The columns

Column	What it does
Product no.	The product being sold. Choosing one fills in the rest of the line.
Text	What the customer reads. Starts as the product name and can be rewritten without affecting the product.
Item count	How many.
Unit	Hours, pieces, metres and so on.
Cost price	What the item costs you. It does not appear on the invoice the customer sees. It is there so you can see your margin while you work.
Price per item	What you are charging, before VAT.
Discount %	Taken off this line only.
Note	An internal note on the line.
Task	Which task the line came from, filled in automatically when you invoice a task. It is what lets a fee be charged once per task.
Sum	The line total. Calculated, not typed.

Two more columns appear only when they are relevant to your setup:

Cost group appears once you have created any cost groups. See Settings and lists.
VAT group appears if your Microbizz allows the VAT group to be changed on the line. Otherwise it follows the product automatically.

What choosing a product does

Pick a product number and Invoice+ fills in the text, the unit, the cost price and the price. The price is not the list price: it is the price this customer should pay, worked out from your pricing and discount agreements, and any discount that follows from that agreement is filled in too.

All of it can be changed afterwards.

If a price comes out looking wrong, check the agreement behind it rather than the line. The line is showing what the agreement says.

How the total is calculated

Each line is item count × price per item, less the line's own discount. The invoice total is the sum of the product lines, before VAT. Text lines and sections contribute nothing.

The running total sits at the top of the lines and updates as you work, before you save.

Saving

Lines are saved with their own Save button, separate from the rest of the invoice. Two rules are enforced at that moment:

An invoice may not total less than zero.
A credit note may not total more than zero.

If you break either, the save is refused with a message and nothing is lost. It usually means a quantity has the wrong sign on it.

Lines you cannot edit

Fee lines are shown greyed out. They are maintained by Invoice+ from the fees selected on the invoice, and anything edited by hand would only last until the next save. To change a fee line, change which fees the invoice carries. See Fees.

Once an invoice is posted, the lines are read only. No adding, no editing, no deleting. If a posted invoice is wrong, the answer is a credit note.

Next: 4.1 Fees