Some things in Invoice+ behave in a way that is easy to misread. All of them are deliberate.
Posting is one way
The moment you post, the invoice is fixed. No editing, no deleting, no second posting, and the lines go read only with it.
An invoice number that can be reused, or an amount that can change after the customer has the document, is not usable in an audit. The correction for a posted invoice is a credit note.
What follows from it:
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Check the total, the terms and the recipient before you post.
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Invoicing a task against a posted invoice starts a new invoice rather than altering the old one. If you meant to collect several jobs on one document, do it before posting.
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The due date is worked out at posting, from the payment term on the invoice at that moment. Get the term right before you post, not after.
The invoice number arrives at posting
A draft has no number. It is handed out from the number series when you post, which is why the numbering has no gaps even though drafts are often abandoned.
Invoices and credit notes draw from separate series, so a credit note does not consume an invoice number.
Service value does not follow edits
Adding lines updates the service value. Changing a price, changing a quantity or deleting a line does not.
The value can be set by hand, and a recalculation on every edit would overwrite a figure somebody had deliberately agreed with a customer. Press Recalculate service value after reworking lines and it rebuilds from what is there now. See Service value.
Fee lines are maintained by Invoice+
Fee lines are greyed out in the line editor because they are recreated from the fee setup every time the invoice is saved. Anything typed into them by hand would last until the next save.
To change a fee line, change the fee, or change which fees the invoice carries.
Credit notes behave differently
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They carry no payment status. Paid and unpaid describe money coming in, and a credit note is money going out.
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They do not recalculate fees. A credit note records what you are reversing, so the numbers copied from the original stay as they were.
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Their total may not be above zero, in the same way an invoice total may not be below zero.
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An invoice cannot be turned into a credit note after it exists. The tick is only offered at creation.
Search looks at the title
The quick search box matches the invoice title. Not the customer, not the invoice number, not the line texts.
Two things follow. Write titles that identify the invoice, and use the advanced search when you want to find invoices by customer, status, amount or date.
Amounts are before VAT
The totals you see while working on an invoice, on the lines and on the invoice itself, are before VAT. VAT is applied by the VAT group on each line, set up in Data+, and appears on the finished document.
If a total looks smaller than you expected, this is usually the reason.
The PDF needs a template
An invoice with no invoice template cannot produce a PDF, which means the PDF link does not appear in the list and the invoice cannot be sent by mail. The invoice itself is still valid, it has no layout to be printed into.
The forecast goes by due date
Invoices are placed in the month they fall due, not the month they were raised. An invoice with no due date does not appear at all.
That is what you want for a cash flow view, but it does mean the forecast and a sales report for the same month will show different numbers.
Things that fill themselves in
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What |
Where it comes from |
|---|---|
|
Sender name and address |
Your own company details. |
|
Recipient name, addresses, payment term, email |
The company, when you select it. |
|
Handler and team |
You, and your own team. |
|
Automatic fees |
The fee setup, on every new invoice. |
|
Line text, unit, cost price, price, discount |
The product, and your price agreement with that customer. |
|
VAT group on a line |
The product, unless your setup allows it to be edited by hand. |
|
Cost group on a line |
The team that did the task, matched on the cost group code. |
All of them can be changed after they are filled in.
Changes are logged
Changes to an invoice, payments recorded, postings and sends all go into the invoice's activity log, with who did it and when. Mails sent from the invoice are kept with it.
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