Invoices — create, send, get paid

Step by step

1. Open Money → Invoices. ⚡ Invoice completed bills finished work orders in one go (each WO moves to invoiced). 🧾 New Invoice creates a blank draft for anything without a work order. On a project, + New → Invoice makes a blank invoice billed to that project, or one from a project estimate — deposit / progress %, remaining balance or full itemized.
2. Click Edit details to set Billed to, Issue date, Due date, PO #, Tax rate % and the Description and Notes. Write with AI (or Improve with AI) drafts each text from the invoice, its lines and the work order, estimate or project it came from; type an instruction in the box under it, review the result, and click Undo if you don’t want it.
3. Add lines with + Add line, + From CostBook or ✦ AI chat (“add 8 hours service labor at $145”). Unit rates keep up to 4 decimals, so a $0.0425 fitting prints as $0.0425 and qty × rate always equals the line amount.
4. Edit details and a line’s Edit save as you type while the invoice is a draft (Saving… / Saved in the dialog’s header, Done closes, Undo my changes puts back what was there). A sent invoice keeps a Save button. If someone else changed it meanwhile you choose Keep mine or Discard mine, and a change that could not be saved is kept in this browser for Restore.
5. On a draft invoice you can type straight into the line table: description, quantity, unit and rate. Enter or ↓ saves and moves one row down, Esc puts the old value back.
6. Discounts, two ways. One discount on the whole invoice: under the totals, set Discount in $ or % (and a reason if you like) and click Save — it shows as its own row between Subtotal and Tax, and tax and retainage are worked out on the lower amount. Or a discount line: + Add line → Kind Discount — type 1000 or −1000, it goes in as −$1,000 (any other line can take a minus rate too, e.g. −150 for a credit). An invoice can’t go below $0 — for that, issue a credit memo.
7. Link an invoice to a project with Bills project on the invoice (★ marks the same customer’s projects), or tick several on the list and click Link to project; No project shows the ones still unlinked. A linked invoice counts toward the project’s Invoiced. The project’s Customer PO / contract # fills the PO # on its invoices and AIA pay apps when you leave it blank.
8. For a tax-exempt customer, upload the certificate on the customer’s Documents tab as “Tax-exempt cert” and click Use as exemption — the customer is exempt until the certificate expires. Their invoices built from an estimate start at 0% tax, and Edit details reminds you to keep 0% — or warns once the certificate has expired.
9. Click ✉ Send to customer — it attaches the PDF and a tracked portal link, and the customer can pay online if a payment processor is connected; those payments post by themselves. Record a check, cash, card or ACH payment with + Record payment — tick “Email the customer a payment receipt” to send one; left off, the payment is recorded quietly. Catching up on invoices paid long ago (say after an import): tick them on the Invoices list and use Mark paid — each open balance is recorded as a payment on its due date, issue date, today or a date you pick, without emailing anyone. ✉ Send reminder nudges a late payer.
10. Autopay: in the customer portal, someone at the customer who pays invoices saves a card or US bank account (Stripe only). Each open invoice is then charged on its due date — except AIA pay apps and anything above a limit they set. The office sees it on the customer’s Billing tab: the saved method, every attempt and its result, and Turn off. Only the customer can turn it back on.
11. Dates follow your company’s calendar, not UTC: an invoice made at 9 PM is dated today, it is due your net days later, and aging counts whole days.

Tips

• To reverse an issued invoice, issue a ↺ Credit memo — or ✕ Write off a bad debt — rather than deleting it. An invoice with recorded payments can’t be deleted.
• After two failed autopay tries on an invoice, autopay leaves that invoice alone: the customer is emailed to pay or update the method, and the office gets a notification.
• For progress billing on big contracts, use AIA G702/G703 instead of a regular invoice.

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