Creating Invoices

When you use this method, a range of applicable information from the order will automatically be transferred to the Invoice.

Open the Sales Order and click on Invoice on the toolbar, then select either Convert To Invoice or Generate Deposit Invoice. For more information, see our page on Sales Orders.

• Convert To Invoice – this will automatically create a new Invoice for all items on the order. Whether items on backorder are shown on the Invoice will depend on whether you have ticked the Include Items In Backorder box in Admin>General>Invoice Settings.
• Generate Deposit Invoice – if you tick Allow Deposit and have specified a deposit amount when you create a Sales Order, you can quickly generate a deposit Invoice for the specified amount.

Create an Invoice from a Sales Order

Deposit fields on a Sales Order

You can quickly create a new Invoice from the module homepage by clicking the New Invoice button.

Creating a new Invoice

Use these fields to select your customer:

• If you select a Contact in the Send To field, the Company field will automatically populate with the details for the associated Company that the Contact is linked to.
• If you select a Company, the Send To field will automatically populate with Contact records that are linked to the Company; you can then choose the appropriate person from the list.

Invoice recipient fields

If you have a third-party billing relationship or parent-child hierarchy in place for the Company you are invoicing, you will see an alert message beneath the Company field to remind you of the circumstances.

In the parent-child example below, a new field (On Behalf Of) shows beneath the Company field, allowing you to select from child accounts via the dropdown.

A child account warning on an Invoice

• Is Repeating – tick this box if the Invoice will recur in future – for more information, please see our pages on Creating Repeating Invoices and Repeating Invoice Placeholders.

The repeating option on the Invoice form

• Status – this helps you track where the invoice sits in your sales process – the default status for a new Invoice is ‘Entered’. The field will automatically update when certain actions occur (as follows), and you can use the remaining options on the dropdown list to internally manage the status of your Invoices.
  • • • Paid: when a Payment (or multiple Payments) equalling the total amount due is logged.
      • Partially Paid: when a partial Payment for the amount due is logged.
      • Sent: when an Email is sent from the Invoice record using the Email Template called ‘Invoice from Tall Emu CRM’.
• Assigned To – the person responsible for the Invoice e.g. the User who is the salesperson.
• Sell From – this is the Location that the invoice is associated with – if you have specified a default Location in your system, it will automatically be applied. You can also manually select another Location (to customise your list of locations, go to Admin> Locations).
• Source Of Business – you can choose an option to apply to the invoice from your customised list in the dropdown (to customise, go to Admin> Settings> Sales).
• Is Printed – you can use this box to internally track whether or not physical copies of invoices have been printed.

Tracking related fields on a new Invoice

• Date Issue – this will automatically default to today’s date, but can be changed to another date.
• Due Date – this will automatically calculate, based on the selection made in the Payment Term field. You can also manually adjust the date.
• Date Paid – when a Payment has been recorded against the invoice, this field will automatically populate with the date from the Payment record.
• Follow Up Date – you can add a date here for internal tracking purposes.

Date fields on an Invoice

• Customer Price Type – if the selected customer has a Price Type applied to their record, the type will automatically populate this field. You can also manually adjust the type.
• Show Prices Inc. Tax – ticking this box will change the item prices to tax inclusive, rather than the default treatment, which is tax exclusive.

Price related fields on an Invoice

• Courier – if you can select a courier from the dropdown list to internally track shipment details for items on the invoice (to customise your list of couriers, go to Admin> Couriers).
• Tracking Number – you can add a shipment tracking number here. Note that if you have added a tracking number to the same field on a Sales Order, it won’t be transferred over to the linked Invoice.
• Connote Number – you can add a shipment connote number here. Note that if you have added a connote number to the same field on a Sales Order, it won’t be transferred over to the linked Invoice.
• Shipped Date – if you haven’t generated an Outbound Shipment record from a Sales Order, you can use this field to manually record when the invoiced items have been shipped.

Shipment related fields on an Invoice

• Campaign – select an existing Campaign in your system to associate it with the invoice.
• Ticket – select an existing Ticket in your system to associate it with the invoice.
• Project – select an existing Project in your system to associate it with the invoice.

Associated record fields on an Invoice

• PDF Template – this field defaults to the system invoice template, which cannot be be changed from within your system – if you’d like to use a different template, please contact us.
• Email Template – you can choose from any existing email templates to apply by default when you send an Email from the record.

Template fields on an Invoice

• Shipping Address – this will automatically populate when you choose a Company that the Invoice will apply to, provided that the address exists in the Company record.
• Billing Address – this will automatically populate when you choose a Company that the Invoice will apply to, provided that the address exists in the Company record. You can also copy the shipping address to populate the billing address fields by clicking on the arrows button between the address blocks.

Address fields on an Invoice form

If you have generated an Invoice from a Sales Order, this section will automatically populate with details from the order, otherwise you will need to fill in the details manually:

• Item – click on the dropdown list to select a Product from the list or start typing the name of a Product into the field to quickly search for an item.
• Quantity – enter the desired quantity.
• Available – this field cannot be altered and will display how much stock of the selected item you currently have on hand.
• Price – once you have selected a Product via the Item field, the price field will automatically populate with details from the Product record.
• Discount – you can manually enter a percentage discount in this field and the price will automatically update to reflect it.
• Tax Code and Cost Price – this information will automatically populate from the Product record.
• Gross Profit and Gross Margin – the system will automatically calculate these for you, based on the cost price and item price.
• GL Code – this will automatically populate from the Product record. Whether or not this field displays will depend on your Invoice Settings in Admin > General.

By default, pricing is shown as tax exclusive, but you can change this to be tax inclusive – see the Price fields section on this page for more information.

You can add additional items to the invoice by clicking on the Add Item button at the bottom left of the section.

You can use the text fields beneath the item price fields to add further information about the item that will appear on the customer Invoice.

If the Product you have added has batch or serial tracking selected, you will need to add the appropriate batch or serial information before you can Save & Close the record.

Items section on a new Invoice form

• Payment Term – if the selected customer has a Payment Term applied to their record, the term will automatically populate this field. You can also manually adjust the term.
• Auto Pay – if you have connected Stripe to your CRM, ticking this box will reveal the option to add credit card details so that payment is automatically collected on the due date.

Payment related fields in the main Invoice body

Auto Pay fields

You can also apply a payment directly from an Invoice record using the Payment Details section, located toward the bottom of the form – please see our Logging Payments page for more information.

The payment details section on a new Invoice form

• Description – the content you add to this box will appear on the Invoice document that is generated for the customer.
• Internal Notes – you can use this box to make notes about the Invoice that will not appear on the customer version.

Description and Notes fields on an Invoice form

If you don’t want to invoice all the items on an order, just create the Invoice and then delete the items you don’t want to bill yet.

This page on Invoice Settings covers how you can choose whether or not backorder items show on an Invoice and how you can automatically invoice orders when they are shipped (this means that only the shipped items are invoiced).

For databases linked to MYOB, you currently have the ability to delete synced Invoices from CRM with the addition of a “Delete” button.

This works by deleting the record in MYOB, unlinking the record with CRM and then deleting the CRM record.

To access the delete button, click on the MYOB logo.

If the MYOB deletion is not successful (e.g. if there is a payment applied) you will get an error message and deletion will not proceed.

You can then use the Delete button on the Invoice record to remove it from CRM.

Please note that deletion of Invoices synced with Xero is not yet available.