If you are a rental business who uses invoices to receive payment from your customers; you can follow along with the simple methods below to learn how to customize, create, finalize, and send your invoices to you customers through Booqable.
How it works
Booqable automatically creates invoices for your orders, which you can find in the right- hand side of an individual order's page, or the Documents page of the Booqable the main menu.
If you haven't already, check out our article on how to adjust documents templates to create an invoice that looks original to your rental business, through the link below.
1. Create a pro-forma invoice
Initially, invoices are pro forma. Pro forma invoices don't have an invoice number, and the invoice total doesn't count towards your turnover in Documents and Reports sections.
The contents of a pro forma invoice updates with the contents of an order automatically.
While pro forma invoices aren't "accounts receivable", you can send them to customers in some cases. For example, when the final details of the order are not known yet.
💡 Note: Pro forma invoices do not count towards the revenue in the reports and the documents section. In order for the system to add the data to reports and documents, invoices need to be finalized.
2. Finalize an invoice
Finalize an invoice to make it official:
The invoice receives an invoice number
The invoice total counts toward your turnover.
The invoice is "locked"; its contents no longer update with the order.
Hover over an invoice and click Finalize -or- open an invoice and click finalize from the top bar.
Suppose you make changes to an order after you finalized an invoice, and the order total is different than the already invoiced amount. In that case, Booqable creates a new pro forma invoice containing only the changes made to the order:
You can finalize this pro forma to create a brand new invoice, or create a revision of a previously finalized invoice.
3. Revise an invoice
If you need to amend an already finalized invoice, it's best not to delete the original, especially when you already sent it to your customer.
Instead, you can create a revised invoice reflecting the current status of your order. A revised invoice retains the original invoice number, suffixed with "R1", "R2", etc. to indicate the revision.
💡Note: You can only create a revised invoice when the order total is different from the already invoiced amount.
Make sure the order total is different from the already invoiced amount.
Click Make revision from the Invoices section of the sidebar.
When you create a revision, the original invoice becomes invalid and no longer counts towards your turnover.
4. Credit an invoice
When the order total is less than the invoiced amount (when you remove a product from an order, for example), Booqable creates a credit invoice.
To manually create a credit invoice, you can add a custom line with a negative value to the order.
5. Send an invoice
You can attach a PDF of your invoice to an email and send it to your customer. While looking at the invoice, click Send from the top-bar:
💡Tip: There's a customizable email template for sending invoices; select it from the template drop-down to speed up your workflow.
6. Add a prefix
Go to Settings > Documents and click Customize templates.
In the invoice template, click Add prefix.
Select the value you want to use as a prefix and click Save.
7. Adjust invoice numbering
Invoice numbers increment automatically. There are a couple of ways to adjust how your invoice numbers work.
Add prefixes to the invoice number (like an order number or the year),
Specify the invoice number sequence should increment per prefix or globally,
Set a new starting number.
Go to Settings > Documents and scroll down to the Document numbering section.
Choose how you want your invoice numbers to increment.
Use a global level. (This is the default way of document numbering (and the simplest). Your first invoice starts at #1 (or any number you want) and increments by one each time: #2, #3, etc.
Use a prefix level. This increments numbers based on the prefix at the start of the document number to start a new sequence for each customer, month, year, or order.
Change the invoice starting number
1. View a finalized invoice.
2. Click the pencil icon behind the invoice number.
3. Change the number, and Booqable will pick up from there.
You're all set!
You have now successfully learned how to create and send invoices in Booqable.