An invoice charges a customer for what you sent them. Raise one from a dispatch or an order, issue it, send it, and mark it paid. When something needs reversing, a credit note does it without disturbing the original.
Where to find it: Invoices in the Orders section of the main menu.
The invoice list
| Column | Notes |
|---|---|
| Doc # | The invoice number. Assigned when the invoice is issued, not when it is created — see below. |
| Document Ref | Your own reference for the document. |
| Type | Invoice or Credit Note. |
| Customer | Who is being charged. |
| Issue Date / Due Date | When it was issued and when payment falls due. |
| Total / Ccy | The value and the currency it is in. |
| Status | Draft, Issued, Sent, Paid or Voided. |
Raising an invoice
| From | What you get |
|---|---|
| A dispatch Invoice this dispatch | Charges for what actually went out. The usual route, since it bills the goods you really sent. |
| A sales order Create Invoice | A draft invoice pre-filled from the order, opened for editing. |
| Nothing New Invoice | A blank invoice, for charges with no order behind them. |
However it starts, an invoice is a draft until you issue it, and drafts can be edited freely.
Status and actions
| Action | From | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Issue | Draft | The invoice number is assigned here. Numbers are not spent on drafts that never become invoices. |
| Send | Issued | Records that it has gone to the customer. |
| Reopen | Issued | Back to draft to correct something. Conditions below. |
| Mark Paid | Issued or Sent | Records settlement. |
| Void | Draft, Issued or Sent | Cancels the document. A paid invoice cannot be voided. |
Reopening an issued invoice
An issued invoice can go back to draft so you can fix a line or a note — but only while both of these hold:
- It has not been pushed to an accounting system. Reopening after a push would put QTRACA and Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks out of step.
- No credit note has been raised against it. The credit references this invoice’s lines and totals, so changing them underneath it would make the credit wrong.
The document number is kept when you reopen, and reused when you issue again — so correcting an invoice does not leave a gap in your numbering.
Credit notes
Issue Credit Note on an invoice creates a credit against it. You choose which lines to credit and the quantity on each, so a credit can be partial — one damaged carton out of twenty rather than the whole invoice.
A credit note is its own document with its own number sequence and its own lifecycle. The original invoice is left exactly as issued, which is what keeps the audit trail honest: nothing is rewritten, a reversing document is added.
Printing and emailing
- Print PDF produces the invoice document — header, lines, totals and the tax breakdown by code.
- Email Invoice prepares the message to the customer and downloads the PDF to attach, then records the invoice as sent.
Kits on an invoice
An invoice raised from a dispatch that included a kit shows the kit as the charged line, with its components listed beneath for information. The components are not separately priced, and they are excluded from the tax calculation — taxing them as well as the kit would double-count it.
Things to know
- Totals, discounts, currency and tax behave exactly as on a sales order. See Tax zones, tax codes and how tax is calculated and Currencies and exchange rates.
- The source PDF can be attached to an invoice and removed again, for documents that originated outside QTRACA.
- Numbering is configurable — prefix, padding and reset behaviour are set in Order Settings. See Accounting export.