Ledgr/Documentation/Invoicing

Invoicing & quotes

Watch the 3 lessons: Raise and send an invoice (2:21), Send a quote and convert it to an invoice (2:00), Record a payment or issue a credit note (2:11).

Everything you issue to a customer lives here — ten document types sharing one wizard, one numbering scheme and one settings centre.

The ten document types

Each type has its own prefix, colour and behaviour. Pick the type at the top of the create wizard; you cannot change it afterwards, but you can convert between some of them.

Create an invoice

1. Client & Terms

   Choose the customer — start typing and the contact list filters. Set the document date, the payment terms (COD through to Net 90) and the currency. The due date is worked out from the terms. The terms and the currency start from the customer's contact record, so a Net 60 customer's invoice opens at Net 60 — and a term that is not on the list, such as 45 days, is kept as Net 45 rather than rounded to the nearest one.

   Invoicing in a currency other than your own needs Business or above, and the rate, the revaluation and where the rates come from are covered under foreign currency. A card payment link is only offered on a rand invoice — see recording payment.

2. Line Items

   Add lines with + From catalogue (a product or service you have already set up), + Custom item, or Paste… to bring in several at once from a spreadsheet. The P/S switch at the start of each line says what it is:

   • P (product) — quantity and unit price
   • S (service) — hours and rate

   Discount is per line and can be a percentage or a rand amount — use the toggle next to the field. The Type column sets the VAT treatment per line — standard, zero-rated, or a price that already includes VAT — so a zero-rated export line can sit next to a standard-rated one on the same invoice.

3. Review

   Check the totals, then fill in the three text blocks that are separate from your notes: terms & conditions, banking details and footer. They pre-fill from your defaults and you can edit them for this one document. Attach a payment link here if you want one.

4. Save as Draft, or Send

   Save as Draft leaves it as a draft you can still edit. Send Invoice (Send Quote, Send Credit Note and so on) saves it and takes you straight to the sending choices below; it is marked sent when it goes.

Sending

An open document offers three routes:

• Send via Email — uses the template for that document type, with your subject and body, reply-to address and the PDF attached if you have that switched on
• Send via WhatsApp — sends to the contact's mobile number through the WhatsApp Business channel
• Copy Payment Link — a portal link the customer can open without an account, to view the document and pay

Every email and WhatsApp send — the document itself and every payment reminder — is recorded on the customer's Communication History in Contacts, with the date, the channel and whether it went. A send that failed is recorded too, with the reason, so you can prove what went out and when. Copying a link is not recorded, because nothing has been sent yet.

An invoice's Reminder history goes further for WhatsApp: once WhatsApp reports back, a reminder reads delivered or read, and one WhatsApp could not deliver reads not delivered — and is not counted against your WhatsApp messages.

Recording payment

1. Open the invoice and choose Record Payment

   Enter the amount, the method (EFT, cash, cheque, card or other) and the date. A partial payment moves the invoice to Partial and leaves the balance outstanding; a full payment settles it and moves it to Paid.

2. Or let the bank do it

   If the money arrives as a bank transaction, match it in Banking and the invoice settles from there — no double capture.

3. Or let the gateway do it

   Payments taken through a PayFast or Yoco link arrive in the Payments inbox (the Payments button on the Invoicing toolbar) and auto-match to the invoice within your tolerance. Anything the matcher is unsure about waits in the review queue with a manual match dropdown.

Quote to invoice

Open the accepted quote or pro-forma and choose Convert to Invoice. The lines, customer and pricing carry across to a new tax invoice with a fresh number and your chosen terms. The original quote stays in the list, marked Invoiced, so the history holds together.

Recurring invoices and reminders

The Recurring button on the Invoicing toolbar holds the schedules. A new schedule takes a customer, a product or service and its quantity, a frequency (weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually), the next issue date and a currency. On that date Ledgr raises the next invoice as a draft, on the customer's own payment terms, for somebody to look over and send. Pause a schedule any time without losing it, and Resume it later.

Reminders are set up separately, with the Reminders button on the Invoicing toolbar (on a phone it is in the menu beside the refresh button). Tick the days a reminder goes out — 7 or 3 days before the due date, and 3, 7, 14, 30, 60 or 90 days after it — and whether each goes by email, WhatsApp or both. A reminder before the due date reads as a friendly note that payment is coming up and does not mark the invoice overdue. Each day fires once per invoice; an invoice that is already late when the schedule is switched on gets one reminder for the latest day it has passed, not a burst of catching up. Configure Reminders on an open invoice edits the same schedule, and adds an optional message of your own, which goes into the email (WhatsApp messages use fixed, pre-approved wording). To stop chasing one customer — say they are on a payment arrangement — mark their reminders paused on their contact.

The dashboard's Remind button sends one reminder straight away, outside the schedule, once you confirm it.

Attachments on a document

Up to ten supporting files on any document — the customer's signed order, a delivery note, a spec sheet, the photograph of the meter reading the invoice is based on. PDF, JPEG, PNG, HEIC, WebP, CSV, plain text, Word and Excel, up to 15 MB each.

They are for your own record and for whoever asks later. They are not sent with the invoice and they do not appear on the customer's copy: what your customer receives is the document itself, which is the one layout shared by the preview, the PDF, the emailed attachment and the portal page.

Invoice settings

Seven tabs under Invoicing → Settings. Worth ten minutes early on:

Deposits and prepayments

Issue a deposit invoice when you take money before delivering. The payment is held in deferred revenue rather than counted as income, and the deposit invoice shows Held (Deposit). When you deliver, create the final tax invoice, then open the deposit invoice and choose Apply Deposit to Invoice, picking the final invoice — the held amount is released against it and only the balance remains payable.

Picking lists

A delivery note carries a picking list for whoever packs the order. While you create the delivery note, its Picking List section takes the warehouse and the picker's name and lists each line's bin, SKU, item, quantity and the stock on hand, with signature lines for the picker and the customer. Once saved, the delivery note shows the picking list as its own card, with a tick against each line that has been picked. The PDF and the copy your customer receives are the delivery note itself.

Common problems