Most invoicing tools stop at the PDF. This one carries the document through to your accounts: when you finalize an invoice, the bookkeeping entry is already made, the customer’s balance already reflects it, and the tax is already sitting in the right box on your return. You do not reconcile your invoicing against your accounting later, because they were never two systems.
What you can do
- Raise quotes, and turn an accepted one into an order confirmation or an invoice without retyping a line.
- Send invoices as PDF or e-invoice, with your own layout, in your customer’s language.
- Correct mistakes properly with credit notes and debit notes — the original stays intact and the correction is its own document, which is what an auditor expects to see.
- Set up recurring invoices that raise and send themselves on a schedule you choose.
- Track purchase documents from suppliers on the same footing as your sales.
- Chase late payers with payment reminders, escalating through as many stages as you want to define.
- Ship goods with packing notes and consignments that draw from the same lines.
How it works in practice
Start from a quote or go straight to an invoice (Documents → New). Pick the customer and the lines fill in from your product catalog, with their price list, currency and language already applied. The totals update as you type, including tax, discounts and any deposit or shipping you add.
Convert rather than re-enter. A quote your customer accepted becomes an order confirmation, a packing note, or an invoice in one step — the lines, addresses and terms travel with it. The same works across types when a customer changes their mind mid-way.
Finalize when you are ready. Up to that point a document is a draft you can change freely. When you finalize, it gets its permanent number, the accounting entry is posted, and the document is locked — because a numbered invoice you can still edit is not an invoice. If something was wrong, you credit it rather than rewrite history.
Send it however the customer wants it. Email with your own template and signature, a payment link they can click, or an e-invoice through the Peppol network for customers who require one.
Let the repeat work repeat itself. A recurring invoice is a template plus a schedule: monthly retainers, annual licenses, quarterly service fees. It raises the real invoice on the date you set and can email it without you being there.
Watch what happens next. Each document shows its own history — when it was sent, opened, paid, or reminded — so “did they ever get this?” has an answer.
Good to know
- Finalizing is deliberately one-way. You can reset a document back to draft while it is still unpaid and unsent, but once it has been issued in earnest the correct fix is a credit note. This is what keeps your numbering sequential and your books defensible.
- Recurring invoices need a payment method set up if you want them collected as well as sent.
- E-invoicing through Peppol needs your business registered on the network — a one-time setup, and only relevant if your customers ask for it.
- Twelve document types is more than most businesses use. You are not expected to touch all of them; a freelancer might only ever use quotes and invoices.