Invoices
Last updated
Last updated
To create a new invoice, navigate to 'Invoices' in the BestInvoicing menu to the left:
Create a new invoice by clicking the green button '+ Create Invoice' at the top right.
The invoicing window now opens and consists of four blocks of information, regarding:
Your customer: who are you billing?
Your products/services: what are you invoicing and at what price?
The bottom text: the request for payment to the customer, stating your account number and payment reference.
The invoice itself: serial number, date, any discount.
Here you specify to whom you want to address the invoice. You can retrieve customer information from the customer file(s) you created earlier (see Tutorial Step 2: Creating Customers).
For example, if you type the name 'Anthony' in the field 'Customer', BestInvoicing will immediately look for the customer with the corresponding data and copy the information from the entered customer file into the invoice.
You can also search the customer files by clicking the magnifying glass. The complete list of customers will now open, for you to select the appropriate customer.
This invoice will now be linked to customer record 'C00001', the number of Anthony Simmons' customer file.
If you have not yet created a customer file, you can also record the data of a new customer by typing directly in the fields. You may then 'Save as new customer' (this way, a new customer file will be created). When you check the box 'Save as new customer', the fields 'E-mail address' and 'Telephone number' also appear to be completed.
In the field 'Attn.' the specific information of a contact person can be included. If you have entered an address for your contact person that differs from the address of your 'Customer', the address details of your 'Customer' will be overwritten with those of the specific contact person.
By default, no products or services are added to your invoice yet. Per new line you can add a new product or service. Enter in the text field under 'Service or product' what you want to invoice. In the example below, a router is sold:
Just like retrieving a customer, BestInvoicing recognizes the product you want to add from your product database. In this example, a router was entered as a product in a previous step. The data about this stored product will be transferred to the invoice. A new blank line appears below this product, where you can add a second product.
In the example also product is added which has not been created yet in the product database. In such case, manually type the description in the 'Service or Product' field and enter a price.
Want to save this newly entered product information as a new product file for future reference? Simply click the blue button with three white dots to the left of the product line. Then choose 'Create product' to open a product file, add more information to it, and save your entered product.
If you click the magnifying glass on the left-hand side of a product line, you can open the full product list. From this list you can also select a product:
For each product line you may assign a discount. To do so, click on the yellow 'More' button. The field 'Line discount' appears. It is possible to grant the discount as a percentage, or in the chosen currency.
It is possible to insert titles between your different product lines to further structure or break down the document.
Via the green button 'Add line' you can choose from three types of lines in the table:
Add a product or service line (see previous section);
Add a section with title;
Add a (free) text line.
The title consists of one line, with preset formatting. You can use the arrows to place the title more up or down in the document.
Per section created, a subtotal of this section will appear on your document.
It is also possible to add an extra line of text above or below products. Unlike a title, this one can be formatted with the basic editor. You can also use the arrows to move the field up or down in the table.
On an invoice, this might look as such:
Your customer may learn from the bottom text how the invoice should be paid. By default, the text asks to "transfer the invoice amount within xx days to account number xx, stating the invoice number xx."
During the registration process, you entered the bank account number of your company. This is the number that will be included in the bottom text. In principle you do not need to change anything in this text; all information is taken from the data you entered in BestInvoicing. This is done for any value between '%' characters (e.g. %company_name%), called 'tags'. Read more about the use of tags in BestInvoicing.
Would you like to change this bottom text for all your invoices at once? Read here how to do it.
Before you can save the invoice, you're offered a few other choices.
In this section you can:
change the date of your invoice, if desired;
apply a general discount to the entire invoice amount;
enter the payment term, and/or check the box 'End of month'.
Have you already created invoices this year? Then you can set the appropriate serial number for your first invoice via BestInvoicing. Afterwards BestInvoicing will continue the numbering automatically. Click here to learn about numbering.
Once you have done all this, you can generate (= save) your invoice using the green 'Add' button. You will now see the summary of your generated invoice:
From the overview of invoices, you can directly perform some bulk actions via the blue 'Action' button.
Export data: to csv (Excel), combine all documents into one PDF file, to a ZIP file with all documents, or export to accounting packages. Read more about these different exports.
Select some (or all) invoices and change their status to 'Sent'.
Select some (or all) invoices and change their status to 'Paid'.
Select one or more invoices and copy them to a new delivery note.
Select one or more invoices and copy them to a new credit note.
If you click the grey 'View Print Version' button at the top right, a new window will open where you can see what the invoice will look like. You can also download the invoice as a PDF file.
Did you notice an error in the invoice, or do you wish to adjust something? That's possible.
In the summary screen of your invoice, click 'Edit Invoice' in the left menu next to 'Timeline'.
You can edit the invoice section by section using the yellow 'Edit' pencil buttons (e.g. you only wish to edit the customer information, or the information about your listed products/services, ...).
Please note that you can edit your invoices as long as they were not sent from BestInvoicing to your accountant. Once they have been transmitted, a message will appear stating that the invoice can no longer be edited or deleted. The invoice content will be 'frozen' and can no longer be modified.
If you are satisfied with the invoice, you can easily send it via email. To do so, go to your invoice summary:
To the right of 'Timeline' you will see a yellow 'Send via Email' button. This opens a window to send your invoice to the customer, with an accompanying message.
You can customize this email message for your entire organisation in one go, and create new default texts if you wish to. Read how to do this here.
The customer's email address is automatically retrieved from the customer record, or can be entered manually. You can choose to also send a copy to yourself, or use options cc: and bcc:. The subject of the email can be customized, as well as the accompanying text. It is also possible to enter multiple email addresses by placing a comma between them.
The email is sent by clicking the green 'Send Email' button at the bottom of the page.
BestInvoicing also offers the option of sending invoices by regular mail. Read here how that works.
Did you send the invoice yourself, using some other method? Then use the blue 'Actions' button to indicate that the invoice has been sent. Select the option 'Change status to sent'.
Advance invoices are not considered separate documents in BestInvoicing, but they're actually regular invoices. However, they're made available in BestInvoicing to facilitate follow-up. You can create an advance invoice from a proposal and choose a fixed price or percentage amount as advance invoice.
This advance invoice ends up in the list of regular invoices, where you can also use the options for payment follow-up.
When you want to create a final invoice after delivery of the products or services, go back to the original proposal and copy it to a regular invoice.
The advance payment amount(s) will automatically be deducted, so that the sum of both invoices equals the proposal amount.
You can also create multiple advance invoices if payment is made over multiple installments.
In the general overview of invoices, you can immediately follow up on payments with just one look. At the top of the page, the invoices created are visually divided using colors:
Red: the outstanding amount of the past due (overdue) invoices. The due date is calculated on the values that you have set yourself in BestInvoicing.
Yellow: the total outstanding amount of all invoices sent.
Green: your total turnover this month.
In the invoice list, the same colors are used to indicate the payment status per invoice.
Red: invoice is not yet paid and already outside the payment period.
Yellow: invoice has been sent and is waiting for payment.
Green: invoice has been paid.
Blue: invoice is still in draft status; you haven't sent it to the customer yet.
Payment tracking can also be done directly via your bank. Read here how this works. The status of a payment will then automatically be adjusted based on the retrieved bank transaction details; the colors and indications will automatically change accordingly.
To manually mark your invoice as 'paid', click the green button 'Change status to paid' in the summary of your invoice.
However, in order to fully use the functionalities of BestInvoicing, it is best to add the information about the actual payment. Click the blue 'Action' button and select 'Create payment manually'.
A pop-up window will open to enter the payment information:
Payment account: this can be your company's bank account or, for example, your cash register. You indicate how the payment was made.
Date: indicate when the payments was received.
Counterparty name: preset to name invoiced, can be overwritten.
Notice: preset to invoice serial number, can be overwritten.
Amount: the amount you received in this transaction. Maybe the customer only paid 1/2 of the invoiced amount today, or the payment is incomplete.
Click 'Create Payment' to confirm and record the payment information.
Entering the different payment accounts for your company has to be done only once. Read here how to do it.
It is possible to create an (automatic) payment reminder for an outstanding invoice.
To set this up, go to the 'Reminders' tab, in the summary screen of your invoice to the left.
Click the green button 'Create Reminder'.
A default message is used to urge your customer to pay. You can enter the term of payment, any reminder costs and interest. When finalised, click 'Add'.
The reminder is created and can now be sent by email or printed out.
You can also set automatic reminders at the company level. Learn more about this feature.
From the invoice summary, you can easily copy the details of this invoice:
to a new invoice;
to a new credit note.
You can also copy an invoice to a new delivery note, but this is an extension that you need to activate first.
Via the 'Edit' button you can make changes to the new invoice or credit note one it is created.
The attachments to your invoice are usually your General Terms and Conditions. You can upload these and set them up at company level. Read here how to do this.
By linking your BestInvoicing account to your bank account via e.g. Ponto, we retrieve your bank statements daily and compare them with your outstanding invoices using a smart algorithm. If a match is found, the payment is processed automatically and you no longer have to follow up on payments. Would you like to offer your customers an online pay button to pay the invoice? That is also possible in BestInvoicing. Read here how it works.
BestInvoicing enables you to send your invoices directly to your accountant. Click here to learn what connections are available.
BestInvoicing offers the possibility to include additional text at the top of your documents (e.g. your invoice). This can be done via an extra text field at the top of the document where you can enter free text information. This text field is located between the general document data and the table with product lines. Read more about the activation of this extra text field.
It is possible to display a construction/installation site address or a delivery address on your proposals that is different from the billing address or customer address. Read here how to add such alternative addresses.
In addition to the invoice date, enter the delivery date of the goods when creating an invoice. Learn how to activate this field.
Display a customer order reference on your invoices. Read here how to activate this field.
If you have activated the 'General ledger accounts' app, you can also use it in your invoicing. Set up general ledger accounts for products. This way, the invoices immediately receive the appropriate general ledger account number when they are transmitted to accounting software packages. Read here how to set this up.
Attention: not every accounting package can process this general ledger data. So make sure to check with your accountant first!
Besides the line discount on an invoice, BestInvoicing also provides other discount options. You can e.g. activate the app 'Prompt Payment Discount' (grant your customers a discount if they pay within a certain period) or work with price segments (grant discounts per type of customer; e.g. private or professional). Read more about the additional possibilities.
You can use payment requests to have customers pay upfront before creating an invoice. You can also use payment requests as pro forma invoices. A payment request can easily be copied to a final invoice. Read more about using payment requests.
