4. Create an Invoice
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To create a new invoice, navigate to 'Invoices' in the BestInvoicing menu to the left:
As you didn't create an invoice yet, the overview is empty. Create a new invoice by clicking the green button 'Create Invoice' at the top right.
The invoicing interface now opens and consists of four blocks of information, regarding:
Your customer information: 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 with account number and payment reference information.
The invoice itself: serial number, date, discount options, ...
Here you specify to whom you want to address the invoice. You can enter the details of a new customer by typing in the blank fields. However, you can also retrieve an existing customer from the customer files you created earlier (see Step 2: Creating a Customer). For example, if you type the name 'Anthony' in the field 'Customer', BestInvoicing will immediately look for the customer with the corresponding name and copy the existing customer file information into the invoice.
You will see that this invoice is now linked to customer record 'C00001', the number of Anthony Simmons' customer file.
Starting from scratch? Simply enter the new customer data directly into the invoice (manually) and check the box 'Save as new customer'.
By default, your invoice contains no products or services yet. Per new line you can add a new product or service. Add your services or products in the text fields. In the example below, a router is being sold:
Just like retrieving a customer, BestInvoicing recognizes the product you want to add from your product database. A router was entered as a product in the previous step '3. Create a Product'. The data about this product will automatically be transferred to the invoice. A new blank line appears below this product, where you can add a second product.
In the example above, a product is added which has not been created yet in the product database. Manually type the description in the 'Service or Product' field and enter a price.
Want to save this newly entered product for future use? Simply click the blue button with three white dots to the left of the product line. Then select 'Create product' to open a product page pop up, add more information to it, and save your newly created product.
The bottom text informs your customer about e.g. payment instructions. By default, the bottom text asks to "transfer the invoice amount within xx days to account number xx, stating the invoice number xx."
During the first step, '1. Create Account' you entered the bank account number of your company. This is the number that will be included in this bottom text. In principle you do not need to change anything in this text field; all information is reused from the data you entered in BestInvoicing.
Would you like to change this bottom text for all your invoices at once? Read here how to do it.
Before saving and generating the invoice, you can make 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 select '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.
You can generate (= save) your invoice using the green 'Add' button. You will see the summary screen of your generated invoice:
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 looks like to your customer:
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, ...).
If the invoice is complete, you can easily send it via email from the invoice summary:
To the right of 'Timeline' you see a yellow 'Send via Email' button. This opens a window where you can send your invoice to the pertaining customer, with an accompanying message.
The customer's email address is automatically retrieved from the customer file, 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.
