Draft invoices have not yet been generated and sent to the customer. The Draft Invoices view allows you to review and make some types of changes to these invoices before they are posted.
Draft Invoices can be in one of the following states:
- Projected Invoices show you what the next invoice will look like for each customer. See Projected Invoices for more information.
- Pending Invoices are those which are not yet due. A pending invoice is generated if a subscription is still in Draft mode and has not yet been activated. Pending invoices cannot be edited other than to set a Payment Schedule.
- Ready Invoices are those generated due to one or more active subscriptions but not yet posted. These invoices can be reviewed and edited before they are sent to the customer.
- Cancelled invoices have been cancelled by an agent before they were posted. No invoice will be sent to the customer, and no funds collected if the invoice is in a Canceled state. An invoice can be uncanceled, putting it back in the Ready state.
The Draft Invoices view shows Invoices in any of these statuses in a tabbed view. There is also an All View to show all Draft Invoices in all statuses.
If all invoices are posted automatically (see Working with Invoices), this list will be empty.
If a Draft Invoice is in the Ready state, you will see the Post button next to it. Click Post to post the invoice directly from this screen without reviewing the details.
Click on Details beside the invoice to review and post a draft invoice. The Draft invoice shows the line items for all charges in the invoice. There can be several subscriptions on the same invoice. The Posted Date field is blank.
For Draft Invoices in a Pending or Ready state, you can make the following modifications directly on the Invoice:
- Edit the PO Number
- Edit the Notes
- Selectively post only some items which are in a Ready state and leave others in draft (see Posting Selected Charges below)
Note: Projected Invoices are read-only and cannot be edited. However, a PDF can be generated and downloaded to send to a customer.
Posting Selected Charges
On a Pending or Ready draft invoice, you can select which charges for posting at a certain time and leaving others as they are. This is especially handy, for example, if you have pending purchases (for example, the "User Guide" product below) which you do not want to finalize yet but you would like to post the subscription ("Platinum Plan") now. You can even choose to post only some items from the subscription and leave the others alone.
In this example, we have chosen to post the charges for the Tech Support, Monthly Fee, and Services Fees Deposit but not the User Guides that come with the subscription (and, as mentioned, the additional User Guide purchase has not been finalized yet). When you click Post Selected Charges, you will see a preview below showing exactly which charges will be posted and what the invoice total will be. To continue with the invoice post, click Post Selected Charges again.
You can also click between the Posting and Remaining tabs at the top of the invoice preview screen to see what the two invoices will look like once the selected charges have been posted.
After you have committed the posted charges, the Draft Invoice will be updated to show only those charges which remain in Draft.
Note: Once you post the partial invoice, the customer's billing settings will be respected, generate charges, and attempt collection if applicable.
Editing a Ready Draft Invoice
In addition to these edits, if the Invoice is in a Ready state, you will see the Edit Invoice button at the top of the invoice; in this view, you can make additional edits as follows:
- Edit the PO Number
- Change the Product Name or Description
- Change the Service dates (note, this does not change the actual billing dates; it just allows you to set the dates on the invoice to cover a different service period than the billing period)
- Change Quantity and/or Price
- Delete one or more charges
- Add a one-time discount against any Product or Products
- Edit the Notes
- Add or remove Prorate Charge on any charge, regardless of whether this charge was set up to pro-rate at the Plan level in the Catalog.
Note: All of these changes apply only to this specific invoice, as noted in the warning at the top of the screen. You will need to edit the subscription if you wish any changes to persist for future billing periods.
- Click Cancel Invoice to cancel this draft invoice.
- Click Send Draft Invoice Email to email this draft invoice to the customer's primary email address.
- You can customize this template to suit your needs; see Draft Invoice Email Template.
- You can also add a watermark and a custom label to the Draft Invoice online and in PDF format. See Configuring Invoices.
- Click View Draft Invoice as PDF to generate a PDF copy of the invoice, which can then be saved to your local environment.
- Set a Payment Schedule if desired. Payment schedules allow the invoice amount to be collected in scheduled installments.
- When ready, click Post Invoice to commit the invoice and send it to the customer.