Introduction
Every invoice in RentVisie carries three things your customer and your accountant look at first: an Invoice number, an Invoice date and a Due date. You rarely type any of them. The app hands out the number when the invoice is issued, stamps the date, and works out the due date from the customer's payment terms. This page explains when each of those happens, how to tell a draft from an issued invoice, and the one setting that controls where your numbering starts.
You see all three on the screen headed Invoice (open from Financials, Invoices tile). The table there has an Invoice number column, a Status column that says Draft or Send, an Invoice date column, and a Due date column you can switch on.
You come here when:
- The accountant asks why invoice 1057 is missing from the series.
- Two invoices on the list show the same number.
- You are moving to a new bookkeeping package and your invoice numbers have to carry on from where the old system stopped.
- A customer asks why their invoice is due in 14 days when they agreed 30.
- You are just checking whether a manual invoice you started yesterday has actually gone out yet.
Terms used on this screen
| The screen says | It means |
|---|---|
| Send | Issued — the invoice is final and has its number. The screen uses the word "Send" even if nothing was emailed |
| Draft | Started but not yet issued; no number yet. Only invoices you raise by hand can be drafts |
| Min. invoice number | The lowest number the next invoice may get |
| Pament terms | The customer's payment terms. The customer screen spells it this way |
Use this page to understand and check numbers and dates. To actually raise an invoice, go to the pages listed under What to do next.
How to use
Configuration
There is one company-wide setting, Min. invoice number, and one setting per customer, their payment terms.
Set a minimum invoice number. Use this once, when your numbering has to continue from another system or jump to a new series (for example, a new number range each year).
- Open Admin in the main menu, then Settings, then the Financial tile. The screen is headed Financial settings.
- Type the number into Min. invoice number. It is the third box, under VAT low percentage. Whole numbers only. It starts at 1.
- Press Save.
The setting is not retroactive: invoices already issued keep their numbers. The next invoice issued gets your minimum, and every invoice after that counts up from it. It only ever pushes numbers up. Once invoices exist above the minimum, lowering it does nothing, and there is no way to make the series go back down.
Never leave Min. invoice number empty. Put 1 in it if you do not want a minimum.
Payment terms per customer. A booking invoice takes its due date from the customer's Pament terms on their Financial tab: Immediately, 7 Days, 14 Days or 30 Days. Setting these, and the company defaults for new customers, is covered in Set a customer's payment and invoicing terms.
Before you start: the Invoice screen, the Financial settings screen and manual invoices all need a company administrator account. Staff without that role may see the Invoices tile but cannot open the screen behind it.
Using the Invoice screen
From the main menu open Financials, then click the Invoices tile. The screen is headed Invoice, and the newest invoices are at the top.
- Check whether an invoice has been issued. Look at Status. Draft means it is still being prepared, and Invoice number shows 0. Send means it is issued and numbered. Use the dropdown under Status to list only drafts.
- Find an invoice by its number. Type the exact number into the box under Invoice number. The filter matches the whole number only, so 104 does not find 1042.
- See the due dates. Due date is hidden when the screen opens. Switch it on in the table's column settings, at the top right of the table. It stays on for you afterwards. The filter under it and under Invoice date matches one exact day.
- Open an invoice by clicking its row. On a Draft, Invoice date and Due date can still be changed. On an issued invoice both are greyed out.
A booking's own issued invoices are also listed from its invoice summary screen, behind the Issued invoices button. That list has Dutch column headings: Factuur nr. (number), Factuurdatum (invoice date) and Vervaldatum (due date).
Key details
When the number is assigned.
| Kind of invoice | Draft stage? | Number and status set |
|---|---|---|
| Invoice made from a booking, including a combined invoice and a lease invoice | No | The moment it is created. It is Send straight away |
| Credit note | No | The moment it is created. It gets its own number from the same series |
| Manual invoice | Yes | When you press Send or Process (don't send) on the Send invoice screen |
How the next number is worked out. The app takes the highest number among your company's issued invoices and adds one. If that is below Min. invoice number, it uses the minimum instead. Drafts are ignored. Numbering belongs to your company alone, so other companies on the system do not affect it.
Where the dates come from.
| Kind of invoice | Invoice date | Due date |
|---|---|---|
| From a booking | When the invoice was created | Invoice date plus the customer's payment terms: 0, 7, 14 or 30 days. A customer with no financial details set gets 14 |
| Combined invoice across bookings | When it was created | Worked out from the first booking's customer, as above |
| Manual invoice | When you pressed New | 14 days after that, whatever the customer's terms. Both can be changed while it is a Draft |
| Credit note | When it was created | The same moment. A credit is due at once |
The due date is fixed when the invoice is made. If you change a customer's payment terms later, invoices they already have keep their old due date. A manual invoice also keeps the dates it was given when you pressed New, even if it is issued days later. Change them on the draft before you issue it.
Worked example. Your company's last issued invoice is 1041 and Min. invoice number is 1.
- On 3 March at 10:15 you invoice a booking for a customer with 30 Days terms. It becomes invoice 1042, dated 3 March, due 2 April.
- On 4 March you start a manual invoice. It shows Draft, number 0, due 18 March.
- On 5 March a credit note is made on another booking. It takes 1043.
- On 6 March you issue the manual invoice. It gets 1044, but is still dated 4 March and due 18 March unless you changed those on the draft.
- You then move to a new accounting package that expects numbers from 26000. You set Min. invoice number to 26000. The next invoice is 26000, then 26001. Setting it back to 1 later changes nothing, because 26001 is now the highest number.
What to do next: to raise the invoice itself, use Invoice a booking or Manual invoices. To get it to the customer, see Sending an invoice.
Q&A
Why do two invoices have the same number? Two invoices issued at almost the same moment can be given the same number. This can happen when two colleagues invoice at once, or when invoicing that the app runs by itself overlaps with someone at the desk. The app does not stop this. Tell your accountant before you change anything, because one of the two may already be in the books. To remove the wrong copy, switch on the unlabelled column at the far right of the Invoice table in the table's column settings. It shows a red bin icon on each row. Clicking it deletes that invoice and its PDF at once, without asking first. Filter Invoice number to the duplicated number first, so you can see both rows and be sure which one you are deleting. If the app finds no other invoice with that number, it refuses with "Can't delete invoice as its not a duplicate or its synced to financial accounting."
Why is a number missing from the series? An issued invoice with that number was deleted, or Min. invoice number was raised and the series jumped. Deleting a draft never leaves a gap, because drafts have no number. The app keeps no record of deleted invoices, so compare with the series in your accounting package. Deleting is covered in Deleting and exporting invoices.
Why did a new invoice get a number that was already used? The invoice with the highest number was deleted. The next number is always the highest remaining one plus one, so that number is handed out again. If the deleted invoice had already reached your accountant, raise Min. invoice number above it before you issue anything else.
Why does an invoice show number 0? It is a Draft. It gets a number when you issue it with Send or Process (don't send) on the Send invoice screen. See Manual invoices.
Why is a booking invoice due in 14 days when the customer has 30? The customer's Pament terms were changed after the invoice was made, or the customer had no financial details at the time and got the standard 14 days. The due date on an issued invoice cannot be changed. Credit it and invoice again if the date must be right, as described in Credit notes.
Why is a manual invoice due in 14 days when the customer has 30? Manual invoices always start with 14 days and do not read the customer's terms. Change Due date on the invoice while it is still a Draft.
Why can I not change the invoice date or due date? The invoice has been issued. Both boxes are greyed out once Status is Send. Use Credit notes to reverse it and raise a new one.
Why did changing Min. invoice number do nothing? Your issued invoices already go higher than the number you typed. The minimum only lifts the next number; it never lowers it.
Related pages
- Invoice a booking — to create an invoice from a booking's lines.
- Manual invoices — to raise, edit and issue a draft by hand.
- Credit notes — to reverse an issued invoice.
- Set a customer's payment and invoicing terms — to set the payment terms behind the due date.
- Accounting sync — when numbers have to match your bookkeeping package.