Invoices and the pay page

Bill a customer with an itemized invoice and send them a link they can pay from directly. No login, no app, nothing for them to install.

Creating and sending an invoice

1. Open Invoices and choose Create invoice.
2. Pick an existing customer, or enter a name, email, phone and (optionally) an account number to create one on the spot.
3. Choose the gateway that should take the payment and set a due date. Add a memo if you want the customer to see a note. If your account uses locations, choose one.
4. Add line items: a description, a quantity and a unit price. Tick Taxable on each line the tax rate should apply to.
5. Set the tax rate. It is pre-filled from your default and can be changed for this invoice.
6. Choose how the customer may pay (below) and save. You can also add a bill-to and ship-to address; they print on the pay page and receipt.

A new invoice is a Draft and the customer has not seen it yet. Choose Send on the invoice list to email the customer their pay link. The same button reads Resend once it has been sent. You can also copy the link from the Pay link column and send it yourself, for example by text message.

Invoices cannot be edited after they are created. If something is wrong, void it and create a new one.

How your customer pays

The customer opens the pay link. The page shows the invoice and a secure payment form, and what they can do depends on the options you chose: whether they can pay by card, bank account or both, and whether they must pay in full or may pay in parts. When the payment succeeds the invoice moves to Paid and the payment appears under Transactions. If a payment is declined, the invoice stays open and the customer can try again from the same link.

Partial payments and deposits

When you create an invoice, Partial payments has three settings. It is chosen at creation and cannot be changed afterward.

• Disabled (the default): the customer pays the full amount in one charge.
• Customer choice: the customer types any amount up to the balance and can come back to pay the rest.
• Fixed deposit: the first payment must be exactly the required deposit you set, or the full balance. After that the customer can pay any amount up to what is left.

While there is a balance the invoice shows as Partially paid, and the invoice list shows Total, Paid and Balance due.

Card, bank account and authorize-only

You can limit an invoice to card only, bank account only, or both. Bank-account options are only available on gateways that support them; on any other gateway the customer is offered a card. Tick Authorize only to hold the funds on the customer's card without taking them straight away, then capture or void from Transactions. It is only available when partial payments are disabled and the gateway supports it. An authorization that is never captured eventually expires at the card network, so capture promptly.

Void or refund?

• Void an invoice when it should no longer be collected, for example it was created in error. Choose Void on the invoice list. A voided invoice can no longer be paid.
• Refund a payment when money has been taken and should go back. Find the payment under Transactions and choose Refund. Some gateways let you refund part of the amount; others refund the full amount only.
• Void a payment from Transactions when it has not settled yet. Where Void is offered, it cancels the payment instead of returning money afterward.

Invoice numbers

By default invoices are numbered INV-000123, INV-000124 and so on. You can choose your own format and starting number on your account page, under Invoice numbers. The format is text with a few placeholders in curly brackets.

• {######} is the counter. Each # is one digit, filled with leading zeros, so {####} gives 0007. Every format needs exactly one counter.
• {YYYY} is the four-digit year, {YY} the two-digit year, {MM} the month and {DD} the day, in your account time zone.
• If you use locations, {LOC} is the location's short code.
• Anything else must be a letter, a digit, a dash, an underscore or a full stop. No spaces or slashes.

For example INV-{######} gives INV-000123 and {YYYY}-{####} gives 2026-0123. A number can be at most 20 characters. You can raise the next number but never lower it, so a number is never used twice. Changing the format never renames invoices you already issued, and the counter does not restart at the new year on its own. QuickBooks Desktop only accepts reference numbers up to 11 characters, so a longer number appears in the memo instead.