Sending your first client invoice

We all know that cash is king when running your own business, so let's dive in to how you go about raising client invoices.

Firstly, if you navigate to the Sales tab, you'll land straight into the Invoices section. Here you will see a list of all sent & draft sales invoices colour coded as follows:

Orange - meaning the invoice is a draft.
Red - meaning the invoice is past its due date, so you know to follow up with your client.
Indigo - meaning it has been sent to your client but isn't yet overdue.
Grey - meaning it's a past invoice that money has been received for already.

Adding a new sales invoice

To raise a new invoice you simply hit the plus button labelled "Add new sales invoice".

At this point you will be able to add a new client or select an existing one.

In order to learn more about how to add a new client, check out our separate article on this topic here.

After selecting the client you wish to invoice from the list, you'll be taken to the invoice template screen. From here you will notice your default bank account that is connected will display on the template.

Pro Tip: It's important to always have a bank account connected prior to sending any client invoices, or else you'll end up sending it without any bank details, which means you won't get paid!

Adding a line item to the invoice

Next step is to click on the plus button labelled "add new line item".

From here you can either set up a new product or add a custom line item.

Adding a product

Products - are designed for recurring services or products that you sell regularly. These can be added based on units, hours, days or months by the rate at how much you charge for that specific unit.

Adding units to your product

If you select a product, the next step is to add in how many units of the product you'd like to add to the invoice. You can also add any notes at this stage that you wish to appear on the PDF. If you don't add notes, the default description will display your rate and units automatically.

Adding a custom line item

Custom line items - are more for if you're doing one off pieces of work or want to charge your client for a bunch of expenses/on-costs you've incurred.

Previewing and editing the invoice

After clicking on "Add line item", the invoice preview will populate with the total value for the line item like you can see below. To remove the line you simply hit the red remove button.

You can make any other changes to the invoice at this stage. You can click on most sections of the invoice if you wish to change any details, including payment terms, client details, payment bank details, etc.

If you need more information on how to edit an existing invoice, please refer to this article.

Advanced invoice settings

All invoices will default to the date you are raising them on. However, if you need to back date or change payments terms, you can do this from the Invoice Settings section, which can be found by clicking on the three dots located in the top-right corner.

From here you can also flag if the invoice is a credit note or refund. More on this below.

Sending the invoice off to your client

When the invoice is finalised and you're ready to send it off to your client, all you have to do is click on the three dots located in the top-right corner, and click "Send via Email'. This will email the PDF version of the invoice to the email address you have for your client in the system. It will also CC your own user address into the email so you have comfort over the fact it has been sent.

If you need to send the invoice off to multiple email addresses or want to personalise the message yourself, we suggest that you pop your own email in the client box or download it as a PDF so you can send it to yourself, instead of having it sent directly to your client.

Pro Tip: if you send it yourself via your own email provider, just make sure you mark the invoice as "sent" in Ember. Again, you can do this via the three buttons on the top right corner when previewing the invoice.

Issuing a credit note

If you need to issue a credit note against a sales invoice, you can easily do this via the Ember app. For more information on how to do this, please check out our dedicated article on this topic here.

Other Useful Resources

Video Tutorial

We've also prepared a quick video tutorial on everything you need to know about how to raise and send invoices in Ember.