/accounting/invoices
📷 Screenshot: Sales Invoices list page with the status filter tabs and the “New Invoice” button — to be added.
Before you start
- Which book am I in? Invoices belong to an accounting book (the workspace selector at the top of the accounting area). If your organisation runs more than one business or set of books, confirm you are in the right one before creating an invoice — an invoice created in the wrong book posts to the wrong ledger and customer balance.
- You need a customer contact. An invoice must be addressed to a contact whose type is Customer. You cannot raise an invoice against a contact marked as a Vendor — the system will reject it. Create or convert the contact first under Contacts.
The invoice lifecycle (statuses)
Every invoice carries a status (its workflow state). Knowing the status tells you what you can and cannot do with the document.
Two important moments:
- The ledger is only touched when the invoice is sent. A Draft or Approved invoice has no effect on your accounts.
- Once submitted, an invoice is locked. A submitted/sent invoice cannot be edited in place. If you need to change a posted invoice you must either void it (if it has no payments) or amend it (which produces a fresh draft under a new invoice number and supersedes the original).
Creating a sales invoice
From the Sales Invoices list, choose New Invoice.📷 Screenshot: New invoice form showing customer, dates, and the line-item editor — to be added.
Header fields
Line items
Each line represents one thing you are charging for:How totals are calculated
For each line, line total = quantity × unit price, and the line tax is line total × (tax rate ÷ 100). The invoice then rolls these up:- Subtotal = sum of all line totals (before tax)
- Tax amount = sum of all line taxes
- Total = subtotal + tax amount
Discounts: Sales invoices apply tax per line on the full line total; there is no document-level discount field on the sales invoice itself. If you need to offer discounts up front, build them into the line unit price or raise a Quotation first (quotations support both line-level and document-level discounts) and convert it to an invoice. To reduce an already-issued invoice, raise a credit note (see Related).
Editing a draft
A Draft invoice can be edited freely — change the customer, dates, notes, terms, or rewrite the lines, and the totals recalculate. Once an invoice has been submitted, sent, partially paid, paid, or voided it can no longer be edited. The system blocks the change and asks you to amend instead. This protects the integrity of anything already posted to the ledger.Submitting and approval
Choose Submit on a Draft invoice to move it forward.- If your book has an approval rule that matches this invoice (for example, a value threshold), the invoice moves to Pending Approval and waits for an approver. It is locked while it waits.
- If no approval rule applies, the invoice is auto-approved immediately and jumps to Approved, ready to send.
Sending the invoice (this posts to the ledger)
Choose Send to customer on an Approved invoice. Sending does three things:- Posts the journal entry to your general ledger (see Behind the scenes below). This is the moment revenue and the receivable are recognised.
- Marks the invoice Sent and stamps the send time.
- Emails the invoice PDF to the customer’s email address. If the contact has no email on file, the invoice is still marked Sent — only the email is skipped, and you’ll see a note to that effect.
EFRIS (URA fiscalisation): If your business is configured for EFRIS e-invoicing, sending a sales invoice also fiscalises it with URA and stamps the legal fiscal document number (FDN), verification code, and QR onto the document. Depending on your transport mode this happens either before the ledger posts (online) or just after (offline). See the EFRIS page under Related for the full behaviour and what to do if fiscalisation fails.
Advances: If you tagged customer advance payments onto the invoice, sending it automatically applies those advances against the new balance.
Credit limits
Hitaji 360 has a credit-limit guard that can stop an invoice that would push a customer past an agreed limit, with a manager-override option on the create form (Bypass the credit-limit guard).
⚠️ Current state: This guard is part of an ongoing CRM rebuild and is temporarily disconnected in the running system, so invoices are not being blocked on credit limit today. Treat credit-limit control as a manual check until the rebuild reconnects it. (Flagged for the team — see Gaps.)
Recording a payment against an invoice
When a customer pays, open the invoice and choose Record payment.📷 Screenshot: Invoice detail page with the “Record payment” action and the payment modal — to be added.
- Recording a payment requires the
accounting-payments:createpermission. - A payment can settle the invoice fully (→ Paid) or in part (→ Partially Paid); the invoice’s amount paid and balance due update accordingly.
- You can view every payment applied to an invoice in its Payments history.
Overdue invoices and follow-ups
Each night the system automatically marks any Sent or Partially Paid invoice whose due date has passed as Overdue, so your receivables ageing stays current without manual effort. For overdue invoices you can:- Mark as followed up — record that finance chased the customer (stamps the follow-up time).
- Snooze the follow-up — push the invoice out of the overdue chase digest until a chosen future date.
Voiding an invoice
Voiding cancels a posted invoice and reverses its journal entry, backing out the revenue and receivable. You can void an invoice only when:- It has been submitted (a Draft can’t be voided — delete it instead), and
- It has no payments recorded against it. If payments exist, refund/unapply them first.
Deleting a draft
A Draft invoice (no payments, nothing posted) can be deleted outright. The system refuses to delete any invoice that has payments — void it instead.Permissions
Actions on invoices are gated by these permission slugs (your role may have some and not others):Behind the scenes — the accounting
When an invoice is sent, Hitaji 360 posts a balanced journal entry. In plain double-entry terms:
So the customer’s receivable balance goes up by the full invoice total, revenue is recognised on the income account(s), and any VAT charged is parked in a tax-payable account until you remit it. The receivable line is tagged to the customer so it shows correctly on their statement and in Aged Receivables.
When a payment is recorded, a second entry debits your bank/cash account and credits Accounts Receivable, reducing what the customer owes.
When an invoice is voided, the original journal entry is reversed — every debit and credit above is posted in the opposite direction, returning revenue, receivable, and tax to where they were.
If sending fails with a message about a missing Accounts Receivable, Sales, or Tax Payable system account, your chart of accounts is missing one of these system accounts. Configure them in your chart of accounts (or contact support) and try again.
Related
- Quotations — quote a customer and convert it into an invoice
- Credit notes & sales returns — reduce or reverse an issued invoice
- Payments — record, allocate, and reconcile customer payments
- Contacts — create and manage customer contacts
- EFRIS e-invoicing — URA fiscalisation of sales invoices