Send an invoice, your client pays it, and the bookkeeping records itself. Here’s each step: creating and sending, what your client sees, quotes, sales tax, and payments that show up on their own.
Pick a customer, add what you’re billing for (a description, a quantity, and a price), and set a due date. The invoice starts as a draft, so you can change anything until it’s right. Only the admin or finance role can create and manage invoices, and your client needs an email address on their customer record before you can send.
When it’s ready, two buttons do the work. Issue invoice makes it final and puts it on your books. Send email emails your client the invoice with a private payment link; they don’t need an account, just the link. Once issued, an invoice can’t be edited: if something’s wrong, void it and create a fresh one. Voiding also cleanly removes it from your books.
The link opens a clean page with your business name, the line items, the total, and the due date, plus a print button if they want a paper copy. If you’ve set up online payments (the panel at the top of the Invoicing page), the page also shows a pay button, and your client can pay the balance by card on the spot. A card processing fee (about 2.9% plus 30 cents, shown as an estimate when you create the invoice) comes out before the money reaches you.
If you haven’t set up online payments, the page asks your client to contact you for payment details, and you record the check or transfer when it arrives. Either way, if an invoice sits unpaid we nudge for you: a reminder email goes out starting five days after the due date, at most one every five days, and stops the moment the invoice is paid or voided.
Two moments matter, and both are recorded for you. When you issue an invoice, your books record the sale: income you’ve earned, and an equal amount your client owes you. When the payment arrives, the owed amount clears, the money lands in the right account, and the invoice flips to Paid (or Partially paid, if they paid some of it).
Card payments through the payment page record themselves, including the processing fee as a business expense, with nothing to type. For a check or a transfer you arranged directly, open the invoice and choose Record payment. And if the money simply appears in your bank account, see matched deposits below.
Your books and your tax estimate count it at different moments. An issued invoice shows in your profit right away, even before the money arrives: that’s the standard way books work. Your tax estimate waits for the payment, because it counts income when the money actually lands.
An estimate is a price you’re proposing, not a bill. It looks like an invoice and sends like one, but it never touches your books and there’s nothing for your client to pay. Your client gets a link to a page clearly marked as an estimate, with a print button and a “valid through” date if you set one.
There’s no accept button on that page. When your client says yes, however they say it, open the estimate and choose Mark accepted, then Convert to invoice. That creates a draft invoice with the same line items and tax rate in your Invoices tab, ready to issue and send like any other. An estimate can only ever become one invoice.
Enter your rate in the sales tax field, then tick the Tax box on each line the tax applies to. Untaxed lines stay untaxed, and a customer you’ve marked tax-exempt is never charged tax. The tax is added on top of your subtotal and shown as its own line on your client’s invoice.
You enter the rate; we don’t calculate it. Sales tax rates depend on where you’re registered and what you sell, so enter the combined rate you’re required to collect, and confirm it with your state or a tax professional.
The tax you collect isn’t your income. Your books set it aside as money you owe your state. When you send the state its payment, record it in the Sales tax panel on the Invoicing page so your books show that debt as settled.
Sometimes a client skips the payment page and sends money straight to your bank account. When a deposit lands in a connected business account and matches what’s still owed on an open invoice, you’ll see it flagged in your review queue with the invoice number and the balance due, and one click applies it.
Applying it does two jobs at once: the payment is recorded on the invoice, and the deposit is kept from also counting as new income. Without that, the same sale would be counted twice, once when you issued the invoice and again when the deposit arrived.