Invoicing Overview: Manual, Batch, and Automatic

Last updated July 6, 2026 · Admins and office staff

The Sales page is your billing home base: every invoice and every payment for your company lives in one list there. There are three ways an invoice can come into existence — you type it in yourself, you run a batch, or the system creates it for you — and all three land in the same Sales list where you review, send, and collect them. This article explains the three paths and when to use each, plus how payments and the Customer Portal fit in.

Before you start

  • An operator account with access to the Sales menu.
  • At least one customer (see Create a Customer). Manual invoices also require the customer to have a job, and generated invoices pull their dollar amounts from the job’s accepted estimate — so the more complete your customer → job → estimate chain, the more invoicing can do for you.
  • Optional: Payment Methods set up in Settings (Cash, Check, etc.) if you plan to record payments.

The three ways invoices get created

1. Manual invoices (one at a time)

Click Create Invoice on the Sales page, pick the customer and job, add line items, and save. Best for one-off work, custom amounts, or anything that doesn’t follow a standard billing pattern. See Create and Manage Invoices.

2. Batch billing (you press the button)

The Batch Billing toolbar on the Sales page and the buttons on a Program’s summary page generate many invoices at once from work that’s already done:

  • Generate Visit Invoices — one invoice per completed, not-yet-invoiced visit on Per Visit jobs.
  • Generate Monthly Fixed — one invoice per Monthly Fixed job for the current month.
  • Program round invoicing — one invoice per customer for a completed program round (fertilization/PHC programs).

You choose when to run it; the system figures out what’s billable and skips anything already invoiced. See Batch Billing.

3. Automatic invoicing (the system presses the button)

Turn on Set Job Invoicing on a job, and the system creates invoices for that job on its own — instantly when a visit is marked completed (Per Visit jobs), or at the start of each month (Monthly Fixed jobs). Invoices are created for your review only — nothing is ever emailed to the customer automatically. See Automatic Invoicing.

How payments fit in

Money is recorded against invoices as payments. A single payment can cover one invoice or be split across several of a customer’s open invoices. You can record payments three ways:

  • Quick Pay — right from the Sales list, on any invoice row with a balance.
  • Receive Payment — the full payment screen, for splitting one check across multiple invoices.
  • Online via the Customer Portal — the customer pays you directly (see below).

When an invoice is fully paid it’s flagged Paid, and if it’s linked to a job, the job is automatically moved to Closed. See Record Payments.

How the Customer Portal fits in

If you’ve enabled the Customer Portal and connected Stripe, customers can view and pay their invoices online by card — with an optional card-processing surcharge passed through to the customer if you’ve turned that on. You don’t have to do anything when this happens:

  • The payment appears in your Sales list automatically with an Online badge (manually keyed payments show Manual).
  • If there’s been any online activity, the top of the Sales page shows an Online Payments / Manual Payments breakdown, plus Customer-Paid Processing Fees collected.

Setup and details are covered in the portal guides — see the Customer Portal overview, Merchant setup, and Stripe Connect.

Reading the Sales list

Every row is either an Invoice or a Payment (the Type badge tells you which). Invoice rows carry a live status:

Status Meaning
Open Unpaid, not yet past the due date.
Overdue Unpaid and past the due date.
Partial Some money received, balance still owed.
Paid Paid in full.
Overpaid Payments recorded exceed the invoice total.

The grid supports search, filtering, sorting, grouping, and export to Excel, PDF, or CSV from its toolbar — handy for handing data to your accountant.

What happens next

A typical invoice’s life: it’s created (manually, by batch, or automatically) → you review it on its summary page → you Email Invoice or print it → the customer pays (online or otherwise) → you record the payment (or the portal records it for you) → the invoice flips to Paid and its linked job closes. Start with Create and Manage Invoices to walk that path end to end.

Tips & best practices

  • Get estimates accepted before relying on batch or automatic invoicing. Both generate invoice amounts from the job’s most recent accepted estimate — no accepted estimate, no generated invoice.
  • Set Invoicing Terms (days) on each job. Generated invoices compute their due date from the job’s terms (falling back to 30 days). Manual invoices default the due date to 30 days out, adjusted to the job’s terms once you pick a job.
  • Pick one primary path per job. A job set to Per Visit with auto-invoicing on doesn’t also need you running visit batches for it — batch billing remains useful for jobs you haven’t opted in.
  • Use the Type filter on the Sales grid to look at just invoices or just payments when reconciling.

Troubleshooting

  • “Where do I set tax rates or invoice defaults?” — Company-wide invoice preferences (Qty/Rate columns, Product/Service column, sales tax on/off) come from your company settings and can be overridden per invoice under Invoice Settings on the create form.
  • An invoice I expected wasn’t generated — check the job’s Billing Mode, that the visit/round is actually marked completed, that the job has an accepted estimate, and that the visit isn’t already invoiced. Details in Batch Billing and Automatic Invoicing.
  • A payment shows “Online” but I never entered it — that’s a portal payment via Stripe; it’s real money and needs no action from you.

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