Invoices

By the end you'll be able to turn the charges from a visit into a proper invoice, give it an invoice number, fix it while it's still a draft, send it to the client, and tidy up mistakes safely.

An invoice is the bill you hand (or email) to a client. It's a tidy document listing what they're being charged for, with a total and a due date. Before there's an invoice, there are just charges sitting on the client's account from their visit. This section is about turning those charges into a bill and looking after it.

This section covers invoices only. For quotes you give before doing the work, see Estimates (quotes). For taking money once an invoice exists, see Taking payments. We'll point you across whenever those come up.

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The two states every invoice lives in

Almost everything about invoices comes down to one question: is it a draft, or is it finalised?

A draft is your scratchpad. You can add lines, remove lines, change the dates — nothing is set in stone, and a draft doesn't count toward what the client owes. When you're happy, you finalise it. That locks the invoice, stamps it with an invoice number, and makes it real.

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A note on the two kinds of status badge

You'll see a coloured status badge at the top of every finalised invoice. It's helpful, but it can be confusing because it's actually showing two different things depending on what's happened:

• Where the invoice is in its life: Draft, Finalised, Void.
• How the payment is going: Paid, Partial (some paid, some owing), Overdue (past the due date and not fully paid).

So a finalised invoice whose due date has passed will show Overdue — even though, behind the scenes, it's a perfectly normal finalised invoice. That's expected. The badge is just being helpful by flagging that the money's late. (You'll see the same red Overdue badge against the row in the Invoices list, so you can spot late bills at a glance.)

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Find your invoices

Usually: front desk

Step by step

1. In the sidebar on the left, click Billing.
2. Click Invoices.
3. You'll see a table of every invoice — client, patient, date, a status badge, the total and the balance still owing. Any issued invoice that's unpaid and past its due date carries a red Overdue badge.
4. Search by invoice number or description in the search box, or filter by status. Picking Overdue in the status dropdown shows exactly those late, unpaid invoices — handy for your end-of-day chase list.

Other ways to find a specific invoice

• ⭐ From the patient or client: open them, click the Financials tab, and click any invoice in the Recent Invoices list. Best when you're already looking at that client.
• From the Dashboard: the Pending Invoices card lists invoices needing attention — click one to open it.

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Create an invoice from a visit's charges

This is the everyday job: a visit is done, charges are sitting on the account, and you want to bill them. The cleanest way is to let the app gather the charges for you.

Usually: front desk

Step by step

1. Open the patient (the animal) or the client (the owner). Use the patient if it was one animal; use the client if you want to bill several pets together.
2. Click the Financials tab.
3. Look for the Uninvoiced charges section. These are charges from visits that haven't been billed yet. Each one is something the vet or nurse added during care.
4. Tick the charges you want on this invoice. (From the client's Financials tab you may see charges across several of their pets — tick whichever belong together.)
5. Click Generate Invoice.
6. A small dialog lets you choose which charges to include, set the tax rate, the due date, and add notes. Adjust if needed, then click Generate Invoice (if your selection spans more than one pet, the button reads Generate 2 Invoices and so on — you'll get one invoice per pet).
7. You now have a draft invoice with those charges as line items. Check it over.
8. When it's right, click Finalise. (See Finalise a draft invoice below.)

Other ways to do this — pick the one that suits where you are

• ⭐ From the Financials tab (above): recommended. The app surfaces the charges for you so nothing gets forgotten.
• From a blank invoice (Billing → Invoices → New Invoice): full manual control — see the next task. Use this for one-off bills like selling a bag of food with no visit attached.

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Create a blank invoice from scratch

Use this when there's no visit to draw from — for example, selling sundries over the counter, or when you want to build a bill by hand.

Usually: front desk

Step by step

1. Go to Billing → Invoices and click New Invoice.
2. Select the client in the Owner field (that's what it's labelled on the form). This is required — an invoice always belongs to an owner.
3. Select the patient (the animal). This is optional, but please choose one if you can — it links the charges to the right pet, so later you can answer "what was this for?". (See the tip below.)
4. Add line items: click the + to open the item picker, choose a catalogue item (pick its unit if the item offers more than one), then set the quantity, the unit price and any per-line discount (you can enter the discount as a dollar amount or a percentage). Repeat for each line.
5. Set the issue date and due date. You can use a term preset — Pay at time, Net 7 / 14 / 30 / 60, or Custom — to fill the due date for you.
6. Click Create Invoice to save it as a draft.
7. Check everything, then click Finalise to issue it.

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Edit a draft invoice

While an invoice is a draft, you can change anything. This is the time to get it right.

Usually: front desk

Step by step

1. Open the invoice from the Invoices list (or the client's Financials tab). If it's a draft, it opens as an editable form.
2. Make your changes:
   • Add a line: click + and pick a catalogue item.
   • Remove a line: click the trash icon on that row.
   • Reorder lines: drag the grip handle (the ≡ dots on the left of a row) up or down.
   • Change dates or notes: edit the fields directly.
3. Click Save.
4. The invoice is still a draft. When you're done editing for good, click Finalise.

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Finalise (issue) a draft invoice

Finalising turns your draft into the official, locked invoice. It stamps an invoice number, makes the amount count toward what the client owes, and lets you take payment and send it.

Usually: front desk

Step by step

1. Open the draft invoice and check it has at least one line item and everything's correct.
2. Click Finalise in the header.
3. Finalise saves your edits for you first — there's no separate "save before finalising?" prompt, so you don't need to click Save beforehand. Whatever's on screen is what gets locked in. (If the form has an error, finalising stops and shows it rather than issuing a broken invoice.)
4. The invoice moves to Finalised, gets its invoice number, and is now ready for payment and sending. While there's still a balance owing, a prominent Take payment button appears in the header — your one-click way to record money against this invoice (see below).

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Take payment on a finalised invoice

Once an invoice is finalised and still has a balance owing, the quickest way to record money against it is the Take payment button.

Usually: front desk

Step by step

1. Open the finalised invoice. While there's a balance left to pay, Take payment shows as the main (highlighted) button in the header.
2. Click Take payment. The payment dialog opens with this invoice and its outstanding balance already selected for you.
3. Choose the payment method, adjust the amount if it's a part payment, and click Record Payment.

The full walk-through — split tender, allocation, account credit and receipts — lives in Taking payments.

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Unfinalise an invoice (go back to draft)

Made a mistake on an invoice you've already finalised? You don't have to void it and start over. Unfinalise sends it back to draft so you can fix it.

Usually: front desk or admin

Step by step

1. Open the finalised invoice.
2. Click Unfinalise in the header.
3. If payments are already attached, a dialog warns you the payments will stay attached. Read it, then click Unfinalise to confirm.
4. The invoice is now a draft again. Edit it as needed.
5. Click Finalise when you're done to re-issue it.

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Void an invoice (cancel an issued one)

Void cancels a finalised invoice that was issued in error. The invoice stays in the records (marked cancelled) so there's a clear audit trail, but it stops counting toward the client's balance.

Usually: front desk or admin

Step by step

1. Open the finalised invoice.
2. Click the ⋯ (more) menu in the header.
3. Click Void invoice.
4. A dialog explains the invoice will be cancelled and removed from outstanding balances, and that any payments already on it become account credit for the client.
5. Click Void invoice to confirm.

Other ways to do this — when you have several to cancel

• ⭐ One invoice: the ⋯ menu method above.
• Several at once (bulk): in the Invoices list, tick the invoices you want to cancel, then click Void in the toolbar that appears, and confirm. Only finalised/sent/paid/partial/overdue invoices can be bulk-voided — not drafts, already-void, or merged ones.

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Delete a draft invoice

If you created a draft by mistake and it was never finalised, you can delete it outright. This is permanent — there's no draft to recover afterwards.

Usually: front desk

Step by step

1. Open the draft invoice (or find it in the Invoices list).
2. Click the ⋯ menu and choose Delete draft. (In the list, use the row's action menu.)
3. A dialog warns this is permanent and can't be undone.
4. Click Delete draft to remove it.

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Print or download an invoice as a PDF

Once an invoice is finalised, you can print it or save a tidy PDF to keep or email.

Usually: front desk

Step by step

1. Open the finalised invoice.
2. In the header you'll see three icon buttons — Download PDF (a download arrow), Print (a printer) and Send (an envelope). Hover any of them to confirm what it does. Click the printer icon to open your browser's print dialog, or the download icon to save a professional PDF file.
3. For print, choose your printer and print as usual.

The printed and PDF versions use the clean document layout — just the invoice and clinic header, with the on-screen panels hidden. See Printing & PDFs for more.

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Send an invoice to a client

Email a finalised invoice straight to the client, with the PDF attached for them.

Usually: front desk

Step by step

1. Open the finalised invoice (you can't send a draft).
2. Click the Send button — the envelope icon in the header, alongside the Download PDF and Print icons.
3. A dialog opens with the client's email pre-filled. Pick an email template, and tweak the subject or message if you like.
4. The invoice PDF is attached automatically.
5. Click Send.

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Mark an invoice as sent

Usually: front desk

Wattle can track which invoices you've sent to the client — handy at the end of the day for seeing what still needs sending, and what's been sent but not yet paid. It's a simple Sent / Not sent flag you set yourself, and it's completely separate from payment: an invoice can be paid but not marked sent, or sent but unpaid — whatever's true.

Step by step (one invoice)

1. Open the finalised invoice.
2. Click the ⋯ (more actions) button in the header.
3. Click Mark as sent. A blue Sent chip appears next to the status badge.
4. Changed your mind? Open ⋯ again and click Mark as not sent.

Mark several at once (end of day)

1. Go to Billing → Invoices.
2. Tick the invoices you've sent (the day's finalised ones).
3. Click Mark as sent in the bar that appears — they're all flagged at once.

See what's been sent

• The Invoices list has a Sent column showing a Sent / Not sent chip on each row.
• Use the Sent filter (next to the Status filter): pick Not sent to see what still needs sending, or Sent for what's gone out. Combine with the Status filter — e.g. Sent + a balance owing = "sent, now chasing payment".

Merge several invoices into one

If a client has built up a few separate small invoices, you can combine them into a single consolidated bill.

Usually: front desk

Step by step

1. Go to the Invoices list.
2. Tick at least two invoices. They must all belong to the same client, and all be finalised or sent (not drafts, void, or already merged).
3. Click Merge invoices in the toolbar.
4. A dialog shows which invoice will be the destination (the oldest one in your selection), lists the others "merging in", and works out the new combined total. If the selected invoices fall across different BAS quarters, you'll also see a tax warning with a tick-box to acknowledge before you can continue.
5. Click Merge invoices to combine them. Everything is consolidated into the oldest invoice — the others are marked merged (they stay in the records and remain searchable). There's no brand-new invoice number; the oldest one carries the combined total.

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Quick reference — which action for which situation

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Where to go next

• Taking money against an invoice — recording payments, allocation, account credit and overpayments: Taking payments.
• Quoting before the work — estimates, and converting an accepted estimate into an invoice: Estimates (quotes).
• The big picture — how charges become invoices: Charges vs invoices (the money model).
• Plain-English definitions — draft, finalise, void, allocate, account credit: Glossary.
• Symbols you'll see — the ⋯ menu, the grip handle, status badges: Buttons & symbols cheat sheet.