How to Create and Send a New Invoice

Autobooks allows you to create invoices (both one-time and recurring) to send to your business' customers via email. These invoices can then be paid either electronically with a credit or debit card, or by an ACH (bank account transfer) payment.

To create a new invoice follow the below steps:

• Go to Invoicing from the left-hand navigation menu

• Click on Invoices
• Click the [+New Invoice] button

• From the Create an Invoice page, fill out the appropriate information for this new invoice

• Please note that fields marked with a red asterisk* are required

• Customer – This is the person or business that you would like to send this invoice to. Clicking this field will bring up a drop-down menu where you can search for the appropriate customer to bill. If the customer in question has not yet been added into your business' Autobooks account, you can do do by clicking the [+ New customer] option from this menu. 

If you would like to learn more about adding a customer, please click here to view the How to Add a Customer article

• Due Date – This is the date that payment to this invoice from your customer is due.
• Product/Service – This is the product your business is selling or the service your business is providing as part of this invoice. By default, only one product/service will be available for your business. You can add additional products/services that are specific for your business by clicking the [+ New product] option from this drop-down menu.

If you would like to learn more about how or why to add a new Product/Service for your business, please click here to view the How to Add a Product/Service article

• Quantity (Qty) – This field is for showing the number of products this invoice is for, or the amount of service provided.
• Price – This field is where you can enter in the amount of the Product/Service you are providing.

Please note that the Amount field is an automatic calculation that is based off of the Quantity times unit Price. 

• Description (optional) – If you need to add in more details about a specific Product/Service, you can do so in this field.
• [+Add item] (optional) – If there is a second (or third, or fourth, etc.) Product or Service that you need to add to this invoice, you can insert a new line item by clicking this button.
• Message (optional) – If there is anything else that you would like to relay to the customer receiving this invoice, you can add longer messages in this field. 

After you have filled in the necessary information above, you will need to take one of the following steps to finish the invoice creation process:

• Click the [Send Invoice] button to email this invoice to the customer in question.

Please note that if the customer in question does not have an email address on file, you will be prompted to enter one before you can send out this invoice.

•  Click the Preview Invoice option to see what your customer will see when receiving this invoice.
• Click the Save invoice as draft option to save this invoice in a draft state, which will allow you to come back and edit this draft later.
• Click the Save to list option to fully create this invoice, but not send it out via email to the customer in question.

Please note that once an invoice is fully created (either sent through the [Send Invoice] or Save to list options), it cannot be edited. If you need to change an invoice after it has been sent or saved to the invoice list, you can easily copy this invoice from the Invoice List page and then make the necessary changes. To learn more about the Copy Invoice feature, please click here to read the How to Copy an Invoice article.