How to create an outbound invoice

Table of contents:

• Setting up your preferences
• Importing customers to Billtobox
• Creating a new invoice
• Sending the invoice to the customer

Still creating your sales invoices in a spreadsheet, a word processor like Word, or in any other solution that involves more than a minute per invoice?

Then this Billtobox feature will make your life easier by saving you a tremendous amount of time.

It'll take you less than 60 seconds to create and send an invoice with Billtobox.

Setting up your preferences

Go to your Settings > Outbound.

Turn on the Create invoices online and set up your preferences:

1. Default comment on all invoices: add a comment that'll appear on all your outgoing invoices (optional)
2. Autonumbering: ON (so you don't have to manually give your invoices a number. Turn it off to number your invoices manually).
3. Add a new numbering sequence for the autonumbering feature. Useful at the start of the year if you want to start the numbering sequence with the new year.  e.g. 2022-001 for the first invoice of 2022.
4. Add terms & conditions to all your outgoing invoices created on Billtobox.
5. Show extra information in the footer of your invoices:
   • Email address
   • Phone number
   • Website
   • Additional information (free text up to 256 characters)
   • IBAN (choose which IBAN(s) to display on your invoices
     => To add/edit the available IBANs, go to your Settings > Company info

Note: to display your company's RPL (RPR/RPM) on your invoices, go to your Settings > Company info > Registration options > RPL 

Import your customers to Billtobox

If you haven't done it yet, now's a good time. Even though this step is optional, it'll save you a lot of time down the road.

>> Click here to read how to import your customers

Creating a new invoice

• Go to the Accounts receivable menu.
• Click on Create new invoice

In the DIY invoice creation tool, you have to fill out the invoice's legal information:

• Invoice currency:
  
  
  
• Document type: invoice or credit note.
  
  Note: when creating a credit note, select your customer first then you'll need to match the credit note to one or several invoices via the Click here to match credit note with open invoices button.
  

• Document date. The due date is automatically set, following your Default payment after preferences (Settings > Outbound > Default payment after).
  
  
• Document number. Generated automatically if you enabled the autonumbering of outgoing invoices (see above 'Setting up your preferences', point #3).
  
  
• Your customer. Since you imported your customers in a previous step, you only have to choose which customer you want to send the invoice to. If the customer has not been imported yet, click on the + sign and fill out your new customer's information.
  Note: if your customer is an OpenPeppol member, you will also need to fill out the PO (Purchase Order) number before you can send the invoice.
  
  
  
• Product or service you're invoicing your client. You can add products or services in a few clicks thanks to the product catalog by clicking the Import from product catalog button.
  
  

If the product/service is not in your catalog, you can fill in the information manually. If you think you'll need to invoice this product/service in the future, press the little + at the end of the line to easily add it to your catalog.

1. Service: your product/service's name
2. Description: your product's description
3. Hrs/Qty : hours, quantity or measuring unit of your product
4. Price/rate: price or rate you charge by hour/unit
5. VAT: VAT rate applicable to your product/service

The sub-totals, totals and VAT fields are updated automatically.

Click the Add new line button to add extra lines of products/services to your invoice.

• Bank details. Here, you will find the name of your company, its IBAN, BIC, and the payment reference. It's also possible to generate a structured payment reference automatically.
• Comments. You can add a comment to each invoice individually or set up a standard comment that appears on all invoices (as seen earlier in this article).
  
  
  
• Attachments. If the document requires attachments, you can drop them through drag and drop or by clicking to open your computer's file explorer.
  
  

• Save.

Sending an invoice to the customer

Once an invoice has been saved, you'll land in the Accounts receivable menu. From there, you just have to select the invoice(s) you want to send and click Send.

Your customer will receive your invoice through the channel you chose when importing that customer.