OltranoYour first invoice
Five fields, one customer, one line. The only part worth slowing down for is what happens the moment you press Issue — because after that, the document stops being yours to change.
Before the first one
Open Settings → Company and fill in the legal name, the tax number and the IBAN. We refuse to issue without a legal name on purpose: a document that goes to an accountant without the issuer's full name is not a document, it is a note. The IBAN is not required to issue, but without it your customer has nowhere to transfer the money, which is usually the point.
Draft, then issued
A new document is a draft. It has no number, it can be edited freely, and it can be deleted outright — a draft leaves no gap behind because it never took a number.
Pressing Issue does four things at once: it takes the next number from the series, freezes your company details onto the document, freezes the customer's details onto it, and locks the figures.
Freezing both parties is not caution, it is correctness. An invoice from January must still show the address the customer had in January. If we read the address live from the customer record, moving office in March would silently rewrite every old invoice.
What you can still change afterwards
Notes, terms, the reference, the PO number, the due date, the language and the template. Not the lines, not the amounts, not the customer, not the number. If the figures are wrong, the answer is a credit note, not an edit — and that is the same answer your accountant would give.
Then one of three things
- Email it. It goes with a PDF attached and a link to a page where the customer can view and pay. If you are on a plan that supports it, the EN 16931 XML goes along too.
- Download the PDF. Same renderer as the email and the portal — there is only one, so there is no version of the document that only you see.
- Send it to the authority. In the countries where that is required, from the document itself. See e-invoicing.
Questions people actually ask
Can I delete an invoice I already issued?
No, and no software that takes you seriously will let you. An issued number has to stay in the series. Void it instead: the number stays, the document is clearly marked void, and the audit trail keeps the reason.
Can I change the invoice number?
You can change the series format and the next number in Settings, before you issue. Once a document holds a number, that number is its own.
Do I need a VAT number to issue invoices?
No. If you are not VAT registered, leave the VAT fields empty and set your default rate to 0 — the documents come out without tax lines and say so.
Next
- Invoice numbering: series, gaps and why they matterHow series work, and why a failed issue never eats a number.
- How to correct an invoice you already sentCredit note, void, or neither — and how to tell which one you need.
- Make your invoices look like your companyTemplates, logo, accent colour, paper size, and what prints.