Customer invoices¶

A customer invoice is a document issued by a company for products and/or services sold to a customer. It records receivables as they are sent to customers. Customer invoices can include amounts due for the goods and/or services provided, applicable sales taxes, shipping and handling fees, and other charges. Odoo supports multiple invoicing and payment workflows.

From draft invoice to profit and loss report, the process involves several steps once the goods (or services) have been ordered/shipped (or rendered) to a customer, depending on the invoicing policy:

• Invoice creation

• Invoice confirmation

• Invoice sending

• Payment and reconciliation

• Payment follow-up

• Reporting

Invoice creation¶

Draft invoices can be created directly from documents like sales orders or purchase orders or manually from the Customer Invoices journal in the Accounting Dashboard.

An invoice must include the required information to enable the customer to pay promptly for their goods and services. Make sure the following fields are appropriately completed:

• Customer: When a customer is selected, Odoo automatically pulls information from the customer record like the invoice address, preferred payment terms, fiscal positions, receivable account, and more onto the invoice. To change these values for this specific invoice, edit them directly on the invoice. To change them for future invoices, change the values on the contact record.

• Invoice Date: If not set manually, this field is automatically set as the current date upon confirmation.

• Due Date or payment terms: To specify when the customer has to pay the invoice.

• Journal: Automatically set and can be changed if needed.

• Currency. If the invoice’s currency differs from the company’s currency, the currency exchange rate is automatically displayed.

In the Invoice Lines tab:

• Product: Click Add a line, then search for and select the product.

• Quantity

• Price

• Taxes (if applicable)

To access the product catalog and view all items in an organized display, click Catalog. When the products and quantities are selected, click Back to Invoice to return to the invoice; the selected catalog items will appear in the invoice lines.

The Journal Items tab displays the accounting entries created. Additional invoice information such as the Customer Reference, Payment Reference, Fiscal Positions, Incoterms, and more can be added or modified in the Other Info tab.

Invoice confirmation¶

Click Confirm when the invoice is completed. The invoice’s status changes to Posted, and a journal entry is generated based on the invoice configuration. On confirmation, Odoo assigns each invoice a unique number from a defined sequence.

Invoice sending¶

To set a preferred Invoice sending method for a customer, go to Accounting ‣ Customers ‣ Customers and select the customer. In the Accounting tab of the contact form, select the preferred Invoice sending method in the Customer Invoices section.

To send the invoice to the customer, navigate back to the invoice record and follow these steps:

1. Click Print & Send.

2. If the default invoice layout has not been customized yet, a Configure your document layout pop-up window appears. Configure the layout and click Continue.

   Note

   • The document layout can be changed at any time in the general settings.

   • To add a QR code for banking app payments to the invoice, enable the QR Code option in the Configure Your Document Layout window. To modify this option, go to Accounting ‣ Configuration ‣ Settings, scroll down to the Customer Payments section, and enable/disable the QR Codes option.

3. In the Print & Send window:

   • If a preferred Invoice sending method was set in the contact form, it is selected by default. Select another one if needed.

   • If no preferred Invoice sending method was set in the contact form, select the method to use for sending the invoice to the customer.

4. Click Print & Send if the by Email option is selected, or click Print.

Sending multiple invoices¶

To send and print multiple invoices, go to Accounting ‣ Customers ‣ Invoices, select them in the Invoices list view and click Print & Send. The Print & Send window displays the selected invoice sending methods based on the preferred method set.

A banner is added to the selected invoices to indicate they are part of an ongoing send and print batch. This helps prevent the process from being triggered manually again, as it may take some time to complete for exceptionally large batches.

To check all invoices that have not yet been sent, go to Accounting ‣ Customers ‣ Invoices. In the Invoices list view, click into the search bar and filter on Not Sent.

Payment and reconciliation¶

In Odoo, an invoice is considered Paid when the associated accounting entry has been reconciled with a corresponding bank transaction.

Payment follow-up¶

Odoo’s follow-up actions help companies follow up on customer invoices. Different actions can be set up to remind customers to pay their outstanding invoices, depending on how much the customer is overdue. These actions are bundled into follow-up levels that trigger when an invoice is overdue by a certain number of days. If there are multiple overdue invoices for the same customer, the actions are performed on the most overdue invoice.

Sequence¶

Odoo assigns each document a unique sequence made up of a prefix and a number. The prefix combines the journal code and the entry date and groups entries by period. The number is unique for each period and is used to identify the entry. The default sequence on customer invoices is INV/YYYY/number. In some specific cases, resequencing invoices might be necessary.

Resequencing¶

Resequencing is not possible:

• When entries are before a lock date.

• When the sequence leads to a duplicate.

• When the Invoice Date doesn’t match the date contained in the new sequence number, e.g., if the sequence is changed to INV/2023/XXXXX for a document with an Invoice Date of 2024.

To change the invoice sequence with the structure INV/YYYY/MM/number, add /MM with the number of the month of the Invoice date. Odoo will recognize the “/” term as a month and update the future invoice sequence appropriately with the month of the Invoice date. For example, if the invoice date is January, change the sequence to INV/2024/01/XXXXX.

In this case, if the Invoice date isn’t aligned with the sequence number, a Validation Error message appears.

Resequencing a single invoice¶

To resequence the last confirmed invoice, click Reset to Draft, then change the sequence. The invoice now appears in red on the Customer Invoices list.

Mass-resequencing invoices¶

It can be helpful to resequence multiple invoice numbers. For example, when importing invoices from another invoicing or accounting system and the reference originates from the previous software, continuity for the current year must be maintained without restarting from the beginning.

Follow these steps to resequence invoice numbers:

1. Activate the developer mode.

2. From the Accounting Dashboard, open the Customer Invoices journal.

3. Select the invoices that need a new sequence.

4. Click the Actions menu and select Resequence.

5. In the Ordering field, choose to

   • Keep current order: The order of the numbers remains the same.

   • Reorder by accounting date: The number is reordered by accounting date.

6. Set the First New Sequence.

7. Preview Modifications and click Confirm.

The first invoice using the new sequence appears in red in the Customer Invoices list.

Reporting¶

Partner reports¶

Partner Ledger¶

The Partner Ledger report shows the balance of customers and suppliers. To access it, go to Accounting ‣ Reporting ‣ Partner Ledger.

Aged Receivable¶

To review outstanding customer invoices and their related due dates, use the Aged Receivable report. To access it, go to Accounting ‣ Reporting ‣ Aged Receivable.

Aged Payable¶

To review outstanding vendor bills and their related due dates, use the Aged Payable report. To access it, go to Accounting ‣ Reporting ‣ Aged Payable.

Profit and Loss¶

The Profit and Loss statement shows details of income and expenses.

Balance sheet¶

The Balance Sheet summarizes the company’s assets, liabilities, and equity at a specific time.