Invoices allow you to bill goods and services to your clients.You can create both regular invoices that bill a client directly and project invoices that bill your projects (tasks, expenses, trips, products).

An invoice has the following properties:

Because not all invoice fields are relevant to all users, you can hide optional fields that you don't use. Optional invoice fields are fields that can be hidden in the invoice windows (New Invoice or Edit Invoice). Here's how you can configure them:

For instance, one of the optional fields is Reference. This field only makes sense if you need to record a purchase order reference number.

A regular invoice is the most simple invoice you can create in Fanurio. In order to create an invoice, you need to:

Once the New Invoice window is displayed, you can start adding regular items to the invoice by clicking the New button.

If your business sells some items more frequently, you can add them to the business catalog that can be found under Business » My Business Details+Billing+Catalog. Catalog items make it easier to create regular invoice items.

For instance, as a web-designer you could define an item called Hosting that is charged $10/month. Then, every time you need to bill this item to a client, you just create a new regular item based on this catalog item. This will save you time from filling-in the item fields each time.

Regular invoices (see above) can help you bill your clients but they are not helpful if you need to bill your clients by project. A project invoice is a regular invoice that bills one or more projects, it's not a different type of invoice.

You can create a project invoice for a client if it has at least one billable project with one or more billable elements (tasks, expenses, trips or products). In order to create an invoice, you need to:

Once the New Invoice window is displayed, Fanurio will display the Add Project Items window to let you choose the project elements (tasks, expenses, trips and products) that you want to add to the invoice. Click the Add button and Fanurio will add a project item to the invoice for each selected element.

If you add a project item to an invoice but then change your mind, you can always delete it. When you delete a project item, the project element that it bills can be billed again. For instance, when you delete an expense item, the expense can be billed again.

Taxes are disabled by default but can be enabled from Business » My Business Details+Billing+Taxes.

Once you enable taxes, they will be applied to the invoices you create. If some of your clients are tax exempt, you can mark them as "tax exempt" in the Billing section and no tax will be applied to their invoices.

To quickly define your taxes, we recommend that you use the Tax Wizard. Only if the wizard doesn't do what you want, you should try to build a tax group manually.

To deal with a whole range of possible taxes and tax combinations, Fanurio uses two concepts: the Tax and the Tax Group. A Tax has a name and a default rate while a Tax Group contains one or more taxes. In order to apply taxes to an invoice, you need to group taxes in a tax group. Even if you have just one tax.

Automatic invoice numbering is disabled by default but can be enabled from Business » My Business Details+Billing+Invoice numbering.

To generate an invoice number automatically, Fanurio needs a counter and a number format. The number format can be something simple like counter on three or more digits (eg 001, 0001, 00001) or something more complex that involves prefixes, sufixes and dates.

Invoices can be numbered sequentially for all clients or separately for each client. If you need to number invoices separately for each client, Fanurio will use the invoice counter defined at client level. The invoice counter of a client is incremented only when an invoice is created for that client. Edit a client and go to the Billing tab to access its invoice counter.

Fanurio uses the Freemarker syntax for the number format, the same syntax used for the templates. Here are a few number formats that assume the counter is 1 (one) and the year is 2020.

Every invoice has a base currency that is specified when the invoice created. If the invoice items use a different currency, you have to enter exchange rates for each currency different from the base currency. Exchange rates can only be entered manually.

Let's consider the following example to understand when this can be helpful. You have a business based in Germany that does business with clients from across the EU and the USA. European clients are billed in Euros while American clients are billed in US dollars. When working with US clients, you still record expenses in Euros but in the end you have to bill them in US dollars.

With Fanurio you can discount service items or you can discount the total invoice value. In either case, invoices can show both the discounted values and the regular ones. Discounts can be specified as a percentage or as a fixed value. Below we'll show you how discounts can be used to create more accurate invoices.

Note: If you want to customize the invoice template to display discount information, take a look at the placeholders available for items and invoices.

Making a discount for the entire invoice is easy. When you create an invoice, just specify a discount for the total invoice value as a percentage or as a fixed sum.

Let's say that the total invoice value (before taxes) is $1,330.00 and you want to round it to $1,300.00. In this case, you apply a fixed discount of $30.00 and the invoiced value will be $1,300.00. The discount is not taxed if taxes apply to the invoice.

The total invoice discount makes sense when you need to discount the entire invoice but not if you want to discount only certain items. You may want to lower your rate or you may want to bill less work (hours or units). Let's see a few discount examples and how they can help you.

Once you have one or more discounted items, you can easily see which ones are discounted. Discounted items have a red corner in the items table. Just move the mouse over them (don't click, just keep it over) to see more details.

Sometimes an invoice will never be paid because the client refuses to do so or because it goes out of business. To handle cases like these when you know an invoice will never be paid by the client, you can just cancel it. Please note that only unpaid invoices can be cancelled. You can also cancel partially paid invoices.

Once cancelled, you can used the filters above the invoices table to show or hide them. Use the Status filter and select Not Paid or Overdue. Then you can filter invoices by their Cancelled status.

If you want to view, export or email an invoice, you will need to use an invoice template. Templates specify the visual design and content of an invoice document.

Since most business have different requirements when it comes to the layout of their invoices, Fanurio has a very powerful template engine that can handle many file formats (HTML, Microsoft Word, OpenDocument Text, XML, plain text). If you already create your invoices in one of these formats, it's very likely that they can be easily transformed into templates for Fanurio.

We've created a separate guide just for templates. To get started, you only need to read the introduction.

Fanurio can export invoices to various formats depending on what type of template you are using. By default, Fanurio comes with an .html template that can be used to export invoices to .html and .pdf.

To export an invoice, go to the Invoices view, select the invoice you want to export and then click the Export button.

You can send invoices by email to your clients right from Fanurio. Just go to the Invoices view, select the invoice you want to email and then click the Email button.

You can send invoices by email if the following conditions are met:

To learn more about your invoices, go to the Invoices view and use the filters above the table. The table will display only those invoices that match the selected filters. Invoices can be filtered by:

Once you set these filters, the table footer will display totals for:

For instance, you could use these filters to see all overdue invoices issued this year for a certain client. The table footer will help you see how much money the client owes you.

Fanurio can export invoices to CSV and Excel. To export them, you can either:

The previous section explains how you can filter or search the list of invoices so you can get a quick insight about your sales. However, if you need to use this information outside Fanurio you can either export the list of invoices as a CSV or Excel file or create a sales report. Sales reports are more flexible because they allow you to use a template to format data.

Go to Reports » Sales Report to create a report for your invoices. Just like in the Invoices view, you can use several filters to specify which invoices should be included in the report:

Fanurio comes with a set of default templates that can be selected from the Template drop-down box:

If you need to create your own templates, please see this section to learn what placeholders you can use.