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Invoicing

Create custom invoices, collect payments, and fulfill orders

Joe Barlow avatar
Written by Joe Barlow
Updated over a week ago

Invoicing is ideal for handling sales outside your point-of-sale system, including wholesale transactions. With Invoicing powered by Stripe, you can create customer-specific orders, collect payments, and track order fulfillment. All fulfilled invoices will be deducted from your inventory automatically.

This feature is included on Standard plans and up.

Learn more about our plans and upgrade here.

If you want to use Wholesale, be sure to check out this article to learn more:


Getting Started

Before you can send your first invoice, you’ll need to:

  • Create your new Stripe account

  • Add your first customer

  • Set up your inventory

Thrive uses Stripe to help you collect online payments from your customers. You can follow the prompts on-screen to set up a new account.

NOTE: The Stripe account will be specific to Thrive. That means even if you already have a Stripe account for other purposes, you will need to create a new one.


Creating an Invoice

Remember, the products being added to the invoice must already have been added to Thrive!

From the Invoicing page, click "Create Invoice," and you'll see a page like this:

Here is additional information on what each field means:

  • Invoice No. - Can be anything you like. You can choose a random starting number, and each invoice will automatically go up by 1 from there.

  • Due Date - The date your customer is expected to pay the invoice.

  • Shipping Location - Where your inventory will be deducted from. You may add any quantity of items to your invoice, regardless of what is currently in stock.

  • The Customer is the one receiving and paying the invoice. They can be created on the spot along with the invoice.

  • Invoice Type - either Regular or Wholesale depending on who you are selling to.

    • Wholesale will give you the option to add a pricelist. For more information on Wholesale & Pricelists, click here.


Adding your Products

After filling out the top section of the invoice (Invoice No., Due Date, Shipping Location, and Customer), you can start adding products!

There are two different ways to add products to your invoice:

1 ) Scan to add products

Each scan will count as a +1 for that item. A successful scan will produce a pleasant chime sound from your computer.

Scan a product that still needs to be created in Thrive (or isn't available at the Shipping Location), and you'll see an error message at the top of the screen, along with a not-so-pleasant noise.

You can also manually edit the quantities as well. Remember to click off the quantity field when you start scanning again. This is important because the scanner pretends to be a keyboard in Thrive. Clicking on any blank white space in the invoice will deselect any text fields and allow you to scan normally.

The ability to scan to add products on invoices is for users on a Professional Plan and above (learn more about upgrading your plan here).

Have issues scanning?

We can help! Check out this Barcode Scanning FAQ article for guidance.

2) The "Add Products" button

By clicking the blue "Add Products" button on the Invoice screen, you can filter and search to add products.

If you are wanting to add a large number of products from a particular category or vendor, be sure to press the "Load All" as shown here:

  • NOTE: if a shipping location is not already selected, you cannot click the "Add Products" button.

Once products have been added, be sure to enter a quantity along with any additional fields including:

  • Compare At (price)

  • Tax Rate

    • Or apply to the overall invoice in the next section

  • Expiration Date

  • Discount

    • Or apply to the overall invoice in the next section

  • PO Number

  • Lot Number

  • Note


Additional Details, Discounts, and Net Terms

At the bottom of the invoice, you can add discounts, shipping costs, taxes, net terms, and any additional notes, along with your subtotal and total after discounts and shipping.

Additional details:

  • Discount Name (for the entire invoice)

  • Discount - either a dollar amount ($) or percentage (%)

  • Shipping Price is passed on to your customer and included in the Total due. It is not taxed.

  • Taxes for the overall invoice. (NOTE: The taxes for individual items can also be adjusted above for each line item).

    • If you don’t change this setting, we’ll use the tax rates you’ve already set for each product in the inventory section. If you want to choose a different tax rate just for this invoice, you can do that or elect not to apply any taxes.

Things to note about invoice discounts:

  • Line item discounts are specific to one product. This can be a flat value or percentage. Percentage discounts are rounded to the nearest cent.

  • After line items have been calculated, any invoice discounts are distributed proportionally between all the line items.

  • In the event of multiple invoice discounts, fixed-amount discounts are handled first, followed by percentage discounts.

  • Taxes are calculated after discounts have been applied.

Net terms:

  • This field is typically only used on invoicing and means the number of days the total amount is due for payment. This does not affect the Due Date in the previous section, but Net Terms are more to be used as a reference of when to expect full payment.


Sending and Collecting Payment

When your invoice is finalized and the draft is saved, just hit Send! We’ll email your customer their invoice with a button to pay online. All they have to do is click the link to enter a credit card and pay the balance.

If your customer is present and wants to pay with a credit card, you will be able to do that once the Invoice is officially in Open status. Just scroll down and you'll be able to Log an Offline Payment.

Additional Actions

  • Send another email to your customer plus additional customers with the invoice link

  • Download a file for printing

  • See your customer’s view of the invoice (and enter a credit card payment)

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If you collect any other payment types, you can log an “Offline payment,” which will be deducted from the balance due.

Partial payments can be made offline, but card payments via Stripe will always be for the total remaining balance. The application fee for card payments is 3.5%.

Uncollectable Payment

An invoice can be marked as uncollectable if further payment is not received. Uncollectable invoices help Thrive report potential write-off losses for you.

An invoice can be marked uncollectible if it is fulfilled or unfulfilled. Once it is marked uncollectible, it cannot be edited further.


Fulfillment

Invoices can be fulfilled before or after payment is made. To mark an invoice as Fulfilled and remove all inventory from stock, click in the top right corner:

This action fulfills the whole order, adjusts inventory counts, and cannot be undone.


Refunds or Canceling

Refunds can be issued for specific items or a custom amount in the form of original payment. If a customer splits their payment between online and offline, there will be multiple refunds.

The refund amount cannot exceed the amount paid using the same method. For example, an online payment of $100 can be refunded up to $100, even if the invoice is for more.

When a refund is given, you can restock the inventory at the shipping location.

The option to cancel an invoice can be found at the bottom of the page, as shown here (above the timeline):


Settings and More

Email

You can add custom text from your Invoice Settings, which will appear at the bottom of your invoices. This is a great place to specify your return policy, privacy details, and company info or say thanks. Changes made to email blurbs will be applied to all invoices, past and present.

Tracking number

You can use this field to store a tracking number or link for any shipments so that you can refer to it later.


Reporting

All regular (and wholesale) invoice payments and inventory deductions are recorded in Reports. The invoice statuses determine when and where the inventory or sale information is recorded in reports.

Remember, an invoice’s fulfillment is different from the sale. Here are more details:

  • Fulfillment: an invoice can be fulfilled or unfulfilled. Inventory is deducted at the time of fulfillment.

  • Payment: An invoice can be paid or unpaid. When the invoice is paid, the sales show up on the sales reports.

Here is a breakdown of the different invoice statuses and how they show up in reports:

  • Draft: Shows up in invoice tab, not on any reports

  • Open, Unfulfilled, Unpaid: Not on any reports. Inventory has not yet been deducted.

  • Open, Fulfilled, Unpaid: Inventory has been deducted. Inventory changes will show up on inventory reports but not on sales reports yet.

  • Open, Unfulfilled, Paid: Inventory has not been deducted yet. It shows up on the invoicing transactions report but not on sales reports.

  • Closed, Fulfilled, Paid: Inventory has been deducted. It shows up on all sales reports and invoice transactions reports.

Here is more information about the following reports commonly used with invoices:

    • Invoices will show up here when a payment (or partial payment) is received.

    • If a refund is made on a different day, that will be reflected on the refund date.

    • Invoice sales will only appear here once the invoice is fulfilled and paid.

    • Use the Filters (by Integration > Shopventory Invoicing) to see only invoiced products or orders.


Things to Note:

  • Payouts will come from Stripe directly. If you would like to learn more, please click here.

  • Invoicing is only intended for use in the United States. Tax and regulatory requirements may differ in other countries, and all current processing is handled based on U.S. rules.

  • The minimum amount for each invoice is USD 0.50D or equivalent in charge currency. Read more here.

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