What is a Sales Invoice?

A sales invoice is a commercial document issued by a seller to a buyer, indicating the products, quantities and agreed prices for goods or services that have already been provided. A sales invoice indicates that, unless paid in advance, payment is due by the buyer to the seller, according to the agreed terms.

You issue sales invoices to your customers to request payment for goods or services that have already been provided.

The Sales Invoices tab displays a home page that lets you quickly create and locate sales invoices. You can also sort and filter your invoices using standard or custom list viewsClosed Give you instant access to specific sets of data. In addition to using existing views, you can create custom list views for the items most relevant to you.. In addition, this tab lets you view and edit detailed information on each invoice.

Status Description
In Progress The document has been saved but has not been posted. A document that is in progress can have associated document line items. You can edit or discard a document that is in progress.
Ready to Post The document has been saved and is ready to post. The reasons why the app might set a document to this status vary by document type, but it might be because it has more than 250 lines, or perhaps more than one document was selected for posting on a list view. Documents in this state are posted in the background by a scheduled job. You cannot edit, discard, manually post, or print a document when it is in this status. You can print preview and edit custom fields only.
Complete The document has been posted. A complete document must have associated document line items. Once a document is complete, you cannot repost or discard it. You can only edit a limited set of fields on a complete document.
Discarding The document is in the process of being discarded.
Discarded The document is no longer required. A discarded document retains its document number and header details, but its line items are deleted. The user must provide a discard reason. This is stored with the record for auditing purposes. Once a document has been discarded, you cannot edit it.

When a sales invoice is "In Progress", you can preview it in PDF format. When a sales invoice is "Complete", you can preview and print it in both HTML and PDF format.

The Sales Invoice object is a company-owned objectClosed Custom object that only exists within the context of a specific company.. New documents are assigned to the company queueClosed A location within the underlying Salesforce platform used to represent a company. When you activate a new company, a corresponding company queue is created. that represents your document company.

If you have enabled the Sales Invoice Consolidation feature the following additional status is available.

Status

Description

Superseded The document has been superseded by the invoice consolidation process. If a document has been superseded, the Consolidated Invoice field contains a lookup to the new consolidated sales invoice.

Recurring Invoice Schedules

A recurring invoiceClosed A special type of sales invoice that you enter only once but that causes several similar sales invoices to be generated automatically. Recurring invoices are typically used to request payment for regular bills, such as an annual maintenance agreement invoiced monthly. Alternatively you can use them to create invoices for scheduled monthly deliveries of products. is a special type of invoice that you enter only once but that causes several similar invoices to be generated automatically. To create a recurring invoice, set up an recurring invoice schedule. Recurring invoices are typically used to request payment for regular bills, such as an annual maintenance agreement, that are invoiced monthly. Alternatively they could be used to create invoices for scheduled monthly deliveries of products. These invoices are generated according to Salesforce scheduling rules.

The generated recurring invoices have quantities and values which are either equal to the original document or equal fractions of those on the original document.

All periods in the schedule must be open.

Note:

You cannot set up a payment scheduleClosed Used to create a single invoice that has multiple values that are due for payment on different dates. on a recurring invoice.

Note:

Recurring invoices are generated according to either the quantity schedule OR the revenue schedule set up on the product. You can include many products on the same recurring invoice providing they all share the same schedule type, start date, number of installments and installment period.

You cannot mix products with different schedules, but you can include products that don’t have their own schedule as these will automatically inherit the schedule that has been set for the invoice.

Payment Schedules

A sales invoice can be paid in installments. You can do this by setting up a payment scheduleClosed Used to create a single invoice that has multiple values that are due for payment on different dates.. Scheduled payments are typically used to request payment for purchases that are invoiced annually but paid for monthly. See Defining Payment Schedules for more information.

They recognize that payment for a single invoice will be spread over a time period and create transactions that will match to the expected receipts.

All periods in the schedule must be open.

Income Schedules (Revenue Recognition)

An income schedule enables you to spread the revenue from a single sales invoice across a range of accounting periods, so the values in the general ledger accurately reflect the income due for each period. You can choose to associate the product on each line item with an income schedule, or clear/change this setting if the product has a default income schedule.

When you post a sales invoice that has one or more line items associated with an income schedule:

  • The scheduled income is posted to the deferred income account specified on the income schedule associated with each line item.
  • For each line item which is associated with an income schedule, a series of income schedule journals are created, one for each period in the schedule. All periods in each associated schedule must be open.

The resulting income schedule journals must be posted to release the income from the deferred income account to the sales revenue account defined on the product. This can happen automatically at the same time as the associated sales invoice, or manually later. If you want to retain the ability to amend the income schedule journals after the sales invoice is posted, you must choose the Save option on the income schedule grid.

Note:

You cannot associate income schedules with a recurring invoiceClosed A special type of sales invoice that you enter only once but that causes several similar sales invoices to be generated automatically. Recurring invoices are typically used to request payment for regular bills, such as an annual maintenance agreement invoiced monthly. Alternatively you can use them to create invoices for scheduled monthly deliveries of products.. But it is possible to set up a payment scheduleClosed Used to create a single invoice that has multiple values that are due for payment on different dates. on an invoice that has one or more associated income schedules.

If you are creating a sales invoice from an opportunity, make sure that the products on the opportunity that you want to convert do not have income schedules attached. If you want to attach an income schedule, you must do this on the sales invoice line item after conversion.

Settlement Discounts

Settlement discounts are terms that you may wish to offer your customers if they pay the invoice earlier than the normal due date. For example, if your standard terms require payment within 30 days from the invoice date, you might choose to offer a discount of 2.5% for payment within 15 days (from invoice date) and 5% for payment within 7 days.

Potential settlement discounts and dates are calculated when you post a sales invoice.

The discounts are calculated in both account and document currency using the document date and the credit termsClosed Set of terms used to determine due dates and discounts for the goods and services bought or sold. Terms can be set at account level for vendors and/or company level for customers. of the document company. However, if a customer account has its own credit terms, then these take precedence. The discount dates and amounts are stored on the transaction for use in cash matching and when printing the document.

Approval

This feature is not part of the base FinancialForce Accounting package, your administratorClosed One or more individuals in your organization who can configure and customize the application. Users assigned the System Administrator profile have administrator privileges. must install and configure the FinancialForce OneTouch extension package to enable it.

You can prevent the posting of sales invoices by enabling sales invoice approval in your organization. This feature is controlled by a custom setting. Your administrator will configure this for you where appropriate.

Once enabled, you must select the document's Approved checkbox to allow it to be posted. The location of this checkbox is dependent on how your organization is configured. Contact your administrator for more details.

Print Status

The print status of a document is normally displayed as a column in document list views. The event logClosed Tells you when an invoice or credit note was printed or sent by email, and who printed/sent it. Not used for mass email communications. also records when a document has been printed.

Status Description
Not Printed The document has not been printed.
Printed The document has been printed one or more times.

Payment Status

The payment status is displayed on the document's detail page once the document has been posted.

Status Description
Unpaid No part of this document has been paid.
Part-Paid Some of the original value of this document has been paid.
Paid This document has been paid in full.