Invoice and accounts settings

Settings → Modules → Invoice & Accounts holds four things: how invoices are numbered and calculated, your tax rates, extra items you can add to any invoice, and the invoice template.

Settings → Modules → Invoice & Accounts

Default settings

Settings → Modules → Invoice & Accounts → Default Settings

Setting	What it does
Prefix	The letters in front of every invoice number. Required.
Set invoice counter from	The number the next invoice takes — set it to continue your existing sequence.
Round to Decimal places	How many decimals amounts are rounded to. 2 gives 2.12.
Custom field label for inventory and invoicing	Names the extra code column that runs through items and invoices. HSN Code in India; use whatever your trade calls its product codes.
Ship To Address	Adds a separate delivery address to the invoice, for when goods go somewhere other than the bill payer.
Show proforma invoice in jobs/contract	Offers a proforma — a pre-invoice, issued before the work is billed for real.
Replace all zero value fields with blank if item’s quantity is zero	Prints nothing rather than 0 on empty lines. Tidier documents.
Send Invoice PDF automatically after E-signature is submitted	Emails the invoice the moment the customer signs. See sending an invoice.

Discounting method

Three radios decide when a discount is taken relative to tax:

• Apply discount on item’s price before calculating tax — discount first, then tax the discounted price.
• Apply discount on total amount (item’s price + tax) after calculating the tax — tax the full price, then discount the lot.
• Apply discount only on item’s price after calculating the tax — tax is worked out on the full price and stays, and the discount comes off the price alone.

The three produce different totals on the same numbers, and which is correct is a matter of local tax law rather than preference. Set it once and leave it.

Below them, Percentage Discount or Direct (Flat) Discount decides whether a discount is read as 10 meaning ten percent or 10 meaning ten in your currency.

Tax method

Show Total Tax prints one tax figure. Show Tax with components breaks it into its parts — the SGST/CGST/IGST split that Indian invoices require, for instance.

Which columns an invoice shows

Settings → Modules → Invoice & Accounts → Default Settings

Fields which are visible on invoice section turns individual columns on and off — serial number, cost, unit of measurement, tax, tax amount, rate including tax, discount, model number, product code and the rest.

This controls what you see while working on an invoice. Changing what is printed also needs the matching setting on the invoice template, which the screen says in its own note. The two are separate on purpose: an office often wants to see cost on screen and never wants it printed.

Tax rates

Settings → Modules → Invoice & Accounts → Tax Settings

Your tax rates, each with a Tax Label, a Tax Percentage (%) and a Status switch. Add Tax creates one.

The label is what appears on the document, so name it the way a customer expects to read it — VAT 23% rather than Standard.

Turn a rate’s Status off when it stops applying — a rate that has changed, or one for a region you no longer trade in. Existing invoices keep the rate they were raised at; it simply stops being offered on new ones.

These are the rates offered wherever tax is chosen: on invoice lines, on quotes, against a job type/service, and on a labour billing rate.

Tax rates are not the same as your own tax registration numbers, which live under Company.

Extra invoice items

Settings → Modules → Invoice & Accounts → Invoice Item

Standing charges you add to invoices that are not stock and not labour — shipping, a call-out fee, a congestion charge. Each has a Name, a Rate and a Status, and they appear as Add Extra fields at the foot of an invoice.

Ships empty.

Related

• How invoices work
• Creating an invoice
• Invoice templates — what gets printed