How invoices work
Pro-forma and issued invoices, numbering, and why issued ones never change.
Every order has exactly one live invoice, and it moves through a strict lifecycle: pro-forma (a quote) → issued (the tax invoice) → possibly superseded (corrected by a reissue). Nothing in it is ever deleted.
Who can do this: invoices ride their own permissions — viewing, generating, sending, recording payments and using the designer are separate grants, all part of the counter roles.
Pro-forma: the living quote#
While an order is unpaid, its document is a PRO-FORMA INVOICE — numbered PRO-…,
outside the fiscal sequence, and it regenerates freely: edit the order and the quote
follows. It is a statement of what will be owed, not a tax document.
A quote whose order is cancelled becomes void, permanently.
Issued: the tax invoice, minted once#
The moment payment completes, the real thing is minted once: a TAX INVOICE with a
fiscal INV-… number (the quote's PRO- number is kept on it for the audit trail). Its
amounts are a snapshot of what the order actually charged — line prices, discounts,
tax, charges — never re-priced from today's catalogue, so a later price change cannot
rewrite a past sale.
And it is immutable. Editing one is refused — "an issued invoice cannot be edited — reissue it instead" — and nobody can mark an invoice issued by hand: "an invoice is issued when its order is paid, not on request." Corrections are their own document; see Correcting an issued invoice.
Payments and the invoice#
An order's payments are recorded on the order — its Payments section, one row per payment — and each one is mirrored onto its invoice, so the document's paid figure and balance always agree with the order. Overpaying is refused — "payment exceeds the outstanding balance" (paying it off exactly is fine). The payment that covers the total is the one that flips the order's payment status and mints the tax invoice. A voided payment or a refunded excess is mirrored the same way. See Recording payments & deposits.
A pre-order's deposit is simply the first payment, marked as the deposit. The pro-forma prints what is due now; if the deposit was set by hand, it prints that figure, and a deposit set to zero prints no due-now line at all.
If an edit changes the total of an order whose tax invoice is already issued, the invoice no longer matches the sale, and the order takes no more payments until the invoice is reissued.
Standalone invoices and the designer#
An invoice can also exist without an order — priced from the catalogue and issued directly. And what every printed document looks like — logo, colours, footer — is the invoice designer's store-wide template, edited once and applied to all.
Related pages#
Correcting an issued invoice · Sharing invoices & payment links · Payment status