QuickBooksHelpIntuit

See what’s new with estimates and invoices in QuickBooks Online

by Intuit•58• Updated 4 days ago

We're releasing a new estimate and invoice layout for QuickBooks Online that can help you land jobs, keep work moving, and get paid faster. Once the update occurs, you will be able to use the new layout automatically with no extra steps required. All of your past invoices and estimates will be available after the update.

Let’s go over how to create an invoice. We’ll show you how to add customers, products and services to an invoice. And then how to save and send them. Let’s start by looking at the Customers List. Select Sales and select Customers. The Customers list keeps track of who you sell things to and provide services for. It also gives you the current balance for each of your customers. Use it to see what customers owe you, or sometimes, what you owe them. Let's create an invoice for an existing customer. Go to the Create icon and select Invoice. The first thing is to record the customer’s name. Notice that QuickBooks populates both the billing address and the email address for this customer. That’s because this info was already in the customers list. However, if you need to add a new customer you can do by selecting Add new. If you want to send to invoice to more than one address, use a comma between each one. You can CC or BCC an address too. QuickBooks also lets you add a Pay Now button to the invoice. That way customers can pay with a credit or debit card or a bank transfer. The Date should be the day you send the invoice. Or, if this transaction happened in the past, the date you issued the invoice. Terms sets the number of days a customer has to pay the invoice. You can add other things too. Go to the Gear icon to add things like Shipping and custom fields. In the Products and Services area, enter what you're charging the customer for. If you don’t find a product or service that looks right, select Add New to create a new one. If you set up the product or service ahead of time, you'll see the Sales Description and Price you entered earlier. You can also enter or change these while you create the invoice. Add as many products and services as you want. There are more options further down the form. You can enter a message to include on the invoice. You can also add a statement memo. A statement memo shows up as a note on your customer’s statement if you send them. You have several options for saving invoices. You can save the invoice and keep on working It. You can Save and Close, which saves the invoice and brings you back to whatever you were doing before. You can Save and Share a Link. This option saves the invoice and simply emails a link to the customer. When they select the link they’ll see the invoice. Save and send lets you write an email to your customer and will attach the invoice to the email. And you can use Save and New if you want to save the invoice and create another one. Let's select Save and Send. On the left you can see and change the subject and body of the email you’re sending. And on the right you see a preview of what your customer will receive. Select Send and Close to send the invoice. QuickBooks confirms that the email was sent to your customer. And you can see the customer’s balance has increased by the amount of the invoice. Now you’re ready to create your own invoices.

Get insights you need to make smart decisions with QuickBooks Advanced. See plans and pricing.

What you can do with the new estimates and invoices

Customize estimates and invoices on the spot

Customize and adjust your forms right on the estimates or invoice you are about to send. There's no need to manage templates - all the options are on each form. QuickBooks remembers your choices and applies them to your next estimate or invoice.

Get invoices paid faster

If you have QuickBooks Payments, you can add options like credit cards, Apple Pay, and bank payments to your invoices. Your customers can pay online right from the invoices you send.

Track and manage invoices in one place

To see all your invoices in one place, go to Sales and select Invoices (Take me there). Track their progress, send reminders, record payments, and more.

Get estimates approved faster

Your customers can review and approve your estimate online, right from the email you send them. You'll get alerts as soon as they respond.

Track and manage estimates in one place

Go to Sales and select Customers (Take me there). To check the status of all your estimates at a glance, select a customer and go to the Transaction List tab. From there, you can respond to your customers, revise estimates, or convert them to invoices when approvals come in.

Manage it all on the go

Away from your desk? Take care of all your estimates and invoicing tasks with the QuickBooks Online mobile app.

When you create or update an estimate or invoice, the mobile app autosaves your work so you can always pick up where you left off. You can also import contacts from your phonebook and send estimates and invoices by text message.

Available features for QuickBooks Online Advanced

Automate tasks like sending payment reminders or new invoices to customers with workflows.
Smart Suggestions can guide and recommend how to optimize your QuickBooks Online invoices.
Capture another layer of reporting for your invoices with custom fields.
Track invoices by department, product line, or other meaningful info by assigning classes.

Add sales tax or QuickBooks Payments

The new invoice experience is not yet available to customers with sales tax or QuickBooks Online Payments. Once sales tax or Payments is enabled, you will be automatically brought back into the old invoice layout.

Add late fees to invoices

Note: This feature is currently available for QuickBooks Easystart and is being rolled out to other products in the coming weeks.

If you're charging your customer a fee for a late payment, QuickBooks can now calculate and add the fee onto the invoice.

Features currently unavailable in the new experience

The following classic invoice features are currently unavailable in the new experience:

Adding a new invoice Term
Signatures on Mobile
Billable Mileage Tracking
Statements (Show aging table at the bottom of a statement.)