How to enter historical invoice payment dates

Welcome to the Community, davep64.

The Invoice page in the Self-Employed version of QuickBooks is for recording purposes only. As a workaround, you can enter the payments through the Transactions tab and set the paid date from there. 

Let me show you how:

1. Go to Transactions.
2. Click on Enter first transactions or Add transaction.
3. Enter the paid date, description, amount, and select a category.
4. Choose Save.

I'm attaching some screenshots that will guide you through.

To help you learn more about QBSE, refer to these articles:

• Add a new transaction
• QBSE Overview
• Easy invoicing

This should point you in the right direction. Let me know if you have any questions. I'm here to help.

This doesn't resolve linking an invoice payment to the correct date though, there doesn't seem to be an option for linking an invoice to a payment in your transactions so there isn't a way to record correctly the actual date of payment? Surely you should be able to match an invoice to a payment, it seems the self-employed version of quickbooks doesn't include basic functions like editing payment dates. 

Hey there, @gemmatyler.

Thanks for hopping into the thread. At the moment, the ability to edit the payment date on an invoice is unavailable. It will always follow the date as to when you clicked the Mark as paid button. 

I understand the benefits of having the option to edit the payment date of your transactions to match it with the bank statement. I'm taking note of your feedback and share it with our developers for future consideration. 

While this isn't a feature in QBSE, you may want to upgrade your product by shifting to QuickBooks Online. I've included a link for you to compare our products and feature suitable for your business type: Compare QuickBooks Plans.  

Feel free to comment below if you have more questions. We're always happy to assist. 

I would also love this function, I am trial moving to Quickbooks from Wave apps to fit with tax standards and find it clunky in comparison

Hello Leah222, Thanks for reaching out to the Community:smiling_face_with_smiling_eyes: We welcome your feedback and can certainly add your company to those requesting the paid date function in invoices on the Self-Employed product. Is there anything in particular other than this that has caused you to find it clunky? We can go through any questions you might have on the product here. Also, we have help articles available here.

Thank you that would be great. 

Another function I like and would find useful is to add a custom value to the invoices, rather than "item" I want to write "Days"

I also would like an option not to send the invoice to my clients, but to instead download and send myself, and "mark as sent", especially right now as I am back dating. 

I've just signed up to QBSE and I would also like to enter historical invoices but can't see how with the option to mark as paid, this only seems to work if it is sent which obviously you wouldn't want to do. Anyone know how to do this?

Hello, Demiurge.

I have a way on how to mark your invoices as paid without sending it to your customers. 

You're right about the invoice payment workflow. At this time, you would only see the Mark as paid button after sending the invoice. In the meantime, you'll want to send it to a fake email address so it doesn't end up in your customer's inbox. Here's how: 

1. Go to the Invoices page. 
2. Find the invoice that you saved as a draft. 
3. Click the arrow icon under ACTION.
4. Choose Edit.
5. Change the email address to a test or dummy email (for example: test123@gmail.com). 
6. Click Send invoice.
7. Mark it as paid after sending. 

Our developers might change the way you do invoicing in QuickBooks Self-Employed in the future. Stay tuned for more product updates from our blog and newsletters.

If you prefer to receive news to your email, sign up for them by click the Newsletter sign up button in this page: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/uk/blog/small-business/.  

You might want to check out our articles to learn the ropes about the features and navigation menus in QBSE. Browse a certain topic here and look for an article. 

If you have other concerns with QBSE, let me know in the reply section below. I'll address them as soon as I can. I hope you'll have an awesome day ahead. 

I'm having the same issue as everyone else here, it seems like such a ridiculous way to go about marking an invoice as paid - 'to send it to a fake email address'. Why can't there just be an extra button to mark an unsent invoice as paid? The chances are that the majority of people signing up to Quickbooks Self-Employed will be doing so part way through a tax-year and really need the feature to backdate invoices. 

I bet a good amount of people charge a day rate too so it would be very useful to have that as an option.

Users have been asking for the facility to enter historical invoices etc. for as long as I've been using QB. The reply is always the same, 'We are looking into it', this has gone on for years. This is a very basic function and should be addressed immediately. I'm now so fed up with it that I am looking for alternative services so I can transfer my accounts at the end of the tax year.

How difficult can this be?

I'm happier to do that than send it to a fake email address! I'm guessing the reason that this feature still hasn't been added is so that people upgrade and pay more money per month for basic features. I've only been using QB 1 week and it's pretty frustrating already.