Understand invoices in QuickBooks Online

An invoice is a bill sent to one of your customers containing one or more charges. 

When you create an invoice, you record a bill in QuickBooks Online your customers owe you. You can then send the invoice to your customers, then record when you get paid.

Ways to create an invoice

There’s more than one way to create an invoice in QuickBooks.

• Create invoices from scratch, especially if there’s no existing record of the charges. You can create them either one at a time or in a batch.
• Import invoices recorded in a spreadsheet into QuickBooks Online.
• Convert approved estimates you’ve sent customers into invoices.
• If your invoice is being paid in installments, create one or more progress invoices from an existing estimate. Progress invoices don’t change the original estimate, and you can create more than one.

See your invoices

Any time you wish to review your invoices, go to Sales and select Invoices (Take me there). You can also select an individual customer and review their Invoices tab.

The Status column shows where your invoices are in the sales process and whether they are overdue, paid, or voided. 

QuickBooks puts unpaid invoices into your Accounts Receivable account. You'll see this account on your Balance Sheet and other financial reports.Note: Any customer statement created for a parent customer includes invoices for each sub-customer of that parent that has been set to Bill parent customer.

Record paid invoices

There are two ways for customers to pay your invoices.

• With QuickBooks Payments, customers can pay their invoices directly by credit card, PayPal, Venmo, or ACH transfer. We automatically process and handle everything for you. When you get paid, QuickBooks puts transactions into the correct accounts.
• If you use an external platform to process payments, you can record these payments manually in QuickBooks Online.

Related links

• Create invoices in QuickBooks Online
• Import multiple invoices at once in QuickBooks Online
• Convert an estimate into an invoice in QuickBooks Online 
• Set up and send progress invoices in QuickBooks Online
• Create and send multiple invoices in QuickBooks Online Advanced