How tell which invoices are drafts and which have been sent?

Thanks for taking your time in sharing detailed information about your concern. @jeffbean. 

We do have a way to view your list of Invoices and their status within the program. You can go to the Sales menu, then select the Invoice tab. This is where you can click in the Status column and see if the Invoice has been sent, viewed, paid, and deposited. 

You can also see if your customer has received the email and paid you. I find this article about sending online Invoices might be helpful too.

For future reference, check out this article in case you'll need some easy steps in customizing invoices, estimates, and sales receipts in QBO. 

Feel free to drop a line below if you have any other questions. Take care.

@katherinejoyceOThank you for your response.

I asked how invoices can be seen as drafts in the interface. You've suggested I can view the Status column in the Invoices tab.

In the Status column, the first line of information showing for any draft or unsent invoice is the Due date. That is nonsensical for an unsent invoice because it can *never* be due as long as it remains unsent. With this as the primary information displayed as its status, a draft invoice looks exactly like a sent invoice.

You've suggested I can look at the second line of information in the Status column: sent, viewed, paid or deposited. To be honest, I had been ignoring those because they are often wrong (e.g., currently an invoice that has been viewed by the client literally dozens of times is showing simply as "Sent").

Now I see that any draft/unsent invoice should have no information displayed at all on that second line. That's not intuitive -- to infer information from a lack of information provided -- but I'll try to remember that's what QBO does and try to work with it.

But your trick only works on the Invoicing > Invoices screen. It doesn't work on the Invoicing > Clients > Transaction List screen. For some reason, on this screen, QBO chooses to provide a completely different set of values in the Status field column. (Why QBO is displaying different and inconsistent information for the same data on different screens, I can't begin to fathom.) An invoice showing as "Sent" on the Invoice list will show as "Open" in the Transaction List. And a draft (unsent) invoice will show as "Open" as well, looking exactly the same as an invoice that has been sent.

I've tried some workarounds to get draft invoices to somehow show as drafts in the Invoices screen. I've tried leaving the Due Date empty, but then QBO forcibly enters today's date. I've tried leaving the Client empty, but QBO won't let me. I've tried using "TestClient" as a placeholder, but then I have to remember who the real client is. I've tried leaving the Amount at $0, but then QBO bizarrely shows the invoice status as "deposited!"

Please let this serve as feedback for revision: for QBO in all lists where invoices are shown, that it be displayed positively that an invoice is a draft (i.e., unsent) by explicitly labeling it as "Draft" as the primary value in the Status field.

 I can direct you to a page where you would see our release notes, @jeffbean.

I appreciate all the workarounds you've tried about invoice status. Also, I understand that having this feature available in the system would make your QuickBooks experience better. 

I'd recommend sending feedback to our Product Development Team. We value your suggestions. This way, it helps our engineers determine what features to be added in QBO future enhancements. 

Here's how: 

1.   Go to the Gear icon at the top.
2.   Select Feedback.
3.   Enter your comments or product suggestions.
4.   Click Next.

I'd also added these articles that might help you in handling your customer transactions, information, reports, and other related topics: 

•  Sales and customers
• Customize invoices, estimates, and sales receipts

I'm willing to listen if you have other concerns about the features in QuickBooks Online. You can click the Reply button and I'll be there to help you out. Keep safe. 

@MichelleBh thank you for the instructions regarding feedback.

FYI: the Feedback Forum you suggested I monitor has been shut down. You might want to avoid sending other customers to it in the future.

Here's the feedback I sent in the app:

The current way QBO treats draft/unsent invoices provides wrong information. Draft invoices look too much like sent invoices on the Invoices lists. And they are wrongly reported in metrics as being "due."

In all lists where invoices are shown, they should be displayed positively as a draft (i.e., unsent) by explicitly being labeled "Draft" as the primary value in the Status field. (Both on the Invoices tab/screen and the Customer Transaction List.) Draft/unsent invoices should never show as "due" in the Status field because, by definition, an invoice can never be due as long as it remains unsent.

For the same reason, amounts on draft/unsent invoices should never be included in metrics regarding due or unpaid amounts (e.g, on Invoices tab/screen or dashboard).

Why is this marked solved? It's not.

I am having the same issue: I used to be able to see if the invoice was sent but under status all it has is "Due in...." Looked at all the other options mentioned and nothing has worked- why isn't it included in the action column?

Thanks for joining the thread and visiting the QuickBooks Support page, @Kiwi1.

I can guide you through the steps on how to view sent invoices in QuickBooks Online. For this, we can use an invoice report and save it for future use. 

Follow these steps to get started:

1. Go to the Reports menu and find Invoice List.
2. Click the little gear on the report, then press Show More.
3. Mark the Sent box from the list of filters.
   
4. Click on the header to exit out from the filters selector.
5. This is how it looks like one the filter is applied.
   
6. (Optional) You can use the Save customization option, so you don't need to redo it when pulling up the same report. Saved customizations are then moved to the Custom reports section. See this sample report:

I've attached a few resources to guide you with QuickBooks reports:

• Customize your reports in QuickBooks Online.
• How to Customize Reports: Basics, Sorting & Date Ranges.
• Create and manage reports in QuickBooks Online.

Comment down below if you have other questions or clarifications about running invoice reports. I'm always here to provide additional assistance with QuickBooks. Have a great week ahead. Take care.

Hello this still does not solve the problem of telling us which invoices are "not sent".  I don't want to see the sent ones, they've been sent already.  But i do want to see all that have not been sent!  So I can send them!

I'm here to offer help and share how you can pull up your report, @matthew20.

As of the moment, there isn't an integrated way to customize a report with a list of not-sent invoices. It is recommended to customize your report as suggested by my colleague, @Jen_D above, and compare it to the list of invoices to determine what was not sent.

You may also want to read this reference helpful with the steps on how to connect the payment transaction to the original invoice so your accounts stay balanced: How to Receive and Record Invoice Payments in QuickBooks Online?

Let me know how this goes so I can further assist you with invoices and sales-related tasks. I'll be here to lend a helping hand. Take care and stay safe!.

As a contractor this is a really big issue for me. I have recently transferred all of my data over from Wave to use QBO as it was instructed by my accountant. This is a major issue!

For small one off work orders I could previously create a draft invoice and that number was locked in to be able to viewed as a draft and followed up on. This is not the case in QB. Draft invoices are not easily identified within the invoice list and I now have to proceed to each invoice and manually drill down or generate a report. I simply do not have time to perform an audit every day to determine which work orders have not been completed or invoiced. I cannot express further that this is unacceptable. To say the least it is time consuming and inefficient.

The work around previously described involves creating an estimate. However, if an invoice is created while the estimate is waiting in the estimate section this causes the estimate number to then proceed to the next invoice number available when the estimate number is converted to an invoice. This makes that work around worthless to me. This is not acceptable for job tracking. 

Invoices should clearly be displayed as draft or not sent on the invoice dashboard. Invoices should not be listed as due when it hasn't yet been sent. This absolutely needs to be remedied. This issue will continue to cause problems and inefficiency.

The answer from Jen_D is a great solution! I can clearly see which invoices have been sent this month of all the ones I have made. 

---

@JetUSA wrote:

As a contractor this is a really big issue for me. I have recently transferred all of my data over from Wave to use QBO as it was instructed by my accountant. This is a major issue!

For small one off work orders I could previously create a draft invoice and that number was locked in to be able to viewed as a draft and followed up on. This is not the case in QB. Draft invoices are not easily identified within the invoice list and I now have to proceed to each invoice and manually drill down or generate a report. I simply do not have time to perform an audit every day to determine which work orders have not been completed or invoiced. I cannot express further that this is unacceptable. To say the least it is time consuming and inefficient.

The work around previously described involves creating an estimate. However, if an invoice is created while the estimate is waiting in the estimate section this causes the estimate number to then proceed to the next invoice number available when the estimate number is converted to an invoice. This makes that work around worthless to me. This is not acceptable for job tracking. 

 

Invoices should clearly be displayed as draft or not sent on the invoice dashboard. Invoices should not be listed as due when it hasn't yet been sent. This absolutely needs to be remedied. This issue will continue to cause problems and inefficiency.

---

Unfortunately this workaround doesn't work well for me. We're a monthly service business but our invoices change some from month to month depending on what services were actually provided.  The best way for us to do this is to duplicate last month's invoice, modify it, get it approved internally, then send it.  But you can't duplicate an invoice into an Estimate, so as soon as you duplicate, it looks like a live invoice, and begins aging.

Truly absurd that draft invoices don't exist.  A chat support agent told me last week that it sounds like a "great idea," and I said, "I know, it's such a great idea it's almost impossible to believe the market leader in web-based accounting software doesn't have it!"  She told me to suggest it to Feedback... of course.