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Create invoices

by Intuit•976• Updated about 2 hours ago

Before starting

Invoices are how you charge your customers for the products and services you sell. Follow these steps to create and email an invoice in QuickBooks Online:

Draft a new invoice
Add a customer and products or services.
Assign invoice settings, such as payment method and reminders.
Send the invoice by email or save it to send later. You can also download and print the invoice or share a link, depending on your settings.

Note: This feature is limited for QuickBooks Online Free and QuickBooks Online Lite. Upgrade your plan to get more features. Go to Settings , then Subscriptions and billing. Then select Upgrade your plan.

Create and email an invoice in QuickBooks Online

Watch: How to create and customize an invoice in QuickBooks Online

An icon showing cash and a payment card If you'd like to make it easy for your customers to pay an invoice online, check out QuickBooks Payments rates and apply.

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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.

Use the following steps to create, manage, and email an invoice:

Select + New, then Invoice. Alternatively, you can select Sales, then Invoices, then New invoice.
Select a customer from the Add customer ▼ dropdown. You can use + Add New to add a new customer.
Review the Invoice date, Due date, and Terms.
Enter new dates or terms as needed.
- Tip: In the Terms field, "Net" refers to the number of days until the payment is due.
For each line item on the invoice, select a product or service from the ▼ dropdown. To add line items, select Add product or service.
Select how you want to calculate the charge amount: flat rate, by hour, or by item. Enter a quantity and rate, if needed.
Select Manage ⚙ to customize the design, scheduling, and payment options of your invoice. Here's some helpful information about customizing invoices:
- Select Customization if the customization menu isn't displaying.
- In Scheduling, you can set an invoice to recur. If you use QuickBooks Payments, you can also set up recurring payments. You can also turn on automatic invoice reminders.
- To let customers pay online, select Payment options and turn on the methods you want. If prompted, sign up for QuickBooks Payments.
- QuickBooks applies your settings to all existing and future invoices.
Decide when to send the invoice:
- Select Review and send to review and email the invoice right away.
- Select Save to save the invoice for sending at a later time.

Tip: To update company contact info or logo shown on invoices, select Edit company in the invoice header.

Confirm the invoice was sent

You’ll know the invoice was sent by the following results:

The invoice status shows Sent.
The customer receives the email notification.

Get more from your QuickBooks

You can upgrade your plan to get more features. Go to Settings ⚙ , then Subscriptions and billing. Then select Upgrade your plan.
To make it easy for your customers to pay an invoice online, check out QuickBooks Payments rates and apply.
Get personalized help using QuickBooks with QuickBooks Live.