Link Sales order to already existing Invoice

Thanks for visiting the community, @hilltop_account. 

Currently, the QuickBooks account receivable workflow of recording your sales is creating a sales order first before the invoice. Refer to this help article to see the complete list of customer-related transactions: Accounts Receivable workflows. 

In your case, you can delete the existing invoice, then create a sales order and turn it into an invoice. Here's how: 

Deleting an invoice

1.  Open the existing invoice.
2. Select the Delete drop-down box beside the Save button. 
3. Click Delete, then click OK.

Creating a Sales Order

1. Go to the Customer tab, then select Create Sales Orders.
2. Enter all the necessary information on your sales order form. 
3. Click Save & Close.

Once done, you can now turn it into an invoice so you won't have to re-enter the same information. There are two ways to do this. Refer to this article: Create an invoice in QuickBooks Desktop and follow the steps whichever convenient to you in this topic: Create an invoice for a Sales Order. 

I'm also adding some of our helpful articles that I find beneficial for you and your business. Read through these topics:

• How to customize and manage payment reminders. It helps you learn about how to set up automatic payment reminders so you'll be notified whenever you have a customer invoice due for payment. 
• Use the Sales Order Fulfillment Worksheet. This will guide and give you an idea of managing and fulfilling your sales order. 

Feel free to visit again if you have additional questions. We're always delighted to help. 

Hi, 

Thank you for your response.

If I delete the existing one and create a new invoice from the sales order, the payment will be outstanding even though the customer actually already paid with the deleted invoice...So, I don't think it's a good solution.

Is there any alternative way other than using sales order to track the orders and support prepayment invoice ?

Thanks for coming back, @hilltop_account.

I can share a way to track the orders and support the prepayment invoice.

You can set a current liability account and create upfront deposits or retainers. Once done, you can record upfront deposits or retainers you receive, then create an invoice.

You can apply the upfront deposit or retainer as payment on the invoice. This moves the deposit from the liability account to your income account.

You can select any of the following methods that work best for your business.

To enter an upfront deposit or retainer as a line item on an invoice:

1.    Open the customer invoice.
2.    Select the Upfront Deposit item you created from the Item drop-down list.
3.    Enter the amount of deposit to be applied to the invoice in the Amount column.
4.    Hit Save and Close.

To apply an upfront deposit or retainer to an invoice as a credit:

1.     From the Customers menu, select Create Credit Memos/Refunds.
2.     Select the customer or job.
3.     Click the Upfront Deposit item you created.
4.     In the Amount field, enter the amount of the deposit or retainer.
5.     Select Save and Close.
6.     In the Available Credit pop-up, select Apply to an invoice and select OK.
7.     In the Apply Credit to Invoice dialog, click the invoice to which to apply the upfront deposit or retainer and select Done.

 Please visit this article for further details of the steps: Manage upfront deposits or retainers.

If you need some information about managing your desktop account, you can visit this article for your future reference:Help articles. You can click each to view them.

I hope this helps.

Thank you so much for the explanation for setting-up the liability account for an upfront deposit.

While this is a great idea to track backorders while having the prepayment, one thing we cannot do with this method is sending a payment link from the invoice to the customer for prepayment since the payment link can be only generated from Invoice...

Any other recommendations?

Your help on this is greatly appreciated!!

Good evening, @hilltop_account.

I'm happy to provide you information on your upfront deposit.

Great news, you're able to apply this to invoices. This is an item that is attached to a liability account. When it's time to collect payment for an upfront deposit you can apply it to an invoice as a payment. This moves the deposit from the liability account to your income account.

There's a couple of ways to do this:

• Enter it as a line item on the invoice.
• Apply it as a credit.

As mentioned by my colleague above, you can check out: Manage upfront deposits. There's a section of the article that explains how to apply this to your invoice. (Steps 4 and 5).

If you have further questions, feel free to reply to this thread, and I'll help you out. My goal is to get you back to business. Take care!

I understood that we could apply that to the invoice.

My original question was not about how to record an upfront deposit.

I sometimes need to send out invoice, generating payment link, to the customers, so they can prepay for the work with their credit cards from the payment link in the invoice; however, when we do this, we won't be able to track the back order correctly on sales orders, so I was wondering if there's any way we can just link/connect to the existing invoice to sales order to track backorders.

Recording upfront deposit is a solution if I didn't have to send the payment link from an invoice.

Thank you so much in advance!

Hi hilltop_account,

Currently, linking an invoice to the sales order is unavailable in QuickBooks Desktop. You'll want to create an estimate to track backorders and to convert it to invoice for the actual transaction.

To create an estimate

1. Click Customers on the upper menu.
2. Select Create Estimates.
3. Fill in the information such as the Customer Job, Item, Quantity and Total Amount.
4. Click Save & Close.

To convert it to invoice.

1. Open the estimate. 
2. Click Create Invoice on the upper part beside Attach File. 
3. Select if you want to create the entire estimate or only percentage.
4. Click OK,

Also, you can add and match bank feed in QuickBooks: Add and Match Bank Feed Transactions in QuickBooks Desktop.

Please let me know if you have any other concerns.I'll always right here to help.

I have the same question (problem) and am amazed at how useless the responses from QB employees are on here.  Do they assume we are all idiots and can't go through the basic documentation provided.  The answer appears to be that there is no way to link an existing invoice to a SO.  This is unlike how you can link an existing Bill to a PO.  QB should add this as a feature.  

I can see how the functionality to link existing invoices to sales orders would be beneficial to your business, EdNewman. I'm here to share a few details about this.

We take customer suggestions as opportunities to improve the various features within our products. Therefore, I'd encourage sending a product recommendation directly to our Product Development team. This helps us improve your experience with the program. 

Here's how:

1. Go to the Help menu.
2. Choose  Send Feedback Online.
3. Click on Product Suggestion.
4. Click on the drop-down for Type of Feedback and select Product Suggestion.
5. Select the Product Area.
6. Then enter your thoughts and suggestions.
7. Once done, select Send Feedback. 

For your visual reference, I've attached some screenshots below.

Additionally, I'm adding this article to further guide you in managing your business growth and income transactions in QuickBooks: Help Articles for Sales and Customers. It includes topics about sales transactions, managing customers and payments, and customizing forms, to name a few.

I'm all ears if you have other concerns about managing your sales transactions, EdNewman. Please don't hesitate to reply here or create a new thread. I'll be right here to assist you.

Been reading though this this post and I was thinking the same thing. You have asked the question several times and in different ways. I'm trying to figure out the same thing. 

Thanks for joining us on this thread, @Shawn90.

I can see how this feature would be helpful for you and your business. Since this isn't currently an option, I encourage you to submit feedback to our Product Development Team for review when determining features to be added in updates.

Here's how:

1. Go to the Help menu at the top.
2. Select Send Feedback Online.
3. Click on Product Suggestion.
4. Click on the drop-down for Type of Feedback and select Product Suggestion.
5. Select the Product Area.
6. Enter your thoughts and suggestions.
7. Click Send Feedback.

To be updated with our latest news and updates, including product improvements, I encourage you to visit the What's New section on your QBDT account or open this link to view our product update blogs.

Moreover, I don't want to leave you empty handed, feel free to browse this page for future references: Help articles.

If you have any follow up questions or concerns about QuickBooks, let me know by commenting below. I'm more than happy to answer it for you. Have a nice day.

This issue has been around since the beginning, and I think that the suggestion has been made before. Making a suggestion like this as you outlined does no good. Intuit has its own agenda, and these suggestions never make it to the top of the pile. The annual "improvements" rarely address existing problems with the software. The 2023 improvements were so important and helpful that I have not installed the upgrade and won't. It is of NO use to our business.