How do I mark in QuickBooks when an invoice is sent outside of QuickBooks? I don't send our invoices through QuickBooks, but I need to note when the invoices are sent.

Hello there, @rdeen.

Thanks for dropping by the Community. Let me walk you through how to make a note or mark an invoice as sent in QuickBooks Online (QBO).

To change the status of your invoices to Sent, you can send a test email to yourself. Here's how:

1. Go to the Sales menu at the left panel, then pick the Invoices tab.
2. Locate and open the invoice.
3. Enter your email address on the right side of the customer's name.
4. Click Save and send, then Send and close.

Once done, the status of the invoice will now change to Sent. For your reference, you may check out this article for more information: How to create an invoice.

That's it! Give this a try and let me know how it goes by leaving a comment below. I'd be glad to answer should you have additional questions. Have a great day.

Hopefully we will be able to manually change the setting later, rather than having to send a test email to ourselves.

I agree, it's pretty basic functionality. Would be good to see this updated.

Hello there, Matt20.

I'd personally send this feedback to our Product Development Team that you like an option to manually mark sales forms as Sent. 

Always know the Community is always here if you need further help!

It seems clear that Quickbooks wants the opportunity to market themselves and make revenue by allowing people to pay invoices through their system rather than letting QBs users mark invoices "sent" manually. 

I would be OK with using the QBs system of emailing invoices IF it looked halfway professional. The current method pops up an extremely simplified version of the invoice. I bill clients tens of thousands per invoice. This is completely out of sync with the professionalism expected when spending that amount of money. 

Please consider showing the whole invoice rather than the simplified version. 

Hi there, @mardisbagley.

I want to let you know that your voice matters and I'm taking notes of your feedback and submitting it directly to our engineers. As of this time, you can consider the workaround shared by my colleague FritzF above to manually mark an invoice as sent.

Also, to show the whole invoice amount, you can consider importing your custom form styles for invoices as a workaround.

First, we need to turn on this feature. Here's how:
 

1. Click the Gear icon.
2. Select QuickBooks Labs.
3. Scroll down the screen and toggle the switch for Import Style to On.
4. Select Done. 

Then, design your own template in an MS Word file. Once done, you can import it to QuickBooks. Here's how:
 

1. Click the Gear icon.
2. Select Custom Form Styles.
3. Click the New style drop-down.
4. Choose Import style.
5. Select the drop-down under Select a form type, then choose invoice.
6. Click the link Download a sample, and make your own import form style.

I've got you an article for more details: Import Custom Form Styles for Invoices.

You can also visit our blog site so you'll be able to get the latest news about QuickBooks and what our Product Care Team is working on.

Please feel free to leave a comment if you have any other questions. The Community team and I are always here to help you out.

Hi, is there any news on this functionality?

I'm still in trial mode now, but this is one of the reasons I am doubting if I want to actually start paying for Quickbooks.

Thanks,

Eline

You still have to email the invoice to yourself or a test email so it'll be marked as sent, Eline.

Updates regarding this feature are unavailable. Although, I can already see some requests that are forwarded to our software developers.

I'll help you by sending another feedback. The more request a feature has, the more it's likely to be added in our future updates.

Let me also share this reference on how to email or print an invoice.

We're just around if ever you need our help. Just post in the Community anytime. 

Please can we have this feature asap. its not that difficult or at least the export to pdf is the same as sent.

Thanks,

It is so important and can affect getting paid, here's an example.

I received an invoice from a supplier who uses Quickbooks and he used their server to send me the invoice.

Thirty days after receiving it I wanted to pay him but I couldn't find an email from him in my Inbox. I would not even considered looking for an email from Quickbooks.

This is one of the reasons I am still considering moving permanently to Quickbooks.