Money in runs on three documents: the estimate (what you propose), the invoice (what you are owed), and the payment (what arrived). Each one can become the next with a click, so nothing is typed twice.
Creating an invoice
Open Invoices and create one. Pick the customer (or add a new one right from the picker), add your lines, and each line carries its income category so the books stay right without you thinking about it. The window moves and resizes like everything else, and closing with unsaved changes always asks first.
Send it by email straight from the invoice, print it, or download a PDF. Your logo and business details come from your company settings, so every document leaves looking like you.
Your license number on the paper
Contractors and other licensed trades usually have to print their license number on every bid and invoice. Add the license under Company on Books Settings (Licenses and registrations) and tick the papers it prints on; it appears under the company's address on invoices, estimates and purchase orders, and the stationery designer gains a Licenses block.
Getting paid online
An invoice can carry a pay online link. Your customer opens it, sees the invoice, and pays; the payment records itself against the invoice and the deposit shows up in your Banking to be matched when the bank confirms it. No portal for the customer to sign up for, just a link that works.
To turn it on, open Books settings > Connections > Online invoice payments and connect the company's own Stripe account; Stripe opens its own setup page and you come back when it is done. Once Stripe has checked the account, tick Offer "Pay online" on invoices: emailed invoices then carry a Pay this invoice online button. Payments are charged in your books' home currency and dated the day the money settled. Stripe's fee is booked on its own. A refund is recorded by hand.
If you move an invoice to a different customer, the link you already sent stops working, so the first customer can never see or pay the second customer's invoice; share the invoice again for a new link. An invoice whose online payment is still on its way cannot be deleted: void it instead, and the money lands as the customer's credit.
Recording other payments
For a check or a bank transfer, use Receive payment: pick the customer, tick the invoices the money covers, and choose where it deposited. Part payments and overpayments are handled; anything left unapplied stays on the customer as credit.
Estimates
An estimate is an invoice that is not owed yet. Send it for approval; your customer can accept it from the link, and one click turns the accepted estimate into the real invoice.
Estimates carry sales tax the way invoices do: tick Tax on each line that is taxable, and the estimate shows the tax and the total your customer is agreeing to. The ticks carry over when it becomes an invoice, which charges the rate in force on the invoice's own date.
Any invoice or estimate whose link you shared can have it taken back: the Turn off link icon, next to the link icon, stops the page working at once. Copying the link again makes a new one.
Your customer's portal
Give a customer one private link where they see their whole account: what they owe and what is past due, every invoice, what they have paid and toward which invoice, the estimates waiting for their answer, and their statement, which they can print or save as a PDF. They need no account and no password. Where you take payments online, each open invoice has a Pay button; an estimate opens to approve or decline.
Open the customer under Contacts. In the Customer portal box, type their email and choose Send portal link, or choose Get a link to copy it and send it yourself. The link is shown only once, right after you make it, because only a fingerprint of it is kept.
The box then shows whether the link is live, when it was made, and how many times your customer opened it. The link works for a year. Send a new link replaces the old one, and Turn off stops it at once, together with every invoice and estimate page your customer opened from the portal. Anyone your customer forwards the email to can see the same page, so turn it off if it went to the wrong person.
The email itself only goes out once the "Customer portal links" email is switched on for your account; until then, Get a link always works.
Fixing a payment you already received
Open the invoice and find the payment under Payments applied - the pencil on its row opens the payment itself. You can change its date, the method, the check or reference number, the memo, and where it was deposited (Undeposited Funds or a bank account).
You can also change how much was received and how much each invoice takes: the table lists the customer's open invoices with what each would owe without this payment, and an Applied box per invoice. Whatever the invoices do not take stays as the customer's available credit. The amount stays put while a recorded deposit or a matched bank line holds it - you can still spread the same amount across different invoices - and a foreign-currency payment, a pay-page payment or one made by Find a match keeps what it applied; the window says which, before you type.
Wondering about Undeposited Funds? It is the drawer between receiving money and the bank: payments wait there so that Record deposit (the button at the top of this tab, which shows how many are waiting) can group them into the one deposit line your bank statement will actually show. If a payment really landed in the bank on its own, edit it and pick the bank account directly.
A deposit you made with Record deposit opens and saves like any other deposit: fix its date, memo, class or Received from and save. Only its amount and accounts stay put, because they are the sum of the payments it banked. To change those, void the deposit (its payments go back to Undeposited Funds) and record it again.
Sales tax
Books settings > Company > Sales tax on invoices is where the rate lives. Pick the state, type the combined percentage, and say when it starts. A rate keeps up to four decimal places of a percent, so 8.375% is charged as exactly 8.375%. Until a rate exists nothing changes anywhere: no Tax column, no tax line, no new account.
The rate is dated, never overwritten. When your state moves its rate you ADD the new one with the date it starts. An invoice you wrote last January keeps showing the tax it actually charged, and re-printing it a year later shows the same figure. Each taxed line also remembers the rate it was billed at.
What is taxable comes from what you sell. In the card under the rate, tick the income accounts that carry goods. A line billed to a ticked account arrives with Tax already on, and a line billed to a services account arrives off, so you only touch the exceptions. Changing a tick never touches an invoice you already wrote.
A customer can be exempt. On the contact, tick Exempt from sales tax and say why: a resale certificate, a government body, an exempt organisation, out of state, or outside the US. Keep the certificate number with it. Their invoices then charge no tax AND SAY WHY on the paper, which is what matters when somebody asks a year later. If you record an expiry date, the exemption stops on its own when it passes: the invoice charges tax again and the editor tells you the certificate has run out.
Selling into more than one state? Add a rate for each state you are registered in, and set the state on each customer. Everyone is charged their own state's rate. A customer in a state you have no rate for is charged nothing, which is the honest answer, since you do not collect there.
Changing the tax on one invoice. Click the tax figure on the invoice and type what you want charged. The invoice records that the figure was moved and keeps what the rate said beside it, so your books and your return stay honest about the difference. Click Use the rate to put it back.
On the return. Taxed invoices join the sales tax filing for their state and period alongside any counter sales, so a books-only company gets filing periods from its invoices. Each state's registration says how often you file (monthly, quarterly, twice a year or yearly), which month its filing year starts in (quarters starting in March run March to May, June to August, September to November and December to February), and how the tax is rounded: per line (each line rounded to the cent, then added) or on the invoice total (taxed once). The state's usual rule is filled in; change it only when your state says otherwise.
Credit memos give the tax back. A credit memo's lines carry the same Tax tick as an invoice's, so crediting returned goods hands back the tax they were charged, your Sales Tax Payable comes down, and the memo reduces the sales tax return for the month it is issued in - the same way a refund does.
After you file. Editing, voiding or deleting an invoice whose month was already filed is allowed - you get a caution note, never a block - and if the change moves the tax or the taxable amount, the difference carries to your next return automatically, listed there by the invoice it came from. Fixing a memo or a due date changes nothing and carries nothing.
Invoices imported from QuickBooks. QuickBooks records an invoice's tax as a line on its Sales Tax Payable account, so imported invoices arrive with the tax as a line item. When kBooks spots that, the QuickBooks card in Books settings offers to recognise it - it names the account, counts the invoices and totals the money, and one click converts them so they reach your sales tax filings. Nothing happens unless you say so.
Customers in other states. Each customer is charged their own state's rate - that is how sales tax works across state lines. Set the customer's state on their contact card (their address usually suggests it for you). In a state where you collect, their invoices carry that state's rate; in a state where you are not registered, they are charged nothing - the buyer owes their own state use tax - and the sale still counts toward that state's registration threshold. The Sales Tax page's "Where you're heading" panel watches those totals and tells you when a state expects you to register; adding a tax rate for a state signs it up for filings automatically.
One thing to know: an invoice billed in a foreign currency cannot carry sales tax yet.
When something changes
- Edit an invoice at any time, paid or not; its history keeps who changed what. Once money is applied (a payment, a credit memo or a write-off), the customer stays and the total cannot go below what is applied; the balance follows the new total.
- Voiding a paid invoice works like deleting one: its payments stay as the customer's available credit, and an applied credit memo gets its credit back.
- A credit memo handles returns or goodwill and applies against open invoices. When a line names a stocked item, the item goes back on the shelf and its cost of goods is reversed; voiding the memo takes it off again. Edit on a credit memo opens it filled in; what is already used of it stays used.
- An estimate that became an invoice can still be edited or voided - an estimate never posts, so the invoice is not touched. A signed estimate is reopened first, so the signature never sits on numbers the customer did not see.
- A payment that Find a match tied to a deposit already in your books can be voided or deleted on its own: the invoice reopens and the deposit stays exactly as it was. While the payment sits on it, the deposit's memo, class and payee can still change in Transactions; its amounts and accounts cannot, and the message names the invoice.
- A recurring schedule copies each line's item and job onto every invoice it makes. If its customer or an account it uses is made inactive, the schedule pauses and says why; make it active again, then resume.
- Voiding keeps the document with a line through it, so numbering and history stay intact.
Keeping an eye on what is owed
The books' Overview and the aging views under Reports show who owes what and for how long, and a statement for any customer gathers their activity in one document you can send. The statement lists the same open items as the aging: open invoices, credits not yet used, money received but not yet applied, and any journal entry made to the customer's account.