Invoicing

The Invoicing application handles customer and vendor invoices, payment tracking and the basic accounting data. This chapter covers the operational cycle; bookkeeping proper is covered in chapitre 14.

Invoicing or Accounting?

Two applications carry the accounts, and the question comes up constantly: which one do you need? The answer depends less on those two names than on the edition you are running.

Invoicing is the foundation. It covers issuing and tracking invoices, the chart of accounts, the journals, the taxes, the journal entries and analytic accounting.

Accounting is an Enterprise edition application that sits on top of it.

Community (the foundation alone	Enterprise) as soon as Invoicing is installed
- invoices, credit notes and payments, customers and vendors; - chart of accounts, journals, taxes, fiscal positions, currencies; - journal entries and analytic entries; - payment terms; - invoice analysis; - audit trail and securing of journal entries.	- everything above; - bank reconciliation screen and reconciliation models; - financial statements: balance sheet, profit and loss, general ledger, trial balances; - tax returns and their filing; - fiscal years and lock dates; - multi-level customer follow-ups; - digitisation of incoming bills.

Setting up invoicing

Basic settings

Accounting › Configuration › Settings groups the options into thematic blocks. The list is shorter in the Community edition: the blocks specific to bookkeeping (default accounts, fiscal periods, analytic accounting, reports) assume the Enterprise edition modules.

Fiscal Localization: check that the package matches the country you operate in. It is what installed the chart of accounts, the taxes and the fiscal positions (see section 5.5).

Taxes: the block with the greatest structural effect.

Setting	What it governs
Default Taxes	The sales and purchase taxes carried automatically onto new products. They do not change existing product records.
Rounding Method	Round per Tax computes the VAT on the total for each rate; Round per Line rounds it line by line. The difference is a matter of pennies, but it must be consistent with what your accountant expects.
Cash Basis	Allows VAT to become chargeable on receipt of payment rather than on invoicing. A setting to settle with your accountant, according to the nature of the business.
Fiscal Country	The country your accounts fall under, which determines the returns available.

Currencies: the company's Main Currency, and Automatic Currency Rates, which keeps the rates up to date from an official source at the chosen interval.

Customer Invoices: the presentation and the wording.

Setting	What it adds
Default Terms & Conditions	The terms printed at the foot of the documents, as a note or as a link (see section 11.3.7).
Customer Addresses	Allows separate invoice and delivery addresses on the documents.
Credit Limit	Warns during entry when a customer's outstanding balance exceeds the ceiling set for them.
Total amount of invoice in letters	Adds the amount written out in words, required in some countries.
Taxes in company currency	Also shows the taxes in local currency on invoices issued in a foreign currency.
Default Incoterm	The incoterm carried onto export documents.

Customer Payments: Invoice Online Payment opens payment from the portal; SEPA Direct Debit (SDD) allows you to collect from customers who have signed a mandate; QR Codes adds a payment QR code to the invoices; Batch Payments groups several payments into one operation to simplify reconciliation.

Vendor Bills: automatic posting of the bills of a vendor whose extractions prove reliable several times in a row, and prediction of the product from the line label. Vendor Payments, a separate block: check printing and SEPA Credit Transfer / ISO20022 to pay by bank file.

Digitization: Document Digitization extracts the data from bills received as PDF or scans by optical reading. The processing applies separately to vendor bills and to customer invoices, each with a choice between no digitisation, digitisation on demand, or automatic digitisation.

Accounting Firms mode: intended for accounting practices, it makes the document sequence editable and adds fast entry from the tax-inclusive total. There is no reason to enable it on a company database.

Journals

Journals are the entry points for accounting records: sales, purchases, bank, cash, miscellaneous operations.

1. Open Accounting › Configuration › Accounting › Journals.
2. Check the journals created by the localisation.
3. Open the bank journal and fill in the account details.
4. Adjust the numbering sequences if your organisation requires it.

The taxes

The fiscal localisation installs the country's taxes: for France, the VAT rates of 20%, 10%, 5.5% and 2.1%, on sales as well as purchases. So there is normally nothing to create.

1. Open Accounting › Configuration › Accounting › Taxes to consult them.
2. For every tax in use, check: - the Tax Type: Sales or Purchases; - the Tax Computation: Percentage in most cases, Fixed for a flat amount, Group of Taxes to combine several taxes; - the Amount, that is, the rate; - the Tax Scope, which restricts its use to Goods or to Services; - the Included in Price option, if the catalogue prices are tax inclusive.

Fiscal positions

The same sale is not taxed the same way depending on the customer: 20% for a French customer, exemption for a VAT-registered European customer, exemption again for an export outside the Union. The fiscal position is the mechanism that automates that adaptation.

The French localisation installs the usual positions: intra-Community regime, export outside the Union, French overseas territories, reverse charge. They can be consulted in Accounting › Configuration › Accounting › Fiscal Positions.

Reading a fiscal position. The Taxes smart button opens the list of the taxes attached to it. It reads line by line: the Name column carries the tax to apply, the Replaces column the ones it stands in for. A line reading 0% EX G set against 20% G, 10% G and 5.5% G therefore means: whatever the standard rate of the goods, apply the exemption.

The Tax Scope column distinguishes Goods from Services, which do not always fall under the same regime.

Assigning the position. Two ways:

• by hand, in the Fiscal Information block of the customer record (see section 11.1.4);
• automatically, by ticking Detect Automatically on the position and filling in the Country or the Country Group it applies to. Odoo then picks it from the customer's address. The VAT required option further makes it conditional on a VAT number being present on the record, which is what tells a VAT-registered business from a private individual.

Invoice numbering

The numbering of accounting documents obeys legal rules: the numbers must run without gaps, without duplicates, and in chronological order. Odoo uses a particular mechanism for this, which is worth understanding before you try to configure it.

Choosing the format therefore comes down to writing the first number by hand:

1. Create the first invoice of the journal and leave it in draft.
2. Correct its number in the field provided: for example INV/2026/00001.
3. Post it. All the following ones will take up that format.

This is the move to make before the first real invoice. Once the series has started, the format can only be changed by renumbering the documents already issued.

Correcting a series already started is possible as long as the mistake is recent, through a dedicated action.

1. Open the invoice list and tick the ones to renumber, they must belong to the same journal and be of the same kind.
2. Click Actions then Resequence.
3. Enter the First New Sequence: it is that number which sets the format of the whole series.
4. Choose the order: Keep current order, or Reorder by accounting date to restore the chronology.
5. Check Preview Modifications, which shows the old and the new number of each document, then Confirm.

Payment terms

1. Open Accounting › Configuration › Invoicing › Payment Terms.
2. Create the terms matching your practice: immediate, 30 days, 30 days end of month, 45 days end of month, instalments in several payments.
3. Assign the default term to each customer on their contact record.

Electronic invoicing

Sending invoices in electronic format relies on the Peppol network.

1. Open Accounting › Configuration › Settings.
2. In the section devoted to electronic invoicing, activate the service.
3. Fill in the company identifier and follow the registration procedure on the network.
4. Check, on the customer records, that the recipient's electronic identifier is filled in.

Invoicing a customer

Invoicing from an order

1. Open the delivered sales order.
2. Click Create Invoice.
3. Choose the mode: - Regular invoice: invoices the balance still due; - Down payment (percentage): invoices a share of the total; - Down payment (fixed amount): invoices a set sum.
4. Click Create Draft.
5. Check the lines, the date and the due date.
6. Click Confirm.

Creating an invoice manually

1. Open Accounting › Customers › Invoices.
2. Click New.
3. Select the customer, the invoice date and the payment terms.
4. Add the product or service lines.
5. Check the taxes and the income accounts.
6. Click Confirm.

Invoicing several orders together

1. Open Sales › To Invoice › Orders to Invoice.
2. Select the orders belonging to the same customer.
3. Click the Create Invoices button that appears at the top of the list.
4. Choose the grouping you want, then validate.

Sending the invoice

1. Open the confirmed invoice.
2. Click Send.
3. Choose how it is to be sent: email, PDF download, or transmission over the electronic invoicing network where it is configured.
4. Check the recipient and the message, then validate.

The send is logged in the invoice's message thread, which provides proof of transmission should it be disputed.

Collecting payment

Recording a payment

1. Open the invoice.
2. Click Pay.
3. Fill in the amount (the balance due is offered by default), the date, the Journal and the payment method.
4. Add a reference that will let you identify the payment on the bank statement.
5. Validate.

The invoice moves to the In Payment status, then to Paid once the payment has been reconciled.

Partial payments

Enter the amount actually received and validate. The invoice moves to partially paid and shows the balance remaining. As many partial payments as necessary can be recorded.

Handling a down payment

The cycle of an order with a down payment runs as follows:

1. Invoice the down payment from the order, as a percentage or a fixed amount.
2. Send the down payment invoice and record its payment.
3. Deliver.
4. Invoice the balance: Odoo automatically deducts the down payment already invoiced on the final invoice.
5. Record the payment of the balance.

Entering vendor bills

From a purchase order

The procedure is described in chapitre 10: the line-by-line check is done at the moment the bill is created, from the purchase order.

From a document received

This is the quickest route, and the one that limits keying errors: the vendor's document is loaded into Odoo, which extracts the data from it by optical reading.

Getting the document in. Three ways:

• drop it from Accounting › Vendors › Bills with the upload button, several files at a time;
• email it to a dedicated address attached to the purchase journal (see below);
• photograph it from the mobile application.

Odoo creates a draft bill for each document, with the file attached.

Extraction. Depending on the mode chosen in the settings, it is launched automatically or on demand with the Digitize document button. Odoo then fills in the vendor, the dates, the amounts and the taxes, and highlights the extracted values on the form.

1. Check every recognised value, in particular the vendor, the total and the VAT.
2. Correct what needs correcting: the corrections feed the learning and improve later extractions for that same vendor.
3. Check or complete the expense accounts on the lines.
4. Click Confirm.

Receiving bills by email

A journal can have its own receiving address. Any document sent to it becomes a draft bill, with no user having to step in.

1. Open Accounting › Configuration › Accounting › Journals and select the purchase journal.
2. Fill in the Email Alias: the part before the at sign: for example bills.
3. Choose the Alias Domain to its right, which completes the address.
4. Save.

Bills sent to that address now land in the journal, ready to be digitised.

Direct entry

1. Open Accounting › Vendors › Bills.
2. Click New.
3. Select the vendor.
4. Fill in the Reference (the vendor's invoice number) and the date of the document.
5. Enter the lines, checking the expense accounts and the taxes.
6. Confirm.

Paying

1. Open the confirmed vendor bill.
2. Click Pay.
3. Fill in the amount, the date, the bank journal and the payment method.
4. Validate.

To prepare several payments at once, go through Accounting › Vendors › Payments.

Correcting: credit notes and refunds

Issuing a credit note

1. Open the invoice to be corrected.
2. Click Credit Note.
3. Fill in the Reason displayed on Credit Note, which will appear on the document.
4. Check the Journal and the Reversal date.
5. Choose the appropriate option: - Reverse, simply to cancel the invoice; - Reverse and Create Invoice, to correct it and reissue straight away.
6. Confirm the credit note obtained.

Settling the credit note

A posted credit note is a debt owed to the customer. Three routes extinguish it.

Refund it.

1. Open the posted, unsettled credit note.
2. Click Pay.
3. Select the bank journal and the amount refunded.
4. Validate.

Apply it to an invoice. This is the most frequent case: rather than refunding, the credit note is deducted from another invoice for the same customer.

1. Open the invoice the credit note is to be applied to.
2. In the banner announcing outstanding credits, click Add beside the credit note you want.
3. The amount comes off the Amount Due.

Let it apply itself to the original. When the credit note reverses an invoice that has already been paid, Odoo reconciles it by itself with the original payment: the credit note moves to Paid without any bank movement taking place, and the Amount Due falls to zero.

Monitoring receivables

Spotting unpaid invoices

1. Open Accounting › Customers › Invoices.
2. Apply the filter matching what you are looking for.

Filter	What it keeps
To pay	Invoices unpaid or partly paid, overdue or not. This is the customer exposure in the broad sense.
In payment	Invoices for which a payment has been recorded but not yet reconciled against the bank statement. They are neither to be chased, nor quite settled.
Overdue	Invoices whose due date has passed. This is the filter for follow-ups.

1. Group by Partner to measure the overall exposure on each account.
2. Sort by Due Date to deal with the oldest arrears first.

Chasing

Define the levels, once and for all.

1. Open Accounting › Configuration › Invoicing › Follow-up Levels.
2. Create the successive levels (polite reminder, firm chase, formal notice) filling in for each of them: - the Due Days, the number of days after the due date that triggers this level; - the email template used, and the Attach Invoices option to attach the documents concerned; - possibly an SMS, and Schedule Activity so that a reminder appears in the tasks of the person responsible.

Set the handling per customer, in the Accounting tab of their record: the tab is called Invoicing when only that application is installed.

Field	What it governs
Follow-up Status	Computed: No action needed, In need of action when a level is reached, or With overdue invoices if invoices are past due without a level being owed yet.
Reminders	Automatic sends the follow-ups without any intervention; Manual prepares them and waits for validation.
Next reminder	A date before which no follow-up will go out. This is the field to fill in when a customer announces a payment: it suspends the follow-ups until the agreed date.
Responsible	The user in charge of collection on this account.

A banner above shows the progress through the levels, and the Due smart button gives the amount to collect.

Send the follow-up. The Send link, beside the reminders, triggers the level reached: email, SMS or activity, according to what is set on that level.

Invoicing reports

The Reporting menu of Accounting groups the reports by family. Four of them bear directly on the monitoring of invoicing.

Report	What it shows
Invoice Analysis	Turnover invoiced, which can be broken down by customer, product, salesperson or period. This is the commercial steering report.
Aged Receivable	Receivables classified by how long they have been overdue, in columns of thirty days. This is the collection report.
Aged Payable	Payables classified the same way. This is the report that prepares payment decisions.
Partner Ledger	The detail of the movements on one third party, invoice by invoice and payment by payment. This is the report to open when a customer disputes a balance.

Resolving common situations

A complete cycle, worked through