Getting started with invoicing

Invoicing introduces a new, easy and quick way for you to create invoices to send to your customers. This is great for creating invoices and credit notes with no despatch process.

Watch a video

Introduction to Invoicing (video)

Why use Invoicing?

• Use our new grid entry form for easy and rapid data entry.
• Add stock items or free text (plus charges and comments) depending on your organisation's processes.
• As there's no despatch process, you can print or email your invoices straight away.
• Print or email your invoices straight away.
• See all your invoices and credit notes together in one list for easy management.
• You can also report on the profitability and use analysis codes for more in depth reporting.
• Report on income and use analysis codes for in depth reporting.

Invoicing or sales orders?

You can use both Invoicing and Sales Orders with Sage 200. You don't have to exclusively use one or the other.

You will want to use Invoicing if:

• You're a service business and don't need to keep track of stock.
• You don't have a despatch process.
• You have no lead time between orders being placed and invoices sent out.
• The despatch process has already occurred and you don't want to record it in Sage 200.

You will want to use Sales Orders if:

• You want to reserve or allocate stock items for customer orders.
• You want to keep track of your products at different warehouses.
• You need to include orders in an Intrastat declaration.

What's the difference?

Invoicing doesn't require the allocation and despatch of your stock items. You can create and print an invoice at any time. If you're not using stock, this is a quicker way to create invoices. If you are using stock, your stock levels are only updated once the invoice is posted.

Sales Orders require a specific order process to help you keep track of stock. Your customers raise orders with you, then you allocate the stock items which reserves them for that order and prevents them being sold to someone else. You record the despatch when you physically send the items to the customer. Once despatched, you can raise an invoice for the customer.

• Charges - Used to add costs such as delivery or insurance to an order. For charges that you use regularly you can create an Additional Charge record, detailing its VAT rate, value and nominal account for revenue postings.
• Comments - used to add any other information to an order. You can choose whether a comment is printed on an invoice for the customer to see or not. For example, you might want to use comments to add notes for your warehouse staff.

• If you produce back to back sales orders, you can only create these from sales orders and not Invoicing. Stock items on back to back orders will have a fulfilment method set to From supplier via stock.

The invoice process

Decision to make about your invoices

Before you start entering invoices, you need to make sure that you've set up everything you need. Consider questions such as:

1. Do you want add stock items or just one-off free text lines to invoices. You can choose the types you add to invoices in the settings.
2. Do you have customers who pay for their goods straight away, or do you need to take deposits? If so, turn this on and set up payment methods.
3. Do you want to use Opayo (formerly Sage Pay) to process the invoices as card payments?
4. Do you want to customise the printed invoice for your company, such as adding your company logo? If so, then you can customise the invoice layouts.
5. Do you want to control what users can view and change on invoices, such as the selling prices or discounts? If so, set this in the Invoice and order user permissions.
6. Do you want your staff to choose stock items stored in a specific warehouse or branch by default? If so, you can set this in the Invoice and order user permissions.
7. Do you have regular costs that you add to your invoices such as carriage or insurance? To save you entering the details each time, you can set up records for your charges.
8. Do you want to group you invoices and use analysis codes for reporting? If so, then set up analysis codes.

See Setting up Invoicing.