Chapter 17: Working with Invoices

Once the sales stage reaches to final stage you may start working on payment procedure. In this regard Invoice plays a vital role, which is very important for both Sales and Accounting purposes. Invoice is a bill issued by the vendor to the customers along with the goods/services shipment. It usually contains, reference number of Purchase Order, Date, Billing Address, Shipping Address, Terms of Payment, Line Items (products/services) with quantities and prices, and others. In a typical organization, invoicing completes the sales process and begins the accounting process where account receivable is managed by Accounts/Finance teams.

In the Zoho CRM system you can create invoices directly from the Potentials, Accounts, Quotes, or Sales Orders.

Invoices module contains the following components:

• Invoices List View
• Page Navigation
• Quick Create Invoices
• Invoice Reports
• Alphabetical Search
• Custom Views

You can perform the following operations in Invoices module:

• Navigate invoices
• Search invoices (Alphabetical or Advanced search options)
• Create invoices (Form filling or duplicate options)
• Associate invoices with other records
• Print invoice details
• View reports
• Delete invoices (individually or in bulk)
• Customize invoices

Navigating Invoices

(Access Privilege: Read permission)

You can navigate invoices available in the Invoices List.

To navigate invoices

1. Click the Invoices tab.
2. In the Invoices Home page, under the Invoices List section, click the Start, Previous, Next, or End link to access the list of invoices.

Searching Invoices

(Access Privilege: Read permission)

You can search the Invoices alphabetically or filling the required information in Search box.

To search invoices

1. Click the Invoices tab.
2. In the Invoices Home page, under the Invoice Search section, do one of the following:
   • Specify the search criteria in Search box and click the Go button. Or
   • Select one of the alphabetical search links.
3. In the Invoices List page, list of invoices are displayed as per search criteria.

Creating Invoices

(Access Privilege: Read/Write permission)

In Zoho CRM, you can create invoices by entering data into invoice detail form.

Note: Some of the standard fields listed below may not be visible/editable depending on your organization business process and field-level security settings. In case your organization added/modified fields please contact your System Administrator for more details about usage of the other fields.

In the Invoice: Edit form, you need to specify the invoice-related information. The following table provides descriptions of the various fields in the form.

List of Standard Invoice-related Fields

To create invoices

1. Click the New Invoice link. Note: The New Invoice link is present under
2. In the Invoice:page, specify the invoice details.
   
   

   Note: Subject, Account Name, Billing Address, Shipping Address, and Line Items are mandatory fields. Refer to the List of Standard Invoice-related Fields section for more details.

   
   
3. Click Save. An invoice will be created with a permanent Invoice ID, which can be used future reference.

Associating Invoices with Other Records

(Access Privilege: Read/Write permission)

You can associate invoice with the other records such as, activities, attachments and notes.

• Activities: To add tasks related to invoices.
• Attachments & Notes: To add the files and notes to invoices.

To associate Invoices with other Records

1. Click the Invoices tab.
2. In the Invoices Home page, under the Invoice List section, select the required invoice.
3. In the Invoice: <Invoice Name> page, do the following:
   • Edit the Invoice details.
   • Create tasks.
   • Add files and notes.
4. You can close the invoice page once all the required information is updated for the invoice.

Printing Invoice Details

(Access Privilege: Read permission)

You can view a printable form and print the invoice details using browser's Print function.

To print invoice details

1. Click the Invoices tab.
2. In the Invoices: Home page under the Invoices List section, select the required invoice.
3. In the Invoice: <Invoice Name> page click the Print Preview button.
4. In the Invoice: <Invoice Name> page, click the Print Page button. You can print the document using the Web browser print function.
5. Save the invoice file (PDF) locally and send to your customer separately.

Viewing Reports

(Access Privilege: Read/Write permission)

You can directly access some of the standard reports pertaining to Invoices from the Invoice Reports section. In addition to reports you can access one of the dashboards in Invoices module.

By default, the following reports are displayed under Invoices module:

• Invoices by Accounts
• Invoices by Status

To view Invoice report 

1. Click the Invoices tab.
2. In the Invoices: Home page under the Invoices Reports section, click the required Report link.
3. The Report is displayed in Reports page, which can be further customized as per your requirements.

For more details about reports customization refer to Chapter 19: Working with Reports.

Deleting Invoices

(Access Privilege: Read/Write/Delete permission)

Rarely, you may need to remove the unnecessary invoices, which are not tracked further. This will help you manage your invoices in a better way. You can delete invoices either individually or in bulk.

Warning: The deleted invoices are temporarily stored in Recycle Bin. If required you can restore the deleted invoices again. But if you delete invoices from Recycle Bin, you cannot restore again.

To delete invoices individually

1. Click the Invoices tab.
2. In the Invoices: Home page, select the invoice to be deleted.
3. In the Invoice: <Invoice Name> page, click Delete.
4. In the Confirmation dialog, click OK to delete the invoice permanently.

To delete invoices in bulk

1. Click the Invoices tab.
2. In the Invoices: Home page, go to the Invoices List section and select the invoices to be deleted using the Select check box.
3. Click the Delete button.
4. In the Confirmation dialog, click OK to delete the selected invoices permanently.

Customizing Invoices

(Access Privilege: Customize ZohoCRM.com permission)

Customization of the invoices module includes, renaming the tab name, modifying the pick list values in standard fields, adding new custom fields, modifying invoices page layout, and show/hide the related list views according to your Accounting management process requirements.

For more details, refer to Chapter 24: Customizing Zoho CRM