The editor mirrors the PDF
Click + New invoice on the Sales page and an empty draft opens straight in the editor — no setup modal. The editor is a split pane: the form on one side, a live PDF preview on the other. The form sections follow the reading order of the finished document — From → Customer → Invoice details → VAT treatment → Line items → Discount & payment → Notes → Totals — so what you fill in top-to-bottom is what your customer reads top-to-bottom.
The preview is rendered by the same engine that produces the final PDF, so there are no surprises at issue time. It refreshes when you save; saving is explicit via the sticky Save bar (there is no autosave yet).
Drafts are forgiving: half-filled line items save fine. Completeness is only enforced when you finalize, and any section that would block issuing shows a "required to finalize" pill. The service date defaults to the invoice date until you change it, and the currency is locked to your company's house currency (shown as a read-only chip).
Live VAT totals and the header discount
The totals panel groups amounts per VAT rate — one bucket per rate used in your line items, collapsed to a single line when there's only one rate — plus the discount and the grand total. These update live as you type; the server recomputes all totals authoritatively from the line items when you save and finalize.
A header discount applies a percentage to the whole invoice. It is applied per VAT bucket, and the PDF shows a clean subtotal → discount → reduced-base block so the maths is transparent to your customer.
The provisional number
The editor's meta strip and the PDF preview show the invoice number the document will get — marked "(provisional)". It is computed from your number sequence without consuming a number, so previewing never burns a slot. The Finalize dialog repeats it: "This will be issued as …". If you haven't set up a sequence yet, a default one is created automatically on your first visit to Sales, so the first invoice needs zero configuration. See invoice numbering sequences.
Finalizing locks the document
Finalize runs one atomic pipeline: totals are recomputed, all compliance checks run in a single pass (so you see every problem at once, not one by one), the number is allocated, the issuer and customer details are frozen as snapshots, the VAT notice is generated, the PDF is rendered and stored encrypted with a fingerprint that is re-verified on every download and send.
If validation fails, the error panel maps each issue to the exact editor section or settings page with a jump link — an incomplete sender address, for example, links straight to Settings → Tax. A soft, never-blocking warning appears if your bank details are missing from branding.
After finalizing, the invoice is immutable. Content fixes go through a cancellation or credit note — see credit notes and cancellations.
Your branding on the PDF
The finalized document is a professional A4 PDF: letterhead with your logo, issuer block, invoice metadata, customer block, line-item table, per-VAT-rate summary, the mandatory VAT notice, payment terms, and a footer with your bank details and page numbers. Configure it in Settings → Branding: logo upload (max 2 MB), accent color, footer text, bank details, and reply-to address. Each invoice can be issued in German or English (new drafts default to English).
Send it by email — and know it arrived
On the finalized invoice, click Send. The drawer prefills the customer's email and lets you set To / CC / BCC, subject, and a personal message; the PDF is attached automatically. Replies go to your company's reply-to address.
Every attempt appears in the send-history panel with a plain-language status: Queued, Pending, Sent, Delivered, Bounced ("The address doesn't exist."), Spam ("Marked as spam by the recipient."), or Failed ("Send failed — try again."). Transient failures retry automatically up to three times, bounces and spam complaints notify you, and re-sending creates a new history entry rather than overwriting the old one.
What you can still change after finalizing
Exactly three workflow fields stay editable: payment status (Unpaid, Partially paid, Paid, Overdue — a select on the invoice page), review status, and internal notes. Everything else is locked. Need a near-identical invoice next month? Use Copy — it deep-copies everything into a fresh draft with a new provisional number (internal notes stay private to the original).
Related
- Invoice numbering sequences — gapless numbers, start values, the gap report
- VAT schemes and VIES validation — the 7 VAT treatments and the wrong-VAT guard-rails
- Credit notes and cancellations — fixing a finalized invoice
- Products and the article catalog — auto-fill line items from your catalog