Sending invoices¶
How to email an invoice to the customer, send it again, and deal with a send that is refused.
Only admins can send invoices. Every invoice is emailed when you send it, whether you built it with New Invoice or it came from a rollup. The email goes to the account's billing contact, and a conversation with that customer opens under Comms, so a reply from the customer arrives in your shared inbox.
Send an invoice¶
To send a draft:
- Open the draft invoice and choose Send. The Send invoice dialog opens.
- Check the summary: Invoice, Account, Recipient and Total. A rollup invoice also shows Period through, the last day it covers.
- Change the Subject if you want to. It starts as
Invoice <number> from <your business name>. - Add Commentary (optional, max 500 chars) if you want a personal note in the email. The note is kept on the invoice.
- Choose Send in the dialog.
Lupa shows Invoice sent. The invoice's status changes to sent and the email appears in the customer's conversation under Comms.
If the send fails, nothing changes. If the email cannot be sent, the invoice stays a draft and the dialog says why. An invoice is never marked sent unless the email went out.
The email has no pay link. To let the customer pay online, request a pay link after sending and pass it on yourself. See Online payments.
The due date when you send¶
- If the invoice's due date was set by Lupa, sending moves it to 30 days after the day you send. This applies to rollup drafts that have not been edited, and to invoices created with the Due Date field left empty.
- If someone typed or saved a due date on the invoice, sending keeps that date, even if it has already passed. If that date was later cleared, the invoice is sent with no due date and never turns overdue.
See Creating and editing invoices for how the Due Date field works.
Send an invoice again¶
To send a sent invoice again:
- Open the sent invoice and choose Resend. The Resend invoice dialog opens with the commentary from the last send.
- Change the Subject or Commentary if you want to.
- Choose Resend.
Lupa shows Invoice resent. The new email is added to the same conversation under Comms. The invoice's status and due date do not change.
Resend appears only on an invoice that Lupa has already emailed.
If the dialog shows an error¶
| Message | What to do |
|---|---|
| The account's billing contact has no email address on file. | Add an email address for the account's billing contact under Clients, then send again. The invoice stays a draft. |
| This business has no inbound email address configured, so the invoice cannot be sent. | Your company's email setup is not finished. Contact Lupa. |
| The email provider rejected the send | The invoice was not marked sent. Try again. |
| Communications blocked by tenant config. | Outgoing messages are paused for your business, and the Send button is unavailable. Contact Lupa. |
| This tenant is suspended; outbound communications are frozen. | Your business's account is suspended. Contact Lupa. |
| Commentary is too long (max 500 characters). | Shorten the note. |
If the dialog says lines are not yet priced¶
A line with no unit price shows Needs price on the invoice. Sending turns it into a $0.00 line, and after that nobody can tell a deliberate $0.00 from a line that was never priced. So the dialog warns you first:
- Every line on this invoice is not yet priced. The whole invoice would be sent for $0.00.
- 2 of 5 lines are not yet priced. (with your numbers) Those lines would be billed at $0.00.
To send anyway, tick Invoice the unpriced lines at $0.00 and send, then choose Send. Send stays unavailable until you tick the box.
To price the lines first on an invoice built with New Invoice, choose Cancel, then Edit, enter a Unit Price for each line, choose Save Changes, and send again. A line on a rollup draft takes its price from the visit. See Pricing your work.
On the phone¶
Admins can send a draft from the Invoices tab in the field app. The phone asks you to confirm and shows the amount and the address it will go to. The phone sends the same email as Lupa Dash, without commentary. If the billing contact has no email address, the button reads No email on file and cannot be tapped. The phone has no option to send unpriced lines at $0.00, so it refuses to send an invoice with a line that has no price. Send that invoice from Lupa Dash.