Invoices

Invoices allow you to bill a Client for your products and/or services, and help you keep track of your income. Every invoice paid means more revenue coming into your business. Create and send professional invoices to your customers in seconds. Once you’ve entered the client and tax information, you’ll have a range of actions at your fingertips – from saving a draft, to sending the invoice to the client via email, to printing a PDF hard copy.

Overview

The life of an invoice in Sereni system is made up of a number of stages:

  • Draft/Hidden: When you’ve created an invoice, but have not yet sent it.

  • Sent: You’ve sent the invoice, but the client has not yet paid.

  • Viewed: The client has logged in and viewed the invoice.

  • Partial: The invoice has been partially paid.

  • Paid: Congratulations! The client has paid the full invoice amount.

  • Not Paid: The invoice remains unpaid.

  • Overdue: The invoice has passed its due date.

Invoices list

On the invoices list page you’ll see a table with the columns below;

  • Reference: The number of the invoice

  • Customer: The name of the customer

  • Status: The current status of the invoice (Draft, Sent, Viewed, Partial, Paid, Not Paid, Overdue)

  • Due Date: The date the payment is due

  • Amount: The total amount of the invoice

  • Balance: The amount owed by the customer

Create Invoice

To create a new invoice, go to the Invoices tab on the main sidebar, and click on New Invoice button. This will open a modal offering a series of text and numerical inputs.

Note that each new invoice you create will be automatically numbered in chronological order. This will ensure your records are kept logical and organized. (You have the option to change the invoice number manually in Settings - Invoice Settings).

The form contains:

  • Customer: Select from a list of customers

  • Project: Whether this invoice is attached to a project.

  • Late Fee: The percentage or amount to be applied if the invoice is not paid on time.

  • Due Date: The invoice due date

  • Recurring: Make this invoice recur or generate a one time invoice.

  • Show shipping: If enabled, a shipping address will show on invoice page.

Tip

You can create a new client while creating a new invoice. Simply click on new client link, situated next to customer field. A pop-up modal will open, enabling you to complete the new client’s details. Then continue creating the invoice for this new client.

  • Notes: Want to enter information to appear as a footer on the invoice? Enter it here. The text will appear at the bottom of the invoice.

Once you’ve completed creating your invoice, click on Save Button and you’ll be redirected to the invoice page where you can enter your products/services to bill your clients.

  • Item/Product: This is the name of the item you are billing for.

  • Description: Add more information about the item. This will help the customer better understand the job completed, and is also useful for your own reference.

  • Unit Price: The amount you charge per unit of items. For example, let’s say your item is “1 hour consulting”, and you charge $80 for an hour of consulting – that is, for 1 item unit. Then you’ll enter 80 in the Unit Price field.

  • Quantity: The number of units being charged. Continuing the above example, let’s say you need to charge for 3 hours of consulting, enter the number 3 in the Quantity field.

  • Tax Rate: Note: To apply tax to the line item, click on the arrow at the right side of the Tax field and select the relevant tax from the drop-down list.

  • Discount: This is the discount percentage you need to apply for the particular line item.

Click on Save button to save the item.

Beneath and to the right of the line item section, you’ll find the Totals section:

  • Payable: This is the amount due before other figures are taken into calculation, such as Tax etc.

  • Payment Made: The amount paid to date, including partial payments.

  • Balance: The final balance owed to you, after taxes, payments have been deducted from the charged amount.

Invoice Page

  • Make Visible: Use this button to hide/show invoice to client.

  • Pay: Click this button to make payment to an Invoice.

  • Send: Email the invoice directly to the email address specified for the client.

  • More button: Access additional invoice options including updating, deleting invoice.

  • Mark Sent: When you mark an invoice as sent, only then is the invoice viewable to the client in the client portal, and the client balance is updated to reflect the invoice amount.

  • Delete: Click here to delete the invoice. It will be deleted and removed from the Invoices list page.

  • PDF: Download a PDF version of the invoice.

Viewed Notification

Know when an invoice is viewed, becomes due, or gets paid, so you can take the right actions to manage your cash flow. Set up invoice reminders to automatically email your customers when payment is due.

Auto Reminders

Save yourself the time and hassle and automate your client communications! An invoice reminder is an automatic email message to remind your customer that an invoice is coming due or that it is overdue. This is a great way to stay on top of reminding your customers that you should be getting paid soon.

You can have Sereni send reminders that invoices will be due to be paid soon, and we call these Upcoming Reminders. You can also have Sereni send reminders that invoices are overdue, and we call these Overdue Reminders.

Upcoming Reminders

To send invoice reminders before the due date, modify Settings > Invoice Settings > Upcoming reminders. Default is 3 days

  • Change to the number of days you want a reminder to be sent before the due date.

  • Example; Setting it to 2 days will send invoice reminders 2 days before invoice overdue date.

Overdue Reminders

To enable Invoice Overdue Reminders, go to Settings > Invoice Settings > Auto remind invoices and enable it.

Once you’ve got these reminders set up, you don’t have to do anything else; Sereni will continue to send these reminders on the schedule you set until the end of time (or until you get paid, whichever comes first).

Tip

Modify the number of days to send each invoice reminder in Settings - Invoice Settings section. You may also set late fee to apply on third reminder.

Recurring Invoice

As a busy freelancer, you work for a variety of clients. Some jobs are one-off, but others are ongoing, whether on a weekly, monthly or other basis. Sereni recurring invoice feature automatically creates invoices for ongoing jobs, and sends the current invoice to the client on a regular, pre-defined basis. For each recurring job, you only need to set up the procedure once.

To make a invoice recur, edit the invoice and select the Recurring Invoice dropdown. You can set it to recur every week, month, quarter, six months and yearly. Select the start date and a date when the invoice should stop recurring (End Date).

Tip

To stop a recurring invoice, edit the invoice and change Recurring invoice field to No.

Tip

Reminders are sent based on the due date of the invoice.

Tip

To disable/enable sending invoices immediately they recur, go to Settings - Invoice Settings and disable/enable Email on Recur checkbox..