This section describes the process of issuing final balance invoice to your client. If you wish to issue a deposit invoice for pre-payment amounts owed to you by your client, see Generating Client Deposit Invoices instead. Deposits paid to you will be reflected in the balance invoices described here.

When you are managing a for-profit FF&E project or a fee-based project management project, this function is used to print an invoice to your client for either the FF&E "sell" price or for your fee based on the item cost. The type of billing set on the order is what determines the kind of billing that occurs (a fee % should be entered on a project before orders are created, and ideally, before specifications are created, since it is automatically copied to them at that time). You can override the fee % on each order item if needed.

A third kind of invoicing, for a fixed purchasing management fee (that is, one that is not based on an actively recalculated percentage of each item's cost) can also be handled by the system, using a special purchase order. Understanding how to do this is part of the initial system billing setup, and it is covered as part of the section "Working with Markups, Taxes, Freight and Fees" in the Design Module's "How to..." section. You should note that fixed fee (or other kind of invoicing based on a percent of completion) can usually be handled directly on your accounting system.

In addition to the usual scope for what items to invoice, the items can also be filtered based on their shipping status, with the default being "shipped" (as opposed to either "issued" or "delivered") and on the issue date of the order.

If the scope of invoices to print includes more than one project or client, FF&EZ will create separate invoices as needed for each. You can review invoices using the Preview/Draft button.

Before using this function, be sure to review the general description of the Processing Tools screen, which covers the most common fields and options that you may see.

Since invoicing depends on the status of each order item, specifically whether it has been issued (whole order), shipped and/or received, you should review the functions on the Expediting List screen so that you know how to update these status fields to make order items eligible for invoicing.

Important: In order for a freight charge to appear on a re-sale balance invoice, either 1) the order must have been reconciled with Processing> Enter/Reconcile Vendor Final Invoices to verify final freight changes or 2) a separate additional freight charge must be entered as a "special item type" on the order, along with the vendor invoice number.

To issue one or more invoices, follow this procedure:

1. On the Orders List or Expediting screen, move to the first order that you want to process or if appropriate, create a query to display only orders meeting specific conditions (queries are not commonly needed since the standard processing scope options usually provide enough control over what will be printed).
2. Click on the Processing button to display the Processing Setup screen.
3. Select Print Client Balance Invoices.
4. Select an appropriate scope of order items to process. If you were on the first eligible order, "this order only" will be the default scope. However, if you were on an order for which all items have been invoiced, that scope will be disabled since these cannot be processed.
5. Normally this function will also ignore items that have not been shipped, however you can override that with the "Invoice only items that have been" option to include eligible orders that have been issued (but not shipped) or only orders that have been delivered.
6. If the invoice scope includes items that have no billable amount, they will normally be included so that they are marked as "processed." However, you can control whether they are processed and whether they physically appear on the invoices using the "Process items with no billing amount?" and "Print on invoice?" options.
7. Enter any comment text needed for the items that will be processed. Comments are short notes that are specific to the invoices about to be printed, not general boilerplate. Comment text will be saved until you close the Orders List screen or change it manually.
8. If you have a custom invoice format, it will be selected automatically, but you can temporarily select the "standard" format if desired.
9. If you are generating an invoice as a backup for an invoice you plan to issue from your own accounting system, you may wish to select the "Invoicing backup format" option to adjust the labeling on the document.
10. If you have entered permanent boilerplate text for the invoice's "Notes" section, you need do nothing. If you need to add or edit the text, you can do so with the Edit "Note" Boilerplate button. Keep in mind that boilerplate text is saved and will apply to all future invoices, so use the "Comment" field instead for specific, temporary instructions to the payer.
11. If you need to, select an appropriate printer with Print Setup. Note that you cannot change the orientation or margins for any report formats, because they are integrated with what are often very tight layouts. If you have a "PDF" type of printer and select it, keep in mind that each invoice is a separate report, so you will be prompted for a PDF file name for each invoice.
12. (Optional) Select Preview/Draft preview invoices and print draft versions individually. Please note that the format will have the word "DRAFT" embedded in it when you use this option.
13. Select Print Final or click the [>PDF] button to send the final invoices to the selected destination.
14. If you performed Step 13, the system will prompt you to confirm that the documents printed correctly. If they did and you want to finalize the processing of the affected order items, answer "Yes" and the system will mark those items the invoice # on which the item was billed. If you don't, you will return to the Orders List and no data will have been changed. Do not distribute documents that were not marked as final!

You can review all invoices on the Invoices List screen, as well as reprint selected invoices there and, if eligible, void invoices that were incorrect.