How an invoice moves from open to paid

Every invoice in Vinosoft passes through the same three stages. Knowing which stage an invoice is in tells you what you can still change, whether it is in your books yet, and whether the customer still owes you money.

StageList tabBadge on the invoiceWhat it means

Open

Open

Open

A draft. You can change everything. Nothing is booked yet.

Invoiced

Invoiced

In progress

Issued to the customer. The income is booked and the stock has left the warehouse. You are waiting for the money.

Paid

Paid

Paid

Settled in full. The invoice is closed.

1. Open: preparing the invoice

A new invoice always starts as Open, whether you create it by hand, convert it from an order confirmation or delivery note, or it is generated by the shop or a recurring schedule. See Create an invoice.

While it is open, it is a working draft:

• You can edit addresses, articles, prices and texts freely.
• The articles are only reserved in stock, not yet taken out.
• No income or tax is booked in Finance.
• You can delete it at any time.

You can preview it with Details or download it with PDF as often as you like. Neither of those changes the stage.

2. Invoiced: the bill has gone out

An invoice moves from Open to Invoiced the moment you hand it to the customer. In Vinosoft that means one of two actions:

• Send by email — the invoice is mailed to the customer.
• Print — the invoice is printed.

There is no separate "finalize" button. Sending or printing is issuing. See Send or print an invoice.

At that moment Vinosoft:

• sets the invoice date, if you hadn't set one,
• books the income and the tax in Finance,
• turns the stock reservation into a real stock movement.

From now on the invoice appears in the Invoiced tab, which is your list of receivables.

Two columns help you follow up:

• State — where the payment stands: Open, Partially paid, or the reminder level reached (Friendly reminder, First reminder, Second reminder, Third reminder).
• Maturity — how long ago the invoice was issued. It turns red once the invoice is older than the days in its terms of payment, so overdue invoices stand out.

3. Paid: settled in full

An invoice moves to Paid when the payments registered against it cover its total. You register them with Register payment — on the invoice, or for several invoices at once from the Invoiced tab. See Register a payment.

A payment that covers only part of the total keeps the invoice in Invoiced and sets its State to Partially paid. The next payment that covers the rest moves it to Paid.

Payments can also come in through a payment link your customer pays online (Let a customer pay an invoice online) or through a bank file import. Either way, the invoice only moves once the payment is booked.

Side paths

Not every invoice runs straight from open to paid:

• The customer doesn't pay — send reminders with a dunning run. Each run moves the State one level up. See Send payment reminders (dunning runs).
• The customer returns goods or you overcharged — create a credit note. See Credit an invoice.
• You issued it too early or with a mistake — switch it back to open, or cancel a registered payment. See Correct, reopen or delete an invoice.
• You bill the same thing every month — set up a recurrent invoice that creates a new open invoice on schedule. See Bill automatically with recurrent invoices.