Invoices

The Invoices screen is where you bill customers and keep track of who owes you what. It shows every invoice for your workspace, the balances outstanding, and the payments recorded against each one. This guide walks through reading the list, opening an invoice, recording a payment, getting the PDF, and collecting payment online.

The balances at a glance

The top of the screen is a two-card summary of where your billing stands:

• Outstanding Balance — the total still unpaid across your open invoices, including partially paid ones.
• Overdue — the part of that balance whose due date has already passed and that has not been paid.

Read the two together to see how much is on the books and how much of it is late.

The invoice list

Below the summary is the table of invoices. Each row is one invoice with:

• Invoice — the invoice number and the customer it is for.
• Job — the job the invoice is tied to.
• Issued — the date the invoice was issued.
• Due — the date payment is due.
• Total — the invoice amount.
• Status — where the invoice stands: Paid, Partial, Unpaid, or Overdue. The status is shown as a labelled badge, so it reads the same whether or not you can distinguish the colors.
• Attachment — whether a backup file is attached.
• Actions — a View link through to the full invoice.

By default the list shows your active invoices. Use Show Archived to bring archived invoices into view, and Hide Archived to go back. Archived invoices stay preserved for history; archiving just keeps them out of the working list.

Reading an invoice

Open an invoice from its View link. The detail screen shows:

• Invoice Summary — the number, dates, customer, and job.
• Attachment — the backup file, if one was uploaded, and the invoice notes.
• The totals: Invoice Amount, Paid, Outstanding, and the Status badge.
• Payments — every payment recorded against the invoice.

From the header you can Download PDF (covered below) or go Back to the list.

Creating an invoice

Choose Create Invoice to start a new one. The form is grouped into sections:

• Invoice Information — the Job the invoice is for (optional — leave it unset for work that is not tracked as a job), the Invoice Number (pre-filled for you, and editable if you need a different one), the Issue Date, and the Due Date.
• Customer — the customer’s name, email, phone, and address, which is what prints on the document your customer receives.
• Line Items — the body of the invoice. Each line has a description, a quantity, and a price. Add a line per item of work or material you are billing. Below the lines you can set an optional discount — either a percentage or a flat amount — and an optional tax rate.
• Attachment — an optional backup file (PDF, PNG, JPG, WEBP, or HEIC, up to 5 MB).
• Notes — Customer Notes print on the invoice the customer sees; Internal Notes stay inside QELM for your own team.

There is no Amount field. The subtotal, the discount, the tax, and the Total are worked out from the line items, and the total is computed on the server — so what the customer is billed always matches the lines you entered. Choose Save Invoice to record it. The new invoice then appears in the list with an Unpaid status until a payment is recorded against it.

Recording a payment

On an invoice’s detail screen, use Add Payment to record money received. Enter the Date and Amount, and optionally the Method and a Reference. Once saved, the payment shows up in the Payments list, the Paid and Outstanding totals recalculate, and the status moves toward Partial or Paid as the balance comes down.

Recording payments here is for money you have already collected (a check, cash, or a card charge taken elsewhere). To collect a card payment online, use the payment link below.

Downloading the PDF

Download PDF on the detail screen opens a clean, printable PDF of the invoice — the same document your customer would receive. Use it to print, save, or email the invoice. The PDF carries your workspace’s logo and details.

When the invoice bills change orders

If the invoice includes money from change orders, the PDF is a single file containing the whole packet: the invoice first, then each signed change order it bills, one after another. That way the paperwork justifying the total travels with the total. The same packet is what goes out when the invoice is emailed, so the customer never has to ask what the extra work was or whether they agreed to it. Change orders themselves are created on the job — see Jobs.

Collecting payment online

QELM can take a card payment from your customer directly. When online payments are enabled for your workspace, an invoice has a payment link you can share with the customer. They open it, see the amount due, and pay by card on a secure page — no account needed. When the payment clears, it is recorded against the invoice automatically and the balance updates.

If you do not see a payment link, online payments have not been set up for your workspace yet; record payments manually with Add Payment in the meantime.

Archiving

When an invoice is finished with, Archive moves it out of the active list while keeping it preserved for your records. An archived invoice can be restored at any time. Archiving never deletes anything — it just tidies the working view.

A note on what you see

The Invoices screen shows only your own workspace’s invoices, and the figures reflect what your team has entered — the invoices you have issued and the payments you have recorded. If the list looks empty, it usually just means nothing has been billed yet; it fills in as you create invoices. For how a job flows through QELM in the first place, see the Guides overview.