Each invoice contains invoice items, line items with a billable amount or credit associated with each one. All invoice items are associated with a case note, and case notes are marked as invoiced or not depending on whether they have an active invoice item in an invoice yet. An invoice item may contain more than one case note if case notes are combined into a line item. The "+" button next to an invoice item will pop out a list of what case notes make up the item. Invoice items may also be added directly to an invoice without creating a case note first, to add in any additional charges or credits beyond the existing case activities. When an extra invoice item is added, a new case note is automatically created to correspond to the new invoice item. If a retainer is entered for a case, that will show up as a credit if it not already been credited to an invoice for the current case.

To start a new invoice for the current case, simply click 'New Invoice' in the popup menu or navigation page. The invoice items will automatically be populated with any non-invoiced case notes for the current case that have a billable value. In addition, any retainer for the case that is not already in an invoice will be included as a credit.

The check boxes in the 'Include' column control whether or not a particular invoice item will be included in this invoice or not. There are always three blank invoice items at the bottom of the list so you may enter any additional items not from case notes. The total hours and amount at the bottom of the list are automatically updated whenever an amount or number of hours is changed.

The invoice status indicates whether an invoice has been paid, is pending, or is overdue.

The 'Bill To:' menu lists the possible billing parties, the available contacts for the case, going through the client and all contact types, filling in organization and contact names where found.

The name and address from the billable party will show up on an invoice template, and a billable party is necessary to generate an outstanding balance on later invoices.

To add an extra line item to the invoice by hand, check the 'Include' box for a blank item, and enter the name and amount for the item. The item name field will pop up suggestions of existing item names to autofill, to assure that activity names remain consistent. Hourly rate and hours may be entered if applicable. The amount will be autocalculated from hours and rate if they are available.

Your new invoice will save when you go to another page, unless you click the 'Cancel' button. The 'Save' button saves your invoice and returns to the invoice editing page. Your browser's back button also backs out without saving.

To get an invoice list, click 'List Invoices' in the popup menu or navigation page, or click the button 'List Invoices' on the invoice page.

To edit an existing invoice, click the 'Edit' link from an invoice list, or on the invoice page, select an invoice from the menu in the lower right and click 'View Invoice:'. If you have the privilege you may modify the invoice and add or remove invoice items.

By default, all invoice items appear ordered by the date of the case note they are for. Sometimes, a different order may be needed, so items can be reordered by dragging them to the desired place in the invoice item list. Just grab an item with the mouse, near but not in the date and Include check box, and drag it to where it will go. This new item order will be saved when the invoice is saved.

The '+' button for each invoice item opens a list of the case note or notes that account for this line item. The '+' button at the top of the list opens all the case note lists for all items at once.

When case notes are visible, they may be dragged and dropped into other invoice items to create combined items.

The blue '^' up arrows will take a note from an item's list and put it back in it's own line item by itself, basically undoing the drag and drop to combine notes. Case notes may be combined only if they have the same hourly rate, or all have no hourly rate. If notes of different acitvity names are combined, the invoice item will be titled for the original note from before combining. In the Admin Preferences section, there is a setting 'Combine Notes of same date and activity for invoicing', which if checked will cause notes with the same date and activity to be automatically combined into one line item when a new invoice is being created, if those notes were not already in another invoice. The feature can be turned on or off only by the admin user.

Note that there are two different mouse drag functions in the invoice item list. Grabbing the item (the lighter blue part) will move it up or down the item list. Grabbing a case note inside an item (the darker blue part when the item is expanded) will move the note to combine it with a different item.

If, for an invoice, there are previous invoices billable to the same party that are marked Unpaid, an outstanding balance exists. This will be displayed in the invoice editor like this:

The outstanding balance is automatically included in the invoice total. If an invoice document is generated, it will reflect the outstanding balance as of the time of document generation. For invoice document templates, there is a special repeat designation 'Outstanding' to aid in creating itemized outstanding balances on invoice printouts.

Partial payments may be recorded and applied to outstanding balances. If the Invoice Status field has an option containing the word 'Partial', and there is a custom field named 'partialamount' or 'amountpaid', the amount in that field will be applied to the outstanding balance if the status 'Partial...' is chosen.

The 'Export' button on the edit invoice page will generate and download an Excel compatible spreadsheet file. Below is the same invoice as it appears in Excel after the export file has been downloaded and opened.

This document format is not template based, and the Excel export is available as is.

The invoice search page can be reached through the link 'Find Invoices' in the 'Invoices' section of the navigation page.

The results of your search will be an invoice list as shown below. It has all the same features as the case invoice list page.