Zoho FSM | Creating Invoices

Creating Invoices

To handle invoicing, and payments, Zoho FSM has built-in integration with Zoho Invoice. This will allow you to conveniently and quickly create invoices for your work orders and offer a secure way to your contacts to make payments. This means your billing times are greatly reduced, resulting in immediate payments and realization of revenue.


 Available in Editions: All Editions

Work Order-level Invoicing

In Zoho FSM, invoices can be created at the work order-level for each of the service line items in a work order.

 

Work order-level invoicing will facilitate the following:

  1. Ability to generate an invoice for an individual service line item of a work order or for multiple service line items of a work order
  2. Ability to generate an invoice for service line items from different appointments
  3. Invoices can be created for the service line items even without creating appointments for them
  4. All invoices for a work order can be seen and managed from a single place

Characteristics of Work Order-Level Invoicing

  1. An invoice can be generated for a service line item irrespective of the status (Open, In progress, Completed) associated with it
  2. Irrespective of the invoice status of a work order, it can be marked as Completed and subsequently Closed after all the appointments associated with it have been completed.



  3. The Service line items in a work order will have the following statuses that correspond to the work status of the service line item.
    - Open
    - In progress
    - Completed

    The Service line items in a work order will also have the following statuses that correspond to the billing status of the service line item.
    Not yet Invoiced: No invoice has been created for the service line item
    - Invoiced: An invoice has been created for the service line item
    - Void: The billing status of the work order has been marked as Void.
    Non Billable: The billing status of the work order has been marked as Non Billable.



    While creating an invoice, you can filter the service line items using its billing status.



  4. The Invoices created for the service line items will have the same status as the ones used in Invoice/Books (Draft, Sent, Pending Approval, Approved, Rejected, Pending, Partially Paid, Paid, Overdue, Void, Write Off, Signed, Closed).



  5. The Work Orders will have a Billing Status that will be determined based on the invoices created for the service line items in the work order.
    Not Yet Invoiced: When no invoice has been created for any of the service line items of the work order
    - Partially Invoiced: When at least one of the service line items of the work order is invoiced
    - Invoiced: When all the service line items of the work order have been invoiced.
    - Partially Paid: When all the service line items are invoiced and at least one of the invoices has been paid.
    - Paid: When all the invoices created for the service line items of the work order have been paid.

    Apart from the statuses mentioned above, work orders can also have the billing status Non Billable, or Void.




Create an Invoice

Permission Required: Create of Invoices
- Find out the Edition-specific limits for Invoices.

To create an invoice:
  1. Select Invoices from the Billing menu and click Create. Choose the work order for whose service line items you want to create the invoice.
    Or
    Select the Work Orders module from the Work Order Management menu and click the work order for whose service line items you want to create the invoice. Go to the Invoices tab and click Create Invoice.
  2. Select the service line items you want to create the invoice for and click Next.
    If an invoice has been generated for a service line item, then that service line item cannot be selected.



  3. Provide the necessary details and click Generate Invoice.
    In the Sales person dropdown, the sales persons added in Zoho Books/Invoice will be listed under Sales Persons and all active Zoho FSM users will be listed under FSM Resource. The Payment Terms set as default for a customer in Zoho Books/Invoice will be populated here.



    The payment gateways configured in Zoho Books/Invoice will be listed here, and all of them will be selected by default. You may deselect any gateway if needed. The selected payment gateways will be presented as options to the customer when making a payment. The Share invoice with dropdown will list all contact persons linked to the customer in the work order. The one designated as the Primary Contact in Zoho Books/Invoice will be selected by default. The email address of the contact chosen in the Share invoice with dropdown will be automatically populated in the To field of the Send Invoice overlay.



    The invoice will be created with the status Draft.

  4. Click the invoice you want to send. Click Send Invoice.
    You can also record the payment. Click Open In ZohoInvoice to view the invoice in Zoho Invoice. The billing address of the work order will be used here.



  5. Click Send to dispatch the email.
    By default, the checkbox for Add Invoice PDF will be selected. If you do not wish to include the invoice PDF in the email, deselect it. To rename the invoice PDF, click on its name and enter a new value. Click on Attachments to add any other files that you want to send in the invoice email. You can add up to three files each with a maximum size of 3 MB.
    In the To field, you can use one of the following email addresses. Please note that all these email addresses will be fetched from your integrated finance organization.
    - Contact email address
    - Company email address
    - Email addresses of the Company's Contacts
    In the Cc and Bcc fields, along with the email addresses available in the To field, all active confirmed users will also be listed. To include any other email address, just type in the value and press Enter. In each of these fields, you can include a maximum of five email addresses.


Add Salespersons

To add a salesperson in Zoho Books/Invoice:
  1. In the Create/Edit Invoice page, click Manage Salespersons in the Salesperson field.



  2. In the Manage Salespersons popup, click New Salesperson.
    Click Save and Select to add the newly created salesperson to the invoice.


Set Default Payment Terms

To set a default payment term in Zoho Books/Invoice:
  1. In Zoho Books/Invoice, select the Customers menu from the left-hand side.



  2. Click a customer and Edit it.
  3. In the Payment Terms field, click Configure Terms.



  4. Hover over the payment term and click Mark as Default and click Save.



  5. Click Save.


Add Payment Gateways 

To configure the payment gateways, in Zoho FSM, navigate to Setup > Billing > Billing Setup and select the Payment Gateways tab. Click on Configure in Zoho Books/Invoice. You will be taken to the Online Payments screen in Zoho Books/Invoice. Here you can configure the required payments gateways.

Set Primary Contact Person

To designate a contact person as the primary of a customer:
  1. In Zoho Books/Invoice, select the Customers menu from the left-hand side.
  2. Click a customer.
  3. Hover over a contact person and click on the Gear [] icon. Select Mark as Primary.

Edit an Invoice 

Info
- Permission Required: Edit of Invoices
  1. In an invoice, you can edit the fields in the Invoice Summary section, Custom Fields section, the payment gateway details and the values in the Share invoice with field.
  2. If the invoice is in any status other than Draft, then you will have to provide a Reason to edit it.
  3. An invoice in the Void status cannot be edited.
To edit an invoice:
  1. Select Invoices from the Billing menu.
    Or
    Select the Work Orders module from the Work Order Management menu and click the work order whose invoice you want to edit. Go to the Invoices tab.
  2. Either
    Hover over a invoice and click on the Edit [] icon.



    Or

    Click on the invoice you want to edit and select Edit from the Download dropdown.



  3. Make the necessary changes and click Save.


Besides being able to create invoices for a work order, you can also link an invoice to a work order. If you have already created invoices directly in Zoho Books or Zoho Invoice and now wish to associate them with a work order in Zoho FSM, you can easily do so using the Link Invoice feature.
 
To link an invoice to a work order:
  1. Select the Work Orders module from the Work Order Management menu and click the work order to which you want to link the invoice.
  2. Select the Invoices tab and click Link Invoice.



  3. In the Link Invoice with Work Order popup, either select an Invoice Number or enter the Invoice ID and click Link.



    You can obtain the Invoice ID using the List Invoices API of Zoho Books/Invoice.
Info
Note:
  1. The linked invoice will be listed under the Invoices tab with the same status as in Zoho Books/Invoice.
  2. All the service line items in the work order with the billing status Not yet Invoiced will be linked to this invoice. The status of these service line items will change to Invoiced.
  3. The Billing Status of the work order will change according to the statuses of the invoices in the work order.
  4. If you attempt to link an invoice to a work order where all the service line items have the billing status as Invoiced, then you will encounter the error message "Work Order has already been invoiced".

Make a Payment

You can record the details of the payment made for an invoice.
  1. Select the Invoices module from the Work Order Management menu and click the invoice you want to record the payment for.
  2. Click Record Payment.



  3. Click Record Payment.
    Any custom field added to the Payments Received form in Zoho Books/Invoice will also be listed under the Custom Fields section.



    The status of the invoice changes to Paid. The reference number entered here will be updated in the corresponding invoice record in Books/Invoice.


Using Invoice Credits 

Any excess amount paid by the customer (i.e. the amount that is not used to record payment for the invoices) will be available as invoice credits in Zoho FSM. These can be used later while recording invoice payment.
 
In Zoho Books/Invoice, record the excess payment made by the customer. To do so:
  1. Navigate to Sales > Payments Received and click New.
  2. In the Customer Name field, select the customer for whom you want to record the excess payment and in the Amount Received field, enter the amount. Click Save.
    If there unpaid invoices present for this customer, a popover (Would you like this amount to be reflected in the Payment field?) will be shown. Click No for this amount to be considered as an excess payment.



  3. Click Continue to Save.


This excess payment will be available as credits when you try to record payment for an invoice for this customer. To use the credits in Zoho FSM:
  1. Select the Invoices module from the Work Order Management menu and click the invoice you want to record the payment for.
  2. Click Apply Now in the Available Credits section displayed on top.



  3. Enter the amount you want to use from the credits and click Apply Credits.


You can either use the credits to record the payment of the full invoice amount or a part of the invoice amount. After you use the credits to record the payment of only a part of the invoice amount, you can proceed to record the payment of the remaining amount.

Invoice Actions

The following options are available for an invoice under more options [  ].
Download: You can download the invoice as a PDF
Print: You can print an invoice
Mark as Sent: When you email the invoice to the customer, the status of the invoice changes from Draft to Sent. If need be, you can mark the invoice as sent without sending the invoice to the customer. This option will be only available if the invoice is in the Draft state.

  1. The maximum number of invoices that can be created for a work order will depend on your FSM edition. For a work order, you can create as many invoices as the service line items allowed for a work order.
  2. Whether created in web or mobile app, the invoices will be automatically synced with your Books/Invoice account.
  3. From the work order module, you will be able to see the various pre-defined work order views related to invoicing.