How to create invoices

If your customer is going to pay you in the future for the products and services that you sell, you'll need to create an invoice.

We'll go over how to add your customers and your products and services to your invoice, plus how you can customize and send your invoice. Finally, we'll show you how to create an invoice on your mobile device with the QuickBooks app.

Note that if your customer is paying you at the time of the sale, then you'll want to give them a sales receipt instead.

To start, select New, then Invoice.

Your customer will see this invoice. In case you want to make any changes to your contact info, your company info, or just your customer-facing address, select the Settings icon and then select Change what your customers see. Make the necessary changes and select Done.

Next, fill in who you are sending the invoice to. If you've already added your customers in QuickBooks, select one of them. QuickBooks fills in their info automatically. Select Add new if you need to add a new customer.

You can change the fields your customer sees in this section by selecting the Settings icon and Custom Fields. You can add or remove a separate shipping address, total discount, deposit, custom transaction numbers, and tags.

Select Product or Service to add what you are charging your customer for. If you don't find a product or service that looks right, select Add new to create a new one.

If you've set up the product or service, you'll see the sales description and the price you entered earlier. You can also change these or enter new ones. Add as many products and services as you want.

You can also add fields for SKU or service date in the optional column section in Settings.

Next, you'll see options to offer your customer to pay you online. If you want to change these, select Payment options and toggle any options on or off.

Note that you need to sign up for QuickBooks Payments in order to receive online payments, but you can sign up for that here if you haven't already.

If you've set up sales tax in QuickBooks and this invoice includes taxable products, then you'll see your sales tax here.

You can write a note or add attachments for your customer in these fields.

You can adjust the look of your invoice by selecting the Customize option to change the design, color, and font of your invoice to something that suits your company's design.

If you need to send this invoice to your customer over and over every day, week, month, or year, you can set up a recurring invoice under Make recurring.

Once everything looks just right, you are ready to send your invoice. You have a couple of options. You can email your invoice to your customer, save and close, or share a link to the invoice.

We'll select the option to email your invoice for this example since it's the most common thing to do.

On the left, you can view or edit the subject or the body of the email you're sending, and on the right, you'll see a preview of what your customer will receive.

When you're ready, select Save and close. QuickBooks confirms that the email was sent to your customer, and if you go to your invoices list in QuickBooks, you'll see when your customer has paid your invoice.

You can also create an invoice on the go with the QuickBooks mobile app.

Now you're ready to create and send invoices in QuickBooks.

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