Manual Invoices

Manual invoices provide a way to create an invoice using invoice items and invoice item charges from previously issued invoices for that billing account. When creating a manual invoice, you may manage invoice item details like the description, service start and end dates, and invoice item charge details like price and quantity.

Manual invoices are a useful tool for correcting an invoice when the financial details are not accurate, or to issue credits such as a goodwill credit or to write invoices.

In addition, a manual invoice can include invoice items from more than one invoice posted to the billing account. It can also be entered with negative amounts to create a negative manual invoice that contains detailed invoice line item information. A negative manual invoice is different from a credit adjustment, which only shows a total and does not have line items.

As an alternative to creating adjustments or a manual invoice, you could create a manual charge that is based on an existing invoice item charge. Refer to Manual Charges for more information.

Additional features of manual invoices:

  • When manual invoices are saved as a Draft, you can edit it or preview tax before approving it.

  • Manual invoices do not undo a bill cycle run. Once a bill cycle run has been approved, there is no way to reverse that, even if you process a Reverse manual invoice.

  • A manual invoice may not be created without a previously issued invoice.

  • Manual invoices may not be backdated into a closed bill cycle.

  • If you keep tax items from the original invoice on a manual invoice, only tax processors that have a tax override feature will recognize those charges as tax charges to be added to tax reporting. The tax processors that have a tax override feature are Avalara Standard Tax and One Source.

For manual invoices created after October 10, 2022, from a non-manual invoice, the original invoice item IDs, invoice item charge IDs and service periods (IDs) will persist on all manual invoice items in the chain from the original invoice. Additionally, they will be collected for the charge info records created by the Insert Manual Invoice collector, same as for the original invoice date and the service period start and end dates. This change will not apply to any manual invoice chain where the first manual invoice was created prior to October 10, 2022. The changes are applied in the API.

Examples

An example for creating a manual invoice to correct an invoice could be that a customer states that a price of an invoice item is incorrect. You could create a manual invoice to correct that price. You would complete the following steps to credit and rebill the invoice with the correct price:

  1. Reverse the original invoice to fully credit the invoice. Refer to Reverse Invoice for more information.

  2. Select Create Manual Invoice when viewing the original invoice to initiate an manual invoice populated with the same invoice items as the original invoice.

  3. Edit the unit price of the invoice item.

  4. Approve the manual invoice to rebill with the correct price.

If the financial details are accurate, but the administrative details need to be changed, consider alternative options like regenerating an invoice, which only updates the non-financial information of an invoice PDF. Alternatively, you can reverse the original invoice to credit it and then reissue the original invoice. Reissuing an invoice creates a new manual invoice that duplicates the original invoice’s item charges and uses current administrative information and has an option to recalculate the tax.

An example for creating a negative manual invoice to include invoice items from more than one invoice posted to the billing account with negative amounts, could be that a customer states that their $100 monthly service for XYZ should have ended after the January invoice, but they were invoiced $100 for XYZ in February and March. This happens when a deactivation date is not entered, and the service continues to be billed.

You would complete the following steps to credit the billing account for both months by creating a manual invoice with negative amounts:

  1. Select Create Manual Invoice from the billing account drop-down menu.

  2. Browse for and select the Invoice Items for XYZ from February and March.

  3. Edit the unit price of both invoice items to show a negative amount of -$100 each.

  4. Approve the manual invoice to post a negative invoice for -$200 to the billing account.

 

Refer to the following topics for additional information about creating and working with manual invoices:

 

 

 

Topic updated: 08/2024.