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Free text invoices

A Free text invoice bills a customer directly against one or more General Ledger accounts, without going through a sales order or an item. Use it for anything that isn't a stocked or catalogued item - a one-off service charge, a consulting fee, a miscellaneous adjustment - where what you're billing for is a ledger account and a description, not an item number.

Creating a Free text invoice​

Navigate to Accounts receivable > Free text invoices and select New Invoice.

On the General tab, fill in:

  • Customer: The customer being billed. Selecting a customer pre-fills the Payment Term, Payment Schedule, Payment Method, Cash Discount, Tax Group, and Currency from the customer's own record, wherever the customer has one configured.
  • Invoice Date / Due Date: The invoice's date and when payment is due.
  • Currency: The currency the invoice is raised in.
  • Tax Group: The customer's tax profile for this invoice - used together with each line's own Item Tax Group to determine which taxes apply, the same as on a sales tax group elsewhere in the module.

The Payment Information section collects Payment Term, Payment Schedule, Payment Method, and Cash Discount - all optional, and all pre-filled from the customer if available.

The Invoice Totals section (Sub Total, Total Tax Amount, Total Amount) is read-only and recalculates as lines are added.

Adding invoice lines​

Switch to the Invoice Lines tab and select Add Line. Each line is posted straight to a ledger account rather than an item, and defines:

  • Main Account: The GL account the line amount is posted to.
  • Description: Free text describing what the line is for.
  • Quantity and Unit Price: Multiplied together, less any discount, to produce the Net Amount.

Selecting a line opens its Line details, with three tabs:

  • General: The same Main Account, Description, Quantity, Unit Price, and Net Amount fields shown in the grid.
  • Setup: Tax Group and Item Tax Group for this line - defaults to the invoice header's Tax Group but can be overridden per line.
  • Financial Dimensions: One field per financial dimension segment, resolved from the line's selected Main Account. Because a Free text invoice posts directly to a ledger account with no customer or vendor context to inherit defaults from, dimension values are entered here, on the line, rather than defaulted from the customer.
Dimensions follow the account

Which dimension segments appear on a line depends on its Main Account - the same account-structure resolution used everywhere else in the General Ledger (see Financial dimensions). Changing a line's Main Account after entering dimension values can change which segments are shown.

Select Delete Line to remove the currently selected line, or Posted sales tax to review the tax already calculated for it.

Posting​

Select Post and confirm. Posting creates the customer-facing invoice and its General Ledger voucher in one step, moves the invoice's status to Invoiced, and cannot be undone - the invoice's General tab, Invoice Lines, and Payment Information all become read-only afterwards. A Payment Schedule tab also becomes available once the invoice has been saved, showing how the total is broken into installments if a Payment Schedule was assigned.

Posting can trigger credit limit enforcement

If posting this invoice would push the customer over their configured credit limit, what happens next depends on the module's Credit limit message type setting: Error aborts the posting outright and reports the customer's balance, limit, and the excess amount; Warning lets the posting proceed and instead notifies the user afterwards that the limit was exceeded. See Credit limit enforcement for the full evaluation logic.

After posting​

A posted invoice's detail page exposes further actions:

  • Print: Generates a PDF of the invoice.
  • Open Transactions: Shows this invoice among the customer's other unsettled transactions.
  • New Payment Journal: Starts a payment journal pre-scoped to settling this invoice.
  • Accounting Distributions / Voucher Transactions: Show how the invoice's amount was distributed and the actual General Ledger entries its voucher created.
  • Posted Sales Tax: Shows the tax transactions posted for the invoice as a whole.

An invoice's status moves from Draft through Posting to Invoiced, and finally Closed once fully settled.

Viewing Free text invoices​

The Free text invoices list shows every invoice with its Invoice Number, Customer, Due Date, Currency, Tax, Total Amount, Status, and Posted Date. Use the Date filter to restrict the list to a date range. Selecting an unposted invoice and choosing Post from the list toolbar posts it without opening its detail page.

  • Customer transactions: Every posted Free text invoice also appears here, alongside the customer's sales invoices, returns, and payments.