# Sending an invoice and getting paid

> Send an invoice by email with its PDF and a pay link, or mark one you delivered yourself as sent, then follow it to Paid and send reminders while money is owed.

*This article is being updated.*

An invoice stays a draft until you send it. Sending issues it: it takes its number and its dates, and it's ready to be paid. You need a role that can send invoices. To start and fill in a draft, see **Drafting an invoice**.

## Send an invoice

1. Open the draft. Once it has at least one line, **Send** shows at the bottom of the invoice.
2. Choose **Send**, then **Send invoice**.
3. Under **Recipient**, pick who it goes to. For a person, it's their billing email, or their email if no billing email is set. For an organisation, the list starts with its billing contact and its accounts email, then the invoice's contact and its other people. The first one is picked for you.
4. Add a **Message** if you like. It's written above the attached invoice.
5. Choose **Send**.

The dialog says which number the invoice is issued as. The invoice goes as a PDF attachment, and the email has a **View and pay** button that opens its pay page. If the invoice belongs to a payment schedule still waiting for the customer's payment method, the email asks them to **Add a payment method** instead of the pay link, with no PDF attached.

When it's sent, the invoice takes its number and keeps the dates on the draft. A date you picked yourself stays. Otherwise the invoice date is the day it's sent, and the due date follows the **Payment terms** shown on the draft. Its status changes from **Draft** to **Issued**, or straight to **Paid** if its total is zero.

If the customer has no email address on file, the dialog says so. Add one to the customer, or mark the invoice as sent instead.

## Mark as sent

If you delivered the invoice yourself - by post, SMS, by hand or from your own email - choose **Send**, then **Mark as sent**. Under **Sent by**, pick **Email**, **SMS**, **Post** or **Other**, then confirm. The invoice is issued the same way, but Prevarro sends nothing.

## How your customer pays

**View and pay** in the email opens your branded pay page. It shows the invoice and the **Amount due**, and the customer pays there by the methods you've turned on in **Payments → Settings**. Paying online needs your business's **Payments account** to be set up and taking payments. See **Setting up payments - card and bank debit**. If no payment method is turned on, the page reads **Online payment isn't available here. Contact the business to pay.**

If your customer portal shows invoices and the customer (or, for an organisation, one of its people) has been invited to it when the invoice is sent, the PDF also reads **Pay online at** with your portal's address. An invoice sent before that keeps its PDF as it was.

## After it's sent

The invoice's status follows what's paid:

- **Partial** - some of it has been paid.
- **Paid** - it's paid in full.

An **Overdue** badge shows once the due date has passed with money still owed.

While money is still owed, choose **Send**, then **Send reminder** to email the customer a reminder. You can add a message, which goes above the reminder's own text.

**Resend invoice** sends the invoice again. **Mark as sent** stays on an issued invoice until something has sent it.

## Text it or show a QR code

While money is still owed, **Send** also offers **Text it** and **Show QR code**, and so does the invoice's row menu on the list. **Text it** shows while your business's texting is on: it texts the customer a link to the pay page, to the mobile of the person the invoice's email goes to. If there's no mobile on file, or they've opted out of texts, it says so and doesn't send. **Show QR code** puts a code on your screen with the amount due, for the customer to scan with their phone camera and pay. Choose **Done** when they've scanned it; the code isn't kept.

Each text and each code makes a new link, and the link sent before it stops working. The invoice's **Activity** lists **Sent by text** and **Shown as QR code**, never the link. A text sent before any email marks the invoice as sent by SMS.

**Preview** opens the invoice's PDF, and **Download PDF** saves it.