Question

Sending PDF invoice from QuickBooks Self Employed

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
April 3, 2019
5 replies
0 views

Hello!

I've just started up with Quick Books Self-Employed and am finding the invoicing process a little inflexible. From what I can tell, using the "Send invoice" functionality sends an email the customer which contains a link they have to click. When using this on a phone, the customer is then sent to the QB website where there is yet another link to click in order to open the full invoice. This isn't a great customer experience! Also, the email arrives in the (phone) inbox with a sub-heading of "QB Self-Employed Welcome Email" which isn't ideal - anyone know if I can change this somewhere?

Because of all this, I decided that I'd rather download the PDF myself and email it to the customer - painful for me, but less annoying for customer. But now I've realised that there is some workflow which means I can't mark the invoice as paid if it hasn't been sent from QB!

Being a little cynical, I guess I'm getting what I paid for and no doubt there is better functionality in a more expensive version of QB, but I was hoping someone could confirm my understanding above before I give up and look for an alternative! Many thanks.

Jo

QuickBooks Self-Employed

R

RaymondJayO

Hello there, @TBW1,

The program is a cloud-based system and we value data security thus it requires your customer to click many links to open the full invoice. This is only happening when using QuickBooks Self-Employed (QBSE) on the phone.

If you're using QBSE on the browser, the full invoice will automatically pops-up when your customer clicks View Invoice. Please see the screenshot below to serve as your visual guide.

Please know that I'm listening to your comments about the sub-heading of "QB Self-Employed Welcome Email" when your customer received the invoice email. There's no currently an option to change the sub-heading name.

If you need to mark the invoice as paid even it hasn't been sent from the account, it's currently unavailable. Yes, you're correct in downloading it as a PDF and directly email it to the customer as an alternative.

Since you want a better functionality, you might want to check the features and prices of our online versions through this link: Compare Self-Employed and Online Versions.

If you find the online version greater benefits, you can watch these instructional videos to help you get started through this link: Getting Started.

This will help improve your experience not to give up QuickBooks, @TBW1. If you need anything else, please drop a comment below. I'm always here to help.

T

TBW1Author

Thanks for your speedy response @RaymondJayO , much appreciated.

Is there any way for me to get around the issue that an invoice can't be marked as paid if it wasn't sent through QB? Because if so, I can live with downloading the invoice PDF and emailing it separately to my customer.

Alternatively, I could probably live with the customer having to make all the clicks if it weren't for the sub-heading, which you've mentioned is a known issue - do you know if that's something that will be resolved? I imagine the vast majority of my customers check their email on their phone and this really does look unprofessional.

Thanks for your support - I find the banking/expense functionality brilliant, but the invoicing part is equally important to me and the experience for my customers just isn't what I had hoped for.

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Rasa-LilaM

Thanks for the quick response, TBW1.

Allow me to step in for a moment and share some additional information about your invoice concern.

As mentioned by my colleague, the option to automatically mark the invoice as paid without sending it via QBSE is currently unavailable. I still suggest downloading the transaction to PDF and manually sending it to your customers.

Right now, we don’t have a defined time frame for when this will be available. Rest assured, I’ll let you know any updates here in the Community.

You can also visit the QuickBooks Blog site to see what’s new and coming about the product. This page covers a wide range of topics that will help your business prosper.

The information I provided should point you in the right direction. Reach out to me if you have additional questions about QBSE. I’m always ready to help.

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Rise_Fitness

Hi

Sorry to jump on this bandwagon, but I have to agree with everyone else here about the need to rethink the invoicing features.

I've just started using QBSE, and am in the process of invoicing a new client. However I'm dreading the prospect of them not being able to view it with ease and requesting a different invoicing method, this would look very unprofessional.

Furthermore in my line of work people seem to prefer invoices sent as an attachment. For now this is what I'll have to do, which is unfortunate as being able to track invoices is a great feature.

Being able to send invoices as an attachment and still track them on QB isn't exactly a premium feature, so please consider implementing this, as I'm clearly not the only one.

On the whole though QBSE seems really good, this is just some constructive criticism.

Thanks,

Rise_Fitness

B

BruceWhite1986

Why has this not been sorted out yet?? Such a simple feature to add which would cut out alot of hassle. Many companies use automated accounting software that only accept invoices in PDF format so paying £9.99 a month for something that cant produce invoices for half your clients is ridiculous. Nearly 2 years since this original post and no progress

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ralphonz

I'm new to quickbooks and I have to say that the lack of professional invoicing features has put me right off. Even free accounting solutions offer better invoicing.

The email that is sent is the main problem. Lacks company branding, has a quickbooks logo on it and quickbooks copyright. I have to re-type the email message body each time to include payment info and the customer has to click thorough too many times just to see a PDF.

The other accounting solutions I've tried all have issues, but none so basic as this. Would be nice to see this sorted out and modernised as I really don't want to use such an unprofessional looking invoice system.

A

Ashleigh1

Hello Ralphonz,

Thanks for commenting on this thread,

We have taken all your feedback on board and will pass it onto the develops for you.

R

RF8

How has this still not been sorted? It's such a basic feature.

Being able to export the PDF is a work around but then there is no way to mark the invoice as sent. It's really not good enough.

I'm so close to leaving QB.

P

payment after leaving

Hi RF8 We appreciate your frustrations regarding this issue, we will of course forward your comments on to our developers for their consideration.

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bhcopy

Just wanted to chime in and share my agreement with this: just attaching the invoice to the email is essential. Clients now have to click the "View invoice" button, which opens up the browser, and then click "View invoice" again to see payment details. I mean, that's a pretty obviously poor UX feature.

Can we please just get a simple checkbox somewhere that says "Attach invoice as a PDF"? I literally just switched from free software that does this.

I know I can download it and send it separately but I still need to send it through QB to register it as 'sent'. So I'd need to email to client twice to add on the PDF.

It'd be massively helpful if you could add this small feature. Or, at the very least, when the client clicks "View invoice" in the email, open up a window that actually has the invoice in for them to view, rather than just the same info that got in the email. That would avoid them having to click again to get the only info they need.

Thanks.

C

Charlie147

Can somebody please implement the ability to mark the invoice as saved, after downloading the PDF? If you want to cater to the self employed of which millions of sole traders would happily make use of. Then please implement this simple feature, obviously it's very important to your customers. The customers experience is very important, all of your competitors seem to offer this feature. Why should we stick with Quickbooks Self-employed if we can't even send our customers simple invoices?

T

TirzahC

Hi, Charlie147.

The system will record the date base on the date you mark your invoice as paid. On the other hand, QuickBooks will identify your invoice as income once you categorize them as a business.

Currently, there's no option where we can modify the invoice in QuickBooks Self-Employed. I'll surely send this feedback to our software engineers. It might be given a chance to be added in the next product updates. We'll take note of this one. That way, this will be considered in future updates. With this, let's consider letting our product developers know about your request by sending feedback. I'll show you how.

Go to Assistant.
Select I need help.
On the textbox, type in Feedback.
Click Add a feature.
Enter a few words describing how you wish to enter the job and purchase order number in each invoice.
Select Send.
Click Yes.

You can read through this article to help you manage your invoices: Create invoices in QuickBooks Self-Employed.

Please know that we're always here if you have other questions. Don't hesitate to reach out. Thanks for coming in and be safe..

C

Charlotte94

I have just been asked by another client to please send invoices attached to the email as they need to be able to access and save easier on their phone. It seems my choices are to export the PDF and send in a separate email (wasting my time and also then meaning I can't mark invoices as paid, which makes the tracking part of QBSE completely defunct), to send the email via quickbooks and also export as PDF (looking pretty unprofessional) or to tell my employer that he just has to lump it (even more unprofessional).

I can see from this thread that this has been discussed since 2019. It's pretty clear to me that QB are banking on people upgrading to a more expensive version so they can have this feature, which is pretty terrible. One more moderator posting that they'll 'forward the information on to the development team' isn't going to change a thing. I think it's time I start exploring Xero and Sage, because QB obviously don't care about providing what the client needs.

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