---
title: "Invoices and credit notes"
description: "Read an invoice and its status, collect one invoice or several at once, keep numbered receipts, and give money back with a credit note or a refund."
canonical_url: "https://twominutebilling.com/help/guides/invoices-and-credit-notes"
---
# Invoices and credit notes

> Read an invoice and its status, collect one invoice or several at once, keep numbered receipts, and give money back with a credit note or a refund.

An invoice records what a customer owes for a period. A credit note reduces what they owe, or gives money back. This guide shows how to read an invoice, collect or record a payment, and correct an invoice the right way.

Open **Invoices & Credit Notes** in the business.

<screenshot alt="The invoice list, with each invoice's status, amount due and dunning stage" caption="Invoices, with their status, the amount due and where each one is in dunning." src="invoices">



</screenshot>

## Read the statuses

<table>
<thead>
  <tr>
    <th>
      Status
    </th>
    
    <th>
      What it means
    </th>
  </tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
  <tr>
    <td>
      <strong>
        Pending
      </strong>
    </td>
    
    <td>
      Still open and collecting lines. Usage and charges are landing on it. Not yet a demand for payment.
    </td>
  </tr>
  
  <tr>
    <td>
      <strong>
        Posted
      </strong>
    </td>
    
    <td>
      Finalised. The lines, tax and total are fixed.
    </td>
  </tr>
  
  <tr>
    <td>
      <strong>
        Payment due
      </strong>
    </td>
    
    <td>
      Owed — past its due date, or collection failed.
    </td>
  </tr>
  
  <tr>
    <td>
      <strong>
        Not paid
      </strong>
    </td>
    
    <td>
      Collection failed and the retries ran out.
    </td>
  </tr>
  
  <tr>
    <td>
      <strong>
        Paid
      </strong>
    </td>
    
    <td>
      Settled.
    </td>
  </tr>
  
  <tr>
    <td>
      <strong>
        Voided
      </strong>
    </td>
    
    <td>
      Cancelled, with its accounting reversed.
    </td>
  </tr>
</tbody>
</table>

<screenshot alt="An invoice in the dashboard, with each line, the tax on it, the amount paid and the amount still owed" caption="An invoice shows every line, the tax on it, what was paid and what is still owed." src="invoice-detail">



</screenshot>

## Collect a payment

**Collect now** charges the customer's saved card immediately. Use it when someone has just fixed
their card and does not want to wait for the next scheduled retry.

**Record a payment** is for money that arrived outside the system — a bank transfer or a cheque.
It marks the invoice paid without touching a card.

## Collect several invoices at once

A payment request asks one customer for several open invoices together: one charge, or one link
they pay once. Use it when a customer has fallen behind on a few invoices and wants to clear them
in one go.

<steps>

### Open the customer

Select **Request payment**. The dialog lists the customer's open invoices with the amount due on
each.

### Select the invoices

Select up to 50, all in one currency. An invoice can be in only one open request at a time, and
an invoice with a payment in progress cannot be added.

### Select how to request payment

**Charge now** charges the total to a saved payment method that you select. **Send a payment
link** emails the customer a link to pay the total in their portal. Leave **Send to** blank to use
the customer's email. Invoices with manual payment can only be requested with a link.

</steps>

The request then appears under **Payment requests** and on the customer page. On the request,
**Due now** is recalculated each time you open it: an invoice paid, voided or written off another
way drops out of the request, and when every invoice has dropped out the request is cancelled.

From the request you can:

- **Charge** it again, with the same or another saved payment method
- **Record payment** for money that arrived offline. It is spread over the invoices oldest first,
and it cannot be more than the amount still due. Record anything extra as an excess payment on
the customer.
- **Send again**, with an optional note added to the email
- **Cancel request**, with a reason that only your team sees

If a charge fails, the request stays open, shows the decline, and the customer is emailed the
link. A failed charge on a request does not use up a dunning retry on the invoices. If the
gateway later reports that the failed charge did go through, the money pays the request's
invoices that are still owed, newest first, and only the rest is refunded. A request that nobody
pays expires after 30 days.

## Receipts

Each successful payment gets a numbered receipt: a record of money received. A receipt is not a
tax invoice and has no tax lines. A payment request that is paid gets one receipt for the whole
charge.

- **Logs → Receipts** in the business lists every receipt, with a PDF for each. The customer and
payment request pages show their own receipts.
- **Settings → Receipts** sets the **Number prefix** (default `RCPT`, so `RCPT-12`). Receipts are
numbered in the order of their payments, a few seconds after each one, and you cannot change the
counter. A new prefix applies to the next receipt we number.
- **Settings → Email notifications** has **Attach the receipt PDF to the payment confirmation
email**. It is off by default.
- Customers can download every numbered receipt from the portal.

<screenshot alt="The credit note list, with notes that reduce what a customer owes or refund what they paid" caption="Credit notes reduce what a customer owes, or refund what they already paid." src="credit-notes">



</screenshot>

## Give money back

Which tool depends on whether the invoice was paid.

<table>
<thead>
  <tr>
    <th>
      Situation
    </th>
    
    <th>
      Use
    </th>
    
    <th>
      What happens
    </th>
  </tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
  <tr>
    <td>
      Invoice is unpaid and they should owe less
    </td>
    
    <td>
      <strong>
        Adjustment credit note
      </strong>
    </td>
    
    <td>
      Reduces what is owed
    </td>
  </tr>
  
  <tr>
    <td>
      Invoice was paid and you owe them money
    </td>
    
    <td>
      <strong>
        Refundable credit note
      </strong>
    </td>
    
    <td>
      Becomes credit on their account, which you can then refund to the card
    </td>
  </tr>
  
  <tr>
    <td>
      You have given up on an unpaid invoice
    </td>
    
    <td>
      <strong>
        Write off
      </strong>
    </td>
    
    <td>
      Recorded as bad debt, with the reason kept
    </td>
  </tr>
</tbody>
</table>

<warning title="Never edit an issued invoice">

You cannot change the amounts on a posted invoice, and that is deliberate. A correction is a
credit note — a second document with its own reason — so both you and your customer can see what
happened and why.

Only the operational fields stay editable: PO number, expected payment date, notes and the address
shown.

</warning>

## Void versus credit note

**Void** cancels an invoice that should never have existed — raised against the wrong
configuration, say. It reverses the accounting and returns any coupon the customer used, so a
single-use code is not wasted on a cancelled document.

**Credit note** reduces or refunds an invoice that was correct at the time. Use this when the
customer is owed money, not when the document was a mistake.

After voiding, **Regenerate** builds a fresh invoice for the same period once you have fixed the
underlying setup.

## Send an invoice

Every invoice is available as a PDF carrying your branding, and can be emailed to the customer and
their additional contacts. You can resend one at any time.

## Related

- [Recurring invoicing and credit notes](https://twominutebilling.com/product/invoicing)
- [The invoice lifecycle in the API](https://twominutebilling.com/help/developers/concepts/invoices)
- [Recover failed payments](https://twominutebilling.com/help/guides/recover-failed-payments)
- [Payment requests](https://twominutebilling.com/help/developers/api-reference/payment-requests) and
[receipts](https://twominutebilling.com/help/developers/api-reference/receipts) in the API reference


## Sitemap

See the full [sitemap](https://twominutebilling.com/sitemap.md) for all pages.