In our continuing series on what’s new in QBO, we’re excited to share with you the improvements we’ve made to creating and sending invoices! In this article we’ll explain how things work in the new world.

A new streamlined form

As mentioned before, the + at the top of the screen is your one-stop shop for creating any transaction. You can create invoices, sales receipts, estimates and more from this single control.

Let’s dive into invoicing. When you first come to the form, you’ll see that it takes over the full width of your screen. This is to provide you with as much real estate as possible for your work – creating the invoice or any form. We redesigned all the forms to have a consistent, modern look. You will find these new forms work much better across your desktop, laptop and tablet devices. They also load faster than in the old version of QBO!

You can start working anywhere in the form, even before adding a customer. In the old version we heard complaints about being forced to select a customer before you could do anything on the form. We want to encourage you to get in there and play around with the new version!

If you ever need to change what fields appear on this form (like Shipping, Discounts or Service Dates), go to Company Settings, accessible from the gear in the top right. From Company Settings, go to the Sales Form Entry section and you’ll see you can change your logo, and add or remove fields.

A better way to send invoices

Invoicing in the new QBO is so much more powerful. We improved how it works based on the fact that most of you (well 87% to be exact) email your invoices.

Here’s how it works

When you Save and Send an invoice, you will now see a preview of your message and the invoice. This makes it easy to personalize your default email message (which you can always change under Company Settings).

When you hit Send, QBO sends an email to your customer with your personalized message and a link to view the invoice.

Your customer will receive an email that looks like this – with a big blue button to view the invoice.

When your customer clicks View Invoice Now, this opens their invoice in a browser window.

Benefits of online invoices

When your customer views the invoice, that is captured in QBO so you know exactly when your customer viewed it – no more “my spam filter ate the invoice”.

Customers can send you a message right from here. If your customer sends a message, it is also saved with the invoice in QBO. You can send messages to your customer from the invoice form in QBO, and they’re saved along with messages from your customer. You can view the entire thread on the invoice form in QBO – very handy if you need to refer to it later. Scroll to the bottom of the invoice form in QBO to view the history of when your customer viewed the invoice and messages back and forth.

All updates to the invoice are automatically saved in QBO and on the online invoice your customer sees. Your customers can also print or save a PDF of the invoice anytime.

If you receive partial payments on invoices, they will be reflected in the Balance Due at the top of your invoice in QBO AND the site where your customer views the online invoice. Now your customer will always have a single, up-to-date view of what they owe you.

And if you turn on QuickBooks Payments, customers can click the Pay now button to pay the invoice right there. The balance due is updated immediately in QBO. Boom, it’s like your Accounts Receivable takes care of itself.

Now that we’ve covered the basics of invoicing, let’s close out with a few more highlights.

Panel for handling estimates and billables

Whenever you create estimates or billables like time activity, billable expenses or charges, QBO keeps track of them for you. When you go to create a new invoice, the estimates and billables are waiting for you in a panel on the right of the form. This is an easy way to view and add the ones you want to include on a given invoice.

When you add an estimate or billable to the invoice, the rows in the table are updated so you can see exactly how they will appear on the invoice. These linked transactions are accessible at the top of the form. You can always take estimates and billables off the invoice and stick them back in the panel by clicking the Remove button.

An additional benefit in the new QBO is that you can make changes to the details of estimates and billables that appear on the invoice without affecting the original estimate or billable item you’re tracking in QBO.

For more details on the new panel, check out Stacy Kildal’s post here:http://www.sleeter.com/blog/2013/11/quickbooks-online-drawers/

A few more tips 

Preview

Although Save and Send always shows you a Preview of your invoice before you send it, you can also use Print at the bottom of the form…

…to Preview your invoice in a large window.

Creating templates for repeat use

If your looking for an easy way to create an invoice template you can reuse over time, check out theMake Recurring link at the bottom of the form. Give the template a name and then under Type, select “Unscheduled”. You can also have QBO automatically send out invoices for you by selecting “Scheduled” under Type.

These templates are stored under Recurring Transactions, accessible from under Lists in the Company menu. To use a template to create a new invoice, select the template from the list and click Use. This gives you a head start on the invoice by including all the information from the template you created – a big time saver!

Creating a stack of invoices

If you print invoices and want to create a bunch at once, you can use a shortcut for Save and New:

• On Windows: CTRL + ALT + s
• On Mac: CTRL + Option + s

Add, Remove, and Rearrange Invoice Lines

To quickly change the order in which a row in your invoice table appears, click the little square icon on the far left and drag the row to where you want it. You can easily delete the row by clicking the trashcan icon on the far right of each row. Another feature we are bringing back due to feedback is the ability to insert a row anywhere. Coming as part of our next release (end of December) you will see a green plus icon when you click into an invoice row. Click the plus icon and you will get a line inserted above the row you are in.

There’s always More

Lastly, at the bottom of the form, under More you’ll find handy tools like Copy and Delete

.

There’s more exciting work underway on invoicing and of course, we’ll tell you all about it right here on the blog.

Not seeing the new forms in QBO yet? You will.

These features are in the new version of QBO today, but for those of you who started out on the previous version of QBO, we are moving those companies to the new version over time. Our goal is to ensure a smooth transition for every customer. With over 500K companies on QBO that is a tall order! See this post for more details: https://community.intuit.com/questions/791220-how-do-i-switch-to-the-new-version-of-qbo?jump_to=answer_1832181

We hope you find the new forms delightful, powerful and generally awesome! As always, please keep the feedback coming so we know what’s working well for you and what can be made even better. Please vote on suggestions or add your ideas to our user voice.

We’ll have more to share in the coming weeks so check back here to learn what’s new in QBO!