Bulk Invoice Generation and Sending

The automatic invoice generation and sending settings make that workflow smooth and easy. However there are circumstances where it would be good to manage invoice generation in bulk (but not globally).

For example there are situations it might be helpful to retain manual control of invoicing for export, or even all wholesale orders, while it’s nearly always going to be better to have eCommerce orders invoice automatically after payment is made or after delivery. Perhaps:

  • Tickboxes on the sales list screen with a Bulk Actions drop down for marking orders invoiced and sending invoice emails.
  • Multiple global settings for auto-invoice generation on delivery and sending invoice emails for specific sales channels (like Shopify) or exports.
  • Import eCommerce orders as invoiced if a payment has been made in the source platform.
  • A customer attribute to prevent auto-invoicing and sending on that basis.
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Thanks Simon, thanks for these suggestions.

Just in case it’s been missed, there is already an option of Automatically invoice orders when their delivery leaves duty suspense or is completed in SettingsDelivery settings. But we would highly recommend not switching this off without being totally sure this is what you want to do and thinking through the ramifications.

Once an order has been invoiced, you’re locked from making most changes to it, so we highly recommend not invoicing an order too early. If, for example, Breww imported an eCommerce order as invoiced and then you made a change to it in the external platform (e.g. changing a product or the delivery address), this change would not be replicated to Breww, so I’d suggest that forcing these to be immediately invoiced upon import might not be the best option.

Additionally, if you invoice an order at a different time from delivering it, you need to account for the value of stock invoiced but not delivered and stock delivered by not invoiced. This adds work for the accounting team (they can’t just use Breww’s stock valuation figure) and also can lead to stock insurance issues (does your insurance cover someone else’s stock stored in your building and what is the value of that stock). These are just some of the reasons that we highly recommend letting Breww invoice your orders automatically at the point of dispatch.

Whilst we realise that sometimes you need to follow a different flow (which can be done currently), I must admit that we’re hesitant to add tools to encourage breaking away from the recommended flow even more as we fear they may be used without looking at the big picture and cause more headaches than they solve. Our recommended flow is based upon a huge amount of experience and helps keep everything “in sync” from an accounting point of view and reduces complexity.