On occasions where your invoices are not being uploaded to your accountancy platform, you will usually receive a sync message (You can find out more about sync messages in our guide: Why haven't some of my invoices/other documents/payments appeared in my accounting software?). Sync messages are returned from your accountancy platform, explaining why it has not been possible to upload your invoice. If the message returned is similar to "This is a duplicate invoice number." it means that Breww has attempted to upload your invoice to your accountancy software, but the invoice number already exists in your accountancy software.
Invoice numbers
If you have just started with Breww but have been trading before joining Breww, you will likely already have created some invoices. When an order is invoiced in Breww, that order number becomes the invoice number, and your first order in Breww will be 1 unless you change this to match the following number in your existing sequence from before joining Breww (you can find out how to do this in our guide How to change my starting invoice number).
If all of your invoices are being created in Breww, then so long as you change your starting invoice number to be greater than your last invoice number in your accountancy software, you shouldn’t come across the sync message again, but if you have already raised invoices and had this sync message returned or if there are invoices you are raising in your accountancy platform that you could not for any reason create in Breww (we do highly recommend raising all invoices in Breww to avoid complications) then you will want to use prefixes for invoices that Breww is uploading to your accountancy software.
Using Prefixes
To prevent duplicates and ensure your invoices raised from Breww are entirely unique, you can use prefixes like BRW, for example, so that invoice number 1 is uploaded as BRW-1 and is, therefore, not a duplicate of the existing invoice 1 in your accountancy software.
To set up prefixes, navigate to Integrations → Accountancy and find your accountancy software provider listed, then click Actions → Configuration and on the settings tab of the configuration under the header “Sync settings” you will see a section for Prefixes where you can enter a unique prefix for your invoices and credit notes.
