Invoices, Credit and Refunds¶

Updated 22 October 2026

Most invoices raise themselves: one when a customer orders, then one for each renewal (The Billing Lifecycle). This page covers what staff do by hand: writing an invoice, recording a payment, cancelling, refunding and managing a customer's credit balance. What each status means is on Products, Services, Orders & Invoices.

Billing → Invoices opens on the Unpaid tab, overdue invoices included. The other tabs are All, Awaiting approval (bank transfers a customer reported), Paid, Overdue, Cancelled and Drafts, plus Needs checking when automatic payment is on. Tick invoices to mark them paid, cancel, send or remind them in one go.

Create an invoice by hand¶

Add New → New Invoice:

1. Select Client.
2. Add the Line Items. Typing a Description suggests your active products (at their cheapest billing cycle) and your catalogue items; picking one fills in the price, unit and tax. Each line has a Qty, a Unit, a Tax rate and a Price before tax. + Add Item adds a line.
3. Notes are printed on the invoice.
4. Dates: the Invoice Date is today and the Due Date is today plus Default payment due (days); change either.
5. Payment Method: your enabled gateways, Bank Transfer and Manual. The customer's default is preselected.
6. Check the Summary (net, tax per rate, gross) and press Create Invoice.

The Tax list offers the rates that apply to the customer's country, and 0%. Tax is worked out line by line, and the rate you pick applies even to a customer marked tax exempt (Tax Rules).

Once saved, the invoice gets the next number, any credit balance the customer has is taken off it, and it is emailed to them (Invoice Created). A customer with a group discount gets the discount as a line of its own.

The catalogue¶

Goods and services you bill often, but do not sell in the shop, go in the catalogue: Setup → Products/Services → + Add product/service, with a Product Name, Price, Unit and one of your tax rates. They are listed in the page's Products/Services card and offered in the description box of a new invoice.

Change an invoice¶

On the invoice's page, each line's description, quantity, price and tax rate can be edited in place (press Enter to save), + Add Item adds a blank line and × deletes one. Totals are recalculated each time.

The buttons at the top depend on the status:

Record a payment¶

Paid opens Mark Invoice as Paid: the Gateway it came through, a Transaction ID (optional) and the Amount.

• Less than is owed: the invoice becomes Partially Paid.
• More than is owed: the invoice is paid and the rest goes to the customer's credit balance.
• A transaction ID already recorded for the same gateway is never counted twice.

The amount is pre-filled with the invoice total, not with what is still owed: on a part-paid invoice, enter what you actually received. Choosing Credit as the gateway only labels the payment; it does not take anything from the customer's balance (see Use credit).

Paying an invoice in full sets off everything that follows a payment: the order is accepted, services are set up or renewed.

Cancel¶

Cancel voids an unpaid invoice. Anything paid on it, and any credit balance that was applied to it, goes back to the customer's credit balance. A paid invoice cannot be cancelled; refund it.

Refunds¶

Refund on a paid or part-paid invoice opens Refund Invoice:

• Refund Amount: empty for everything paid; less for a partial refund.
• Reason (optional): kept on the refund record.
• Refund via gateway (ticked): sends the money back through the gateway that took the payment. Untick it to record a refund you made yourself.

Payments by Bank Transfer, Manual or Credit are always recorded as offline refunds: you return the money outside PNLCS. If the gateway refuses the refund, nothing is recorded and the error is shown.

The part of the invoice that was paid from the customer's credit balance goes back to the balance first; only the rest goes back as money. Refunding an Add Funds invoice takes the added credit off the balance again (as much of it as is left), and affiliate commission on the refunded amount is taken back. The invoice becomes Refunded, or Partially Paid if part of the payment stays.

A refund does not touch the services the invoice paid for: cancel them yourself if they should end.

Credit balance¶

Each customer has a credit balance, in your default currency, shown on the client's page as Credit Balance. It grows from:

• the customer topping up on Add Funds;
• overpayments, and money arriving on an invoice that is already paid, cancelled or refunded;
• payments and applied credit handed back when an invoice is cancelled;
• credit you add.

Add or remove credit¶

Manage next to the balance on the client's page (staff need the permission to manage invoices) opens Credit: choose Add credit or Remove credit, an Amount and a Description, then Save. You cannot remove more than the balance. History lists every change with its description.

Use credit¶

• New invoices take the balance automatically, up to their total; an invoice the balance covers in full is marked paid at once.
• For an invoice that already exists, the customer presses Use my account credit on the invoice in the client area. The admin area has no button for this; integrations use the API's applycredit.

Add Funds invoices never take credit, which would move it in a circle.

Add Funds¶

Customers top up under Billing → Add Funds in the client area: a quick amount (10, 25, 50, 100, 250 or 500) or their own, between 5 and 10,000, and a payment method. PNLCS raises an untaxed invoice for it, due the same day, with no group discount. When it is paid, the amount is added to the balance. When customers are billed in another currency, they enter the amount in that currency (Currencies).

Proformas and VAT invoices¶

Some countries want a payment request first and the tax invoice only once the money arrives. Tick Enable Proforma scheme under Setup → General Settings → Invoices:

• New invoices are proformas, numbered with the Proforma numbering scheme (default PRO-{year}/{month}-{num}).
• When a proforma is paid, PNLCS issues the VAT invoice: the same lines and totals, the next number of the invoice series, dated and paid that day, and linked to the proforma (Refers to proforma). It is emailed to the customer.
• Hide paid proformas (on by default) leaves paid proformas out of the invoice lists, for you and for the customer, so each sale shows once.

Numbering¶

Setup → General Settings → Invoices:

The scheme takes {year}, {yy}, {month}, {day} and {num}; {num} is six digits with leading zeros. The number continues from the highest one already issued, so changing the scheme does not restart the count. With Reset numbering each year, only this year's invoices count, so each January starts again at 1. The card shows the Last invoice and a Preview of the next.

For bank transfers, customers quote a short reference instead of the invoice number: Payment reference prefix (Setup → General Settings → Billing currency, default INV) followed by the invoice's internal ID, for example INV34.

The PDF¶

Staff download it with Download PDF; customers from the invoice in the client area, and it comes with the invoice email. It shows:

• your logo (Setup → Appearance) and company details, with the registered company name from Legal identity when it differs from the brand (Legal Pages and Consent);
• the customer's details as they were when the invoice was issued: changing the customer's address later does not change old invoices;
• each line with its tax rate, the tax per rate, any credit applied and the total;
• the amount in the billing currency and the rate, when there is one (Currencies);
• the invoice's notes.

Late fees¶

A fee for overdue invoices is set under Setup → General Settings → Late Fees; see The Billing Lifecycle.