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An invoice is a bill. In Atelier it is rarely typed from scratch, because the numbers already exist somewhere — on a schedule, in a proposal, or in the hours you logged. Three sources, one document. That is the whole idea of the invoice form.

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The list

Finance → Invoices. Filter by client, project or status; sort by number, issue date, due date or total. Each row: number (INV-2026-002), project, client, status, issue date, due date, total.

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Building one

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The header

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Payment terms

The dropdown beside the due date holds the standard set: Due on receipt · Net 15 · Net 30 · Net 45 · Net 60 · Net 90 Choosing one moves the due date; the date remains editable afterwards.
Terms on an invoice are a due-date preset — a single number of days. The staged, trigger-based terms that govern a whole job live on the proposal instead, as payment milestones. Two mechanisms, two places, deliberately.

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Line items

Each line has a type — Goods or Svc — then description, quantity, unit, unit price or rate, discount %, tax % and amount. The Columns control hides what you are not using. The type matters: the totals panel reports products subtotal and tax on products separately, because goods and services are frequently taxed differently.

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Where lines come from

Five buttons, and the last three are why the form is worth using:
  • From schedule — pull the FF&E straight off the project’s schedule, with markup and tax as costed. The usual route for a procurement invoice.
  • From contract — bill an agreed milestone from the proposal, rather than re-keying the amount.
  • Time entry — turn logged hours into billable lines at the project’s rate.
  • Add product / Add service — a one-off line typed by hand.
For an FF&E invoice, start from the schedule’s Financials view and use Create invoice there instead. Same result, fewer steps.

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Totals

Products subtotal, tax on products, a discount in currency rather than percent, and total due.

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Before you send

  1. Check the studio details. Logo, legal name, business address, tax ID and the payment block in the footer all come from Settings → Studio. Set them once, before the first invoice.
  2. Check every line’s client price. A row may use saved selling or reference pricing even when vendor cost is blank. Review the invoice preview, quantities and totals before saving.
  3. Check tax settings for this project. Confirm the applicable treatment with your studio’s accounting process; imported rates need review.
  4. Check what the terms commit you to. Net 90 on a job where you have already paid the vendor is a cash-flow decision, not a formality.

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Sending it

Open the invoice and choose Send & copy link while it is a draft. This marks it sent and copies a client link; it does not send an email. Paste the link into your own message. For an issued invoice, the action reads Copy link. Save PDF makes a fixed copy. A cancelled invoice has no public page. Check its status before trying to share it.

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Recording payments

Record payment logs an actual payment — it is a new entry, not a checkbox — and you can add as many as it takes: Use the status control in the invoice header for the transitions currently allowed, such as moving a draft to sent. Payment states are calculated from the recorded payments: Partially paid when a balance remains and Paid when recorded payments and any applied retainer cover the total. Use Record payment for money received; changing a workflow status does not record a payment.

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After you send

The Finance dashboard tracks it from there: invoiced, paid, outstanding, overdue, with overdue and partially paid invoices listed under Needs attention.
A sent invoice is out of the assistant’s reach. It writes drafts only — once an invoice is SENT, and at every status after including OVERDUE and PAID, changes are made in Finance by hand or superseded by a change order.

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Apply money received in advance

For a project deposit, record it in Finance → Retainers and use Columns → Retainer applied in the invoice form. The available balance includes claims by other draft invoices. See Retainers and client deposits. Balance due = invoice total − applied retainer − recorded invoice payments, with a minimum of zero. Record each receipt once; applying a deposit does not mean receiving a new payment.