Deposits and automatic invoices

When your client accepts an offer, Billow drafts the invoices for the whole engagement.

Nothing is sent. They wait in your invoice list as drafts.

Drafting runs in the background, so give it a few seconds after acceptance before the invoices appear.

What decides which invoices are drafted automatically

One setting: the deposit percentage on the offer. Five options, and each produces a different set of invoices.

You can’t pick the number of instalments directly. It follows from the percentage.

With no deposit the single invoice has no title and simply reads “Invoice”. The named ones only appear when there’s a deposit to split around.

Worked examples

A $10,000 project at 50%:

The same project at 25%:

At 33%, where the maths is less obvious:

The deposit takes exactly 33%. What’s left is split evenly between the other two, which is why they’re larger than the deposit.

Odd cents go on the last invoice. Billow makes sure every invoice adds up to exactly the accepted total, never a cent over or under.

What every drafted invoice starts with

• Status Draft

• Today’s date, due in 30 days

• Your project’s currency and tax, locked

• No payment method

You choose bank transfer or card per invoice, and Billow won’t let you send until you have.

The deposit invoice

A deposit invoice shows the full project scope, every deliverable at its real price, but bills only the deposit amount.

Your client sees what they’re putting money down on, alongside what they’re paying today.

A deposit invoice is also more locked down than a regular one. Even as a draft, its line items, project, account, currency, and tax come from the offer and can’t be edited. Its amount always follows the offer’s deposit. The currency and tax fields say “Locked for deposit invoices” to explain themselves. Payment method and dates are yours to set.

Bill the deposit first

You can’t send the other invoices until the deposit is paid.

Send the deposit, get it paid, then the rest open up.

Add-ons your client declined

Anything they rejected on the offer is gone. It doesn’t count toward the total and never appears on an invoice.

Drafting rules

Drafting happens once. Accepting an offer drafts the invoices a single time. Re-running it won’t duplicate them.

Drafting only ever follows an offer. A project you’ve already been invoicing by hand can’t take one on at all, so this never runs on top of invoices you wrote yourself. See Simple projects.

One deposit invoice per project.

Nothing is sent automatically. Every invoice needs you to pick a payment method and send it.

Change the schedule by editing the drafts. Amounts, dates, and line items are all editable while they’re drafts. Delete ones you don’t want. The auto-drafted set is a starting point.