Deposits and automatic invoices

When your client accepts an offer, Billow drafts every invoice for the project. The deposit percentage on the offer decides how many invoices you get and what each one bills. Nothing is sent automatically.

When the invoices are drafted

The invoices appear a few seconds after your client accepts the offer. They show up as drafts in the Drafts section of the Unpaid tab in your invoice list, and on the project.

The drafting schedule

You set the percentage under Upfront Deposit when you build the offer. There are five options.

The number of invoices follows from the percentage. You cannot set it separately. For a different split, delete the drafts you don’t need and create your own invoices on the project.

With no deposit, the single invoice has no title and shows as Invoice. Titled invoices only appear when there is a deposit.

Examples

A $10,000 project with a 50% deposit:

The same project with a 25% deposit:

The same project with a 33% deposit:

The deposit takes exactly 33%. The rest is split evenly between the other two invoices, so each of them is larger than the deposit.

Any leftover cents go on the last invoice. The invoices always add up to exactly the accepted total.

What a drafted invoice contains

• Status Draft

• Today’s date as the issue date, due in 30 days

• The project’s account and main contact

• The offer’s currency and tax settings, which stay locked

• No payment method

Send a drafted invoice

If the project has a deposit invoice, send that one first. The other invoices on the project cannot be sent until the deposit invoice is paid. Until then, Send Invoice is disabled with “The deposit invoice for this project must be paid first.”

Until you send them, you can change amounts, dates and line items on regular drafts, or delete the ones you don’t need.

1. Go to Invoices and open the draft from the Drafts section.

2. Open the … menu at the top right of the page and choose Edit.

3. Under Payment Method, choose Card Payment (Stripe) or Bank Transfer.

4. Change anything else you need, such as the dates or line items.

5. Click Save Changes.

6. Click Send Invoice and follow the dialog.

The invoice changes to Pending and your client receives the link. How each payment method works is covered in Getting paid.

The deposit invoice

A deposit invoice lists the full project scope, with every deliverable at its real price, and bills only the deposit amount. Your client sees it with a badge such as “50% Deposit”.

A deposit invoice is more locked than a regular invoice, including while it is a draft:

• The line items come from the offer and cannot be edited.

• The account and project cannot be changed.

• The currency and tax fields show “Locked for deposit invoices”.

• The amount follows the offer’s deposit percentage.

You can still set the payment method and the dates.

Deposit invoices cannot be duplicated. A deposit invoice cannot be deleted while the project has regular invoices.

Create a deposit invoice yourself

1. Go to Invoices and click Create Invoice.

2. Choose the account, then the project.

3. Under Invoice Type, choose Deposit Invoice.

4. Choose a payment method and set the dates.

5. Click Create Invoice.

The line items fill in from the offer and bill the deposit amount.

The Invoice Type field only appears when all of these are true:

• The project is Active.

• The project’s offer has a deposit.

• The project has no deposit invoice, other than a refunded one.

Otherwise every new invoice is a regular invoice, and there is nothing to choose. Refunding the existing deposit invoice makes the choice available again.

Invoice Type defaults to Regular Invoice. The type is set when you create the invoice and cannot be changed afterward, in either direction.

Declined add-ons

Add-ons your client declined on the offer do not count toward the total and never appear on an invoice.