Invoices and their statuses
Draft, Pending, Paid, Refunded, and what you can change at each point.
Status | What it means |
|---|---|
Draft | Editable. No number yet. Not visible to anyone. |
Pending | Sent and numbered. Locked. |
Paid | Done. |
Refunded | Money returned. Final. |
After sending
A sent invoice cannot be edited and cannot be put back to draft. Invoices are financial records.
Check the figures while the invoice is still a draft. To correct a sent invoice, delete it while it is unpaid and send a new one.
The only moves from Pending are to Paid, and from Paid to Refunded.
Copying the public link counts as sending. Generating a share link does everything emailing does: it assigns the number, freezes the invoice, and ends your ability to edit it. Billow warns you before it happens.
Duplicating
Duplicating an invoice gives you a fresh draft titled “(copy)” with the same line items, ready to change. Deposit invoices can’t be duplicated.
Due dates
New invoices offer three options: Immediately, 15 days, or 30 days from the invoice date. 30 days is the default and is what auto-drafted invoices get.
Numbering
Sent invoices get INV-YYYY-NNNN (e.g. INV-2026-0001), counting up within each year and starting fresh in January.
Numbers are assigned on send, so a draft does not use one. Deleting a sent invoice does not release its number.
Two kinds of invoice
Regular invoices have line items you write.
Deposit invoices are tied to an accepted offer and bill a percentage of it. One per project. Billow drafts them for you when your client accepts, and you can create one by hand while the project has an open deposit slot: the new invoice then offers a Regular / Deposit choice, defaulting to Regular. The type is set at creation and can’t be switched afterward. See Deposits and automatic invoices.
Project invoices vs standalone
An invoice attached to a project with an offer takes the project’s currency and locks it, so one engagement cannot mix currencies.
The tax rate is locked the same way when a project has an offer. On a simple project there is no offer to take tax from, so each invoice starts from your workspace defaults and stays editable.
A standalone invoice, not tied to a project, has editable currency and tax.
Switching the account on an invoice clears the project and contact.
Deleting
Admin only. A deleted invoice goes to a trash page you can restore from.
Two things block it:
Paid through Stripe. “Cannot delete an invoice paid through Stripe.” There is a real payment on record.
A deposit invoice with regular invoices still around. “Cannot delete deposit invoice while regular invoices exist for this project.” Delete those first.
Manually-paid invoices can be deleted by an admin. Paid or not, the number is never reused.
Find deleted invoices on the deleted invoices page, where each row has a Restore button.
Restoring
An invoice comes back with its original number, status and paid date. Billow confirms first, and says so when the project it belonged to has been deleted since:
The project this invoice belonged to was deleted. The invoice will be restored without a project.
It returns as a standalone invoice, and its figures are untouched.
Four things stop a restore. The button is disabled with the reason on it:
Its number is now on another invoice. “Cannot restore: invoice number INV-2026-0001 is now used by another invoice.”
Its account was deleted. “Cannot restore: the client has been deleted.”
It’s a deposit invoice whose project was deleted. “Cannot restore: the project has been deleted.” A deposit invoice must belong to a project.
It’s a deposit invoice and the project already has a live one. “Cannot restore: the project already has a deposit invoice.” A refunded deposit invoice does not count, whether it is the one being restored or the one already on the project.
