Quotes and invoices

Quotes and invoices are the same document at different stages of a booking. A quote goes out to win the work; an invoice goes out to collect for it. In 1pm they share one editor (the same one you price an event's charges with), so a quote you've laboured over becomes the event, and the event's pricing becomes the invoice, without re-typing a thing.

This article covers setting your defaults, sending a quote, raising an invoice, and what happens as each moves through its stages.

Set your defaults first

Before your first quote or invoice, set up Tax & invoicing in your account (from your Account page). Three things live here:

Tax rates. Add the rates you charge, mark one as the default, and choose for each whether the tax is included in the price (GST, VAT) or added on top (US sales tax). These are the rates that appear on every line.
Invoice defaults. Set how many days after issue payment is due, how many days a quote stays open before it lapses (a separate number from payment terms, covered in when a quote runs out), your invoice number prefix (so numbers run as INV-0001, INV-0002), your default terms or payment notes, and your business or tax number with a label that suits your region (ABN, GST number, VAT number). The number and terms render live on every invoice, so updating them here updates every invoice you print or share, even ones already issued.
Report tax on. Whether the Tax summary report shows tax on invoices issued (accrual basis) or on payments received (cash basis). Match the basis you lodge your tax returns on. See Reports.

Sending a quote

A quote is raised on a lead, not an event, so it starts from the Leads inbox: open a lead and click Quote, at the bottom right of the reply box. That opens the quote editor, pre-filled with the lead's details. Build it exactly like an event's charges: add lines, pull from your items and packages, put lines into packages, set tax. Per-head lines bill against the guest count the lead gave you.

When it's ready:

Send to lead emails the quote to the lead through their existing email thread, with a link to a clean, read-only version they open without logging in. The quote moves to Sent.
Mark accepted when they say yes. This is the satisfying bit: 1pm creates the event as a confirmed booking and seeds its charges from the quote, so the pricing you quoted is already in place. The lead moves to Converted.
Decline marks the quote declined and the lead lost, so a "no" tidies itself away. If you had accepted the quote and then unaccepted it, the booking it held goes back to lead stage so the date is free again, and its confirmation is voided so the client can no longer sign it or pay a deposit. Once the client has paid anything on that booking, Decline is refused: cancel the booking itself if it is really off.

A lead is won by one quote. If you sent the client two options and they have accepted one, the other can't be accepted as well, by them or by you: the client is told you'll be in touch and you're notified. To switch them to the other option, open the accepted quote, unaccept it, then accept the one they want. A quote on a booking you have cancelled can't be accepted either; reopen the booking first.

If you take a sent quote back to draft, change it and send it again, a client who still has the old version open can't accept it. The page tells them the quote changed and asks them to check it again, so they only ever accept the figures they saw.

When you open a quote's link yourself while signed in, you see it as your client does, with the Accept and message buttons turned off, so testing the page never accepts the quote or messages you as the client.

A quote can be accepted or declined whether it's still a draft or already sent, so an in-person yes doesn't force you to email it first. That stays true after the quote's Valid until date has passed: the client loses their Accept button, you don't. See when a quote runs out.

A quote for a booking over several dates

A conference with a welcome reception the night before, a wedding weekend, three days of photography: one client, one price, several dates. Build it as one quote with a section for each day.

On a quote raised on a lead, click Add a day. Each day is a package of lines with four extra fields:

Date, typed the way you would say it ("10 Nov", "next tue").
Start time and End time. An end time earlier than the start means the day runs past midnight.
Space, which starts on the lead's Space. Change it if that day is in a different room.

The first day starts on the lead's own date, times and Space, and each day you add follows the one before it. Rename a day to say what it is ("Welcome reception", "Conference day"), then add its lines inside it. You can also turn a package you already have into a day with Set a date for this package, or back into an ordinary package with Clear date.

A few things to know:

Lines outside a day belong to the whole booking. A travel fee or a flat fee for the job sits outside the days, and is billed with the first day.
A day is always included. It can't be an optional package or one the client picks from a set, though the lines inside it can still be optional or adjustable.
Each day carries its own times, so the quote can't also have one set for the whole document. A guest count the client sets, a start time the client moves and a line whose quantity is the booking's hours are all refused on a quote with days. An item you saved as setting the booking hours is added as an ordinary line.
A quote holds up to 31 days.
The lead follows the first day. Its date, times and Space update to match, so the Leads list and your calendar show when the booking starts.

Your client sees the first and last date of the booking at the top, then a section for each day with its date, times and Space above its prices.

When the quote is accepted, 1pm creates an event for each day, held as a tentative booking, and groups them in one Program. The first day is the lead's own event, and each later day is named after its section of the quote. Every day's charges go onto that day's own pricing sheet. One confirmation is then raised for the whole Program, so the client signs once and pays one deposit, and signing or paying confirms every day together. A service charge on the quote comes to the same figure on that confirmation. A percentage service charge can land a cent or two away, because each day's pricing sheet rounds its own share.

Every day is checked for a double booking before anything is created. If one of them can't be held, nothing is created for any of them. A client is told the dates aren't available and you are notified. Accepting it yourself, you are shown the clash and can accept anyway.

After that, each day is its own booking. Change a day's charges on that day's Billing tab.

The confirmation is priced from the days' pricing sheets. A pricing sheet that already has charges keeps them when a quote is accepted, so if you unaccept the quote, change it and accept it again, the sheets can still show the earlier figures. When the confirmation doesn't come to the quote's total, 1pm doesn't send your client to it. A cent or two of rounding doesn't count as a difference. Your client is told you will confirm the booking, and you are notified. Check each day's pricing sheet, then send the confirmation, or void it and create a new one from the Program.

If your client already has the link to a confirmation from an earlier acceptance of the quote, and that confirmation no longer comes to the quote's total, accepting the quote again voids it so it can't be signed or paid at the old figures. A confirmation is never voided this way once any money has been received on the booking, or once your client has signed its terms. A confirmation you raise and send yourself afterwards is left alone, whatever its total.

Where the old confirmation can't be voided because money has been received on another part of the booking, your client's link to it no longer opens. Void it yourself and create a new confirmation from the Program.

If you unaccept a quote, change a day's date and accept it again, that day keeps the booking it already had, moved to the new date. A day you took off the quote goes back to lead stage and leaves the Program, so it no longer holds its date and isn't on the confirmation. The booking itself is kept in case you have work on it. Delete it if you don't need it.

Declining a quote you had accepted and then unaccepted releases every day, not only the first. Each day goes back to lead stage and the Program's confirmation is voided. If the client has paid anything on any of the days, Decline is refused.

Raising an invoice

Most invoices start from an event. On the event's Billing page, click Copy to draft invoice: 1pm snapshots the current pricing into a new draft. (For one-off billing with no event behind it, the Invoices page has a Blank invoice button that starts from scratch.)

A draft invoice is fully editable, with the same line editor as an event's charges. Fill in the rest in the Client link & details panel right under the lines:

Bill to, company, email, and address. Use Pick contact to search your contacts by name and prefill from the one you pick. Contacts carry an Address and bill-to details field for the billing address, the make-out-to name and any ABN or company number, so picking a contact fills the whole block rather than just a name. Invoices raised automatically read the event's current Client contact, so re-pointing the Client after a lead is answered updates the next document rather than carrying the original lead forward. Where the client is a business, the document prints the company first and the person under it, which is what an accounts department needs to process it. An individual with no company on file prints one line exactly as before, and a contact that is only a company is not printed twice.
Issue date and due date (the due date defaults from your settings).
A reference for a PO or booking number.
Terms / notes, which fall back to your default terms unless you type something to override them just for this invoice.

If the event's pricing changed after you copied it, Sync from event pulls the current charges back in (this replaces the invoice's lines, so any manual edits to the invoice are discarded). Charges already on another invoice for the event are left out, so syncing never bills the same item twice.

Copying a quote straight to an invoice

A quote normally travels through acceptance, terms and the event's folio. Sometimes none of that applies and the client simply needs something to pay.

Copy to invoice on the quote does that in one step: it copies the lines, the bill-to and the terms into a standalone draft invoice and drops you into its editor. It works on a quote in any status.

Two things about the copy. The quote is left exactly as it was, because this is a copy rather than a conversion, so a quote you may still win is not consumed by billing part of it. And the new invoice carries no link back to the lead's funnel, so it behaves like any invoice you made by hand and paying it does not fire the booking-confirmed automations.

Copying an invoice to a new draft

To bill a client again for the same thing, open the invoice and click Copy to draft invoice. 1pm makes a new draft with the same lines, groups, service charge, gratuity, bill-to and terms, gives it the next invoice number, dates it today and sets the due date from your payment terms. You land in the new draft's editor, ready to change anything before you send it.

The original invoice is left exactly as it was, payments and all. The copy does not belong to an event, so it never adds to what the original booking has been billed. If it is for another booking, attach it with the Belongs to picker (see below).

Issuing, sending, and the freeze

Invoices follow the Xero model: a draft is editable, but once you issue it the figures are locked, so a sent invoice is a fixed record rather than a moving target. Move an invoice through its stages with the Mark sent, Mark draft and Mark void buttons next to the status at the top of the invoice. Voiding asks you to confirm first. There is no button for Paid. An invoice is marked paid when the payments recorded against it cover the total, so record the payment and the status follows (see Getting paid). A void invoice stays void: to bill the client again, raise a new invoice.

To get it to the client:

Email to client sends it to the bill-to email straight from 1pm.
Enable share link creates a read-only public link the client can open without logging in. Copy it, or revoke it later. A revoked link stays off when the invoice is paid, until you turn it on again.
Print opens a clean, printer-ready version you can save as a PDF.

Your logo, business number, and terms render on all of these from your settings, so the document always carries your current details.

When your client changes who it is made out to

Clients often need an invoice made out to a company rather than to them, or need an ABN, a postal address or their PO number on it before their accounts team will pay. They can fix this themselves. An unpaid invoice's public page has an Edit invoice details button, and the booking page offers the same button in the bank transfer panel, so a client can set the details before they generate their invoice.

The client can change:

Company or organisation.
Attention, the person's name.
Address and business number, one box for the postal address, ABN or VAT number and anything else the invoice needs to carry.
PO or reference number, on the invoice page only, because it belongs to that one invoice.

They can't change the amounts, the lines or the email address. Reminders and receipts keep going to the address you have.

The change is saved straight away. It updates the invoice they edited, the booking's confirmation, and any other invoices for the same booking that are still unpaid and billed to the same contact. Paid invoices keep the details they were issued with, and an invoice on the same event billed to someone else is left alone. Invoices you raise for the booking later, such as the balance after a deposit, use the client's details instead of the contact record's. Your contact record doesn't change, because whoever pays the bill may be a different organisation.

You get a notification showing the new details, and the change is recorded in the lead's conversation with what it said before and after. The invoice editor shows when your client last changed the details, and you can still edit them yourself. With Xero connected and automatic sync on, the updated invoice is sent to Xero too.

To turn the button off, untick Let clients edit who their invoice is made out to under Tax & invoicing.

What else the client can do from the page

The public page a client opens can carry up to two extra buttons next to Download PDF, neither of which prints:

A booking button, so a client with a question picks a time with you instead of emailing for one. Off until you switch it on under Tax & invoicing, and covered in appointments and the booking page.
Open your run of show, when the client already holds a live link to the event this document is about, and the document is addressed to them. See sharing the run of show with your client.

Both work on a quote raised from a lead as well as on an invoice from an event.

Finding an invoice later

The Invoices page lists them all. Filter by status (Draft, Sent, Paid, Void), narrow by issue date, or search by number, client, event, or even a line item. Each event's Billing page also lists the invoices raised from it, so you can get there from either direction.

Filing a standalone invoice against an event

An invoice raised with Blank invoice, copied straight off a quote, or copied from another invoice does not belong to an event yet. That is fine for a one-off, but it means the invoice is missing from the event's Billing page and from the lead's conversation, so nobody looking at the booking can see it.

The Belongs to picker on the invoice fixes that after the fact. Point it at the event and the invoice files itself there. Set it back to Not attached and it detaches again, so a mis-attach is not permanent.

Attaching to the event is also how an invoice reaches a lead. A lead has no invoice list of its own: it shows the invoices on the event it converted into. So there is one action here, not two.

One guard worth knowing. If the event you have chosen already holds a live invoice, the attach is refused and the existing invoice is named, rather than the event quietly ending up billed twice for the same thing. Deal with the one that is already there first.

Some invoices stay with their event, and the picker is not offered on them: a deposit, progress or balance invoice, an invoice billed from the event's billing items, and any invoice with a payment recorded against it. Moving one of those would leave the event's billing out of step with what the client has been sent or has paid.

Pricing an event covers the charges every invoice is copied from.
Your items catalog and packages covers the saved lines and bundles you build these documents from.
Recording payments and taking card payments covers recording payment and taking card online.
Turning a lead into an event covers the lead a quote is raised from.
Quote expiry dates covers the Valid until date, lapsed quotes, and chasing a deadline before it passes.