Sending a quote or invoice as a PDF — Help

Some clients live on the web link. Others hand everything to a bookkeeper who wants a file in the inbox, or an accounts department whose system swallows a PDF and ignores a URL. 1pm generates a real PDF of every quote, invoice and agreement, on the server, and sends it alongside the live link so both kinds of client get what they expect.

This article covers where the PDF comes from, the dialog that sends an invoice, choosing between the link and the file, what your client receives, and what happens on the rare occasion a PDF cannot be generated.

A real file, not a browser print

Until now the only way to get a PDF out of 1pm was your browser's own Print to PDF, which produces something that depends on the browser, the printer settings and the person doing it. The PDF 1pm generates is drawn by 1pm: same layout every time, on any device, ready to forward.

It carries the whole document, not a summary. Your logo, the client and bill-to details, grouped and loose lines, tax, service charge and gratuity, the deposit and balance staging, your terms, and the "How to pay" panel with your bank details. What the client sees on screen, what prints, and what lands in their inbox are built from one model, so the three cannot drift apart.

Emailing an invoice

Email to client on an invoice opens a dialog rather than firing the email off immediately. An invoice that just goes reads mechanical, and there is nearly always a line worth adding.

The dialog shows:

Who it is going to. The bill-to email if the invoice has one, otherwise the linked contact's current email. If neither exists it says so and stops, rather than letting you write a note first and fail at the end.
The subject, editable for this send.
A note, optional, which goes at the top of the email above the standard message.
The message, exactly as it will render. It is read-only here because it is your account's template, edited once under Account, then Tax & invoicing, not rewritten per send. Keeping the boilerplate as the backbone means the link, the number and the total cannot be edited out by accident while you are writing one sentence.

The note leads and the standard message follows, so the email reads like a person sent it without you retyping the useful parts.

The link, the PDF, or both

Underneath are two ticks, both on by default, so a dialog you do not touch sends what it has always sent.

Include the link to the online invoice. The live page, always showing the current balance, and the only route to paying by card.
Attach the PDF. The file, named for the document, for example Invoice-INV-0042.pdf.

Untick the link for a client who files paper and never clicks anything. Untick the PDF for a client who pays online and would rather not have an attachment. Untick both and 1pm refuses the send, because there would be nothing for your client to open.

Leaving the link out does not leave a gap in the message. The [invoice link] token is real text in your template, so 1pm removes it and closes up the line it sat on rather than shipping the token to your client.

Sending issues the draft

If the invoice is still a draft, the dialog says so plainly: sending marks it as sent. That is deliberate, and it happens before the PDF is drawn.

The reason is that the document prints its own status. Issue it afterwards and the client receives a PDF stamped "Draft" for an invoice that is anything but, and the public page will not offer Pay now until the invoice is sent. Doing it in this order makes one atomic approve-and-email, the same as Xero.

For the same reason, the share link cannot be switched on while an invoice is a draft. Emailing it is the path that issues it. Revoking a link stays available in every status.

Quotes and agreements

Quotes and event agreements attach their PDF automatically when you send them, with no ticks to set. The client gets the live link (where they accept, ask a question, or sign) and a file for their records, named Quote-… or Agreement-….pdf.

Everything else about those sends is unchanged: a quote threads into the lead conversation, and an agreement goes to the confirmation's bill-to address.

Downloading a PDF yourself

You do not have to email a document to get the file.

On an invoice or quote, hit Print in the header, then Download PDF on the print view. The same view keeps a Print / Save PDF button for paper.
On the client's own page at the invoice link, Download PDF does the same job. Clients can help themselves, which saves a request landing on you.

The download is scoped to the document, so a revoked or frozen link stops handing out the file too.

When the PDF cannot be generated

Rendering happens on the send request, and it is fast, but it is not impossible for it to fail.

When it does, 1pm does not quietly send the email without the attachment. Your note may well say "invoice attached", and an email that plainly is not what was promised is worse than no email. The send stops, the flash tells you why, and support gets the details automatically. You can untick the PDF and send the link on its own if the document needs to go today.

The one thing worth knowing: if the invoice was a draft, it stays marked as sent, because it was issued before the render was attempted. The message says so rather than leaving you to discover it.

Quotes and invoices covers building the document in the first place.
Getting paid covers recording payments and taking card payments online.
Paying by bank transfer covers the "How to pay" panel that appears on the document.
Event confirmations covers the agreement your client signs.
Automations covers editing the standard message each document goes out with.