[Video Walkthrough] All about Invoices

INTRO: How do I get paid?

In one of our earlier videos 103: Events, we briefly explained that in order to get paid for your services, you need to add line items to an Invoice with a price attached.  In our last video, 201: Products & Packages we showed you how to set up Product and Package Templates so that you wouldn’t have to type out these Invoice line items for every product and service you offer every single time you send a Client an Invoice, but NOW we are going to show you how to pull those products and services from your Templates into your Invoices and tell Pixifi how you’d like to have this process automated for you and the level of automation you desire!  Most importantly, we are going to show you HOW TO GET PAID!

CREATING AN INVOICE: (00:55)

You can send Invoices that are attached to an Event, a Project, a Client, or even Invoices that are not attached to anything specific.  Even though you have the ability to create general Invoices, we recommend you do this as little as possible so that your Invoices are as well-organized as they can possibly be for you.  As you learned in our Events and Projects videos, certain variables will appear for E-Mail Templates including E-Mails like Invoice Reminders and if your Invoice isn’t linked up with a Client, Event, or Project, none of those specific variables can auto-populate properly when sending your Invoice Reminder E-Mail.  In that instance you would only have access to the Invoice specific variables/tokens like Invoice ID, Invoice Date, etc.

Any Invoices you create from within the Events or Projects sections will all show up under that Client’s “Invoices" tab because they are all also associated with that Client as well, but Invoices created from within the Clients tab will only show up under that section because they haven’t been linked to any specific Event or Project.  There has been some confusion in the past over this concept so I want to explain a little bit about how this is structured.  Think about the Client as a filing cabinet and every Event or Project associated with that Event is an isolated folder within that filing cabinet.  So, all the Invoices, whether general, Event-related, or Project-related, will all show up in a master list under the Client’s Invoice tab.  

BUILDING AN INVOICE FROM PRODUCT TEMPLATES: (02:18)

So, in the spirit of helping you develop good habits, we are going to create our first Invoice from within an Event.  Once inside your Client’s Event, you can go to the Invoices tab and click [+ Create New Invoice].  As you can see, my Invoice ID auto-populated with the next Invoice number for me, which we will teach you how to do later in this video but for now I just want to note that you can name your Invoice manually if you choose using whatever naming convention you have developed for your business.  Next you will see I can add a Purchase Order Number (this is optional) as well as assign and adjust the issue date and due date of the Invoice.  The default setting for the due date will be the date of the Event, so you will have to change that due date to two weeks or 30 days before your Event or whatever date you want your Invoice paid in full.  I’m just going to give it a subject line and usually I recommend using the same naming convention you use for your Event Names and Contract Names, etc for the Subject Line of your Event Invoice so that it is all consistent and easily searchable later on.   

Once we’ve created this Invoice it will take us to the Invoice editor tab where we can begin building the Invoice.  Before when we briefly went over building Invoices, we taught you how to add each line item manually.  This time around we are going to show you how to pull in your beautifully pre-created line items from your product Templates!  To add a line item, click “Add Line Item" and then instead of typing in your line item manually, simply select your desired product item from the drop-down list of Products you see up here on the right.  You can even filter them, if you would rather see all of your products by year or by product type, etc.  When these items auto-fill, they will auto-populate all the other fields associated with that Template as well so you should just be able to click [√ Save] but if you need to change anything, you can do that from within this pop-up box.  If that product Template was created to have options, you can click this slide down menu where you can select the options you want included on this Invoice.  Each Product Template you add will continue to total at the bottom of your Invoice and if you ever want to add a discount instead we have also created that option.  You can either add your discount as a fixed dollar amount to be subtracted from your total OR as a percentage discount based on the current Invoice total at the time that it is added.  So make sure you wait until you are ready or you will have to delete that discount and reapply so the new percentage will be reflected.

As you can see, adding each line item from product Templates saves you tons of time while building your Invoices, but we want to take you one step further and show you how fast you can populate an Invoice from a Package Template!  Even if you don’t offer set Packages to your Clients, you can still create some informal Package Templates that include common things that lots of people tend to order together so that you can have Pixifi pull in multiple things into an Invoice for you at once where you can then add to it or tweak it as you need to for that specific Event/purchase order.  

BUILDING AN INVOICE FROM PACKAGE TEMPLATES: (05:09)

So, to populate your Invoice with a Package Template, you will simply click  [+ Add Line Items from Package] and you can select from a list of all the Package Templates you have pre-created.  These Package Templates could be your wedding brand’s main 3 Packages or it could also be something like various print Packages that Clients might add to their orders, Album Packages that include parent albums, or any other grouping of product Template items you might sell together.  When these are added to the Invoice as a Package Template, they will quickly populate multiple line items based on what you have included in your Package Templates.

So once you’ve chosen your Package Template to pull from, the next field you’ll want to select is the “Totaling Type" and if you click on the little magnifying glass next to the totaling type drop down box, you will see a preview of how each type would display the line items on your Invoice before you choose which totaling type you prefer to use.  

AUTO-INCREMENT INVOICE ID Set-Up (06:08)

Another cool time-saving feature you can use is Pixifi’s Auto-increment feature where you can set up automatically incrementing Invoice IDs for the naming (and name field populating) of Invoice IDs!  To set this up, go to your SETTINGS tab, Application settings and when you scroll down you’ll see “Invoice Options" where you can tell your system how to auto-name your Invoices!  You want to give it a starting number like 000001 which you would do by typing that value into the “Auto Invoice ID Current #" if this is literally your first Invoice ever but if it isn’t, you could choose something like 000500 so you can continue adding new ones from there but still allow yourself some room to add older Invoices into your system with manually assigned numbers consistent with your Invoice history.  

In the next box, you can also add text to your Invoice name, whether that be an abbreviation of your brand name or inserting the year that the Invoice is created by using the {year} variable (or both), but you ALWAYS need to make sure you use the variable {InvoiceID} to tell this part of the Invoice naming to use the number generated by the box above in it’s name for you!  So one example of an Invoice name could be “SP{year} | {InvoiceID}" which would then be replaced/displayed as “SP2020 | 002145"

Now that you’ve saved those settings by clicking the [√ Update] button at the bottom, you can test out what your Invoice ID’s will look like by clicking on the little shortcut lightning bolt button and [+ Add Quick Invoice].  Right here you’ll see a live example of your auto-populated Invoice ID for the Invoice you are about to create.  If you like the way it’s showing up, go do a happy dance and drink some more coffee (unless of course it’s after 4 pm).  

CREATING PAYMENT TERM TEMPLATES (07:58)

What the heck is a Payment Term Template?  These are pre-designed Templates that you create to tell an Invoice how to split up it’s payments and what the expectation is regarding payment due dates and amounts.  Payment Terms can be created and assigned to any Invoice as they are created manually, but as with all other Pixifi automation, you can set your system up to assign these terms automatically by creating a Payment Terms Template.  

Go to SETTINGS, LISTS/TYPES, Payment Terms and click [+ Add Payment Term].  Name the Payment Term and assign the type.  I always name the terms by how they’re going to Eventually function but you can name yours however you see fit!

Once you hit [√ Save] the Payment Templates will drop down where you can create the payments that are due and on what dates.  These can be broken down by fixed dollar amounts, percentages of the total, equal payment amounts, percentage of remainder, and remaining balance.  Each split method you choose will prompt different settings based on its design and purpose.  These settings should be fairly self-explanatory and there are a lot of them to choose from so we are not going to go into detail for each of them but if you need more help, just ask your amazing peers in the Pixifi group!  

Okay, so bear with me for a second: within each of these Payment Term Templates, you’ll see a “Payment Auto-Reminder Template" option; this does not automatically send out an E-Mail for this payment because you may want to set up a series of Reminders for each payment in your term.  For example: two-week Reminder, due-date Reminder, late Payment Reminder, etc.  The purpose of this is to attach Payment Reminder Templates to each of the payments on the Invoice and these Payment Reminder Templates will be what your Payment Reminder Template E-Mails will pull from!  You may need to replay that sentence again, but there really is no other way to clearly say that in a sentence, so next we will show you what this looks like in action.

So click on this Manage Reminders button where you will be taken to this “Payment Reminders" section.  You can add new Payment Reminders by clicking [+ Add New Reminder Template] but in an effort to clarify what we just went over in a real life example, I’m going to show you one of my Payment Reminder Templates.  First, take note of the NAME of my Payment Reminder Template so that you can recognize it when you see it used later.  

This Particular Reminder Template has 3 Reminders added to it; in other words, when this Template is attached to a payment, that single payment will have 3 separate Reminder E-Mails that go out at different times. The first E-Mail will be sent 4 days before the payment is due, the second will be sent 8 days after the payment was due, and the third will be sent 20 days after the payment was due.  Now, if you’re worried about setting up so many Reminders because you don’t want your Clients who have already made their payment getting harassed by your automated E-Mails after they’ve already paid, one really cool feature about the way we have set up these Reminder Templates is that because each separate payment is given it’s own Reminder Template, once that payment is made, the system drops all other Reminders attached to that payment Template that were scheduled to go out.  So, if my Client pays on time after receiving my first Reminder E-Mail for that payment, they will never see the other two.  If my Client decides to pay a week early, they will never receive any of the Reminder E-Mails I have set up since mine all start from 4 days before the payment is due!  Did you really think Pixifi would make you look tacky!???   

Once you’ve created your Payment Template, then on your Payment Term Templates, you can have each of the payments that will be generated auto-schedule the new Payment Reminders. So in my example, the first payment that is 20% as the retainer, will now have these 3 Payment Reminders set on it, and then the 2nd payment of the remaining balance will also auto-schedule these 3 Payment Reminders on it as well.

MERCHANT OPTIONS (11:52)

Now that you know how to create Invoices, schedule payments, and schedule Payment Reminders for each payment on the Invoice, it’s time to get paid online so that when you send an Invoice you can get paid instantly!  We have many different 3rd party Merchants that you can choose from.  Some of them include Square, Stripe, PayPal, BrainTree, Authorize.net, and more. There is even one “Merchant" labeled as “Manual Payment Instructions" where you can give specific instructions on how your Client can pay by check, wire transfer, VenMo, etc.  

To add one of these Merchant providers, just navigate to SETTINGS then MERCHANT.  At the top Right, click on [+ Add New Merchant] and choose the Merchant in the dropdown box to enter in the various settings that it requires.  You can even select multiple Merchants to give your Client a few options for their most comfortable/convenient method and give each Merchant a “sort order" which will determine the order in which they are presented to your Client for selection.  You can also select a custom button text which will change the text on the button seen from your Client’s Invoice.   And just like that, you’re in business!

HOW TO SEND AN INVOICE (13:04)

You’ve learned how to create an Invoice, and you’re ready to get paid now that your Merchant provider is set-up and ready!  If you remember back to Class 105, we went over how to create E-Mail Templates!  One of the many instances where E-mail Templates are wonderfully useful is invoicing!  When you are ready to send your Invoice, click the [Send] or [Send .pdf] button to send the Invoice to your Clients; the only difference between the two being that one only sends your Client the external link where they can access their Invoice to pay online and the other does the same but also attaches a PDF to the E-Mail for the Client’s records.  You have to make sure your Invoice E-Mail has been populated with the external link variable or your Clients will NOT be able to view their Invoice live or make payments online!  Again, as a refresher, this must be done within the E-Mail Templates module and the type must be set to “Invoice" for you to be able to see them when you’re working in the Invoices tab.

CLOSING REMARKS (14:02)

Class dismissed!  Thank you for taking the time to learn all about Invoices.  In this video, we taught you how to build an Invoice manually, building Invoices from Packages, Invoice discounts, Payment Terms, Payment Reminders, Merchant account options, how to set up auto-increment Invoice IDs, and how to send an Invoice!    In the next video, we will be showing how to create and send Contracts!