How to send your first invoice in AccountTrail

This walks through the whole path: setting up, adding a customer, issuing an invoice, and sending it. Ten minutes, most of which you only do once.

Before you start: set your business defaults

Open Settings and confirm three things. Getting them right now avoids editing every invoice later.

• Base currency. The currency your reports are presented in. Individual invoices can be issued in any currency regardless.
• Financial year start. Drives your Profit & Loss periods.
• Invoice defaults — your numbering, default payment terms and default tax rate. New invoices inherit these, so the fewer fields you touch per invoice, the fewer mistakes you make.

If you run more than one business, each has its own settings, numbering and reports. Check which one is active before creating anything.

Step 1 — Add the customer

Go to Customers → New customer. The name is the only strictly required field, but two more are worth filling in immediately:

• Email — needed to send the invoice or a reminder.
• Address and tax details — these appear on the invoice, and tax treatment can depend on where a customer is.

Step 2 — Create the invoice

Invoices → New invoice. The fields that matter:

• Customer — pick the one you just created.
• Invoice number — pre-filled from your settings. Let it run in sequence; gaps invite questions.
• Issue date and due date — the due date is what makes the invoice chaseable. Set it explicitly.
• Currency — defaults to your base currency, changeable per invoice. Choose it before entering amounts.
• Line items — a description, quantity and unit price each. Describe the work in the client's language, matching their purchase order if they use one.
• Tax rate — defaults from settings, editable per invoice.
• Payment terms and notes — free text that appears on the document. Payment details belong here.

If you invoice in another currency

Enter the amounts in the invoice's own currency. Conversion for reporting uses the rate for the transaction date, not today's — so historic invoices keep the rate that was correct when they were issued, and last quarter's reports do not shift when you reopen them.

Step 3 — Save as draft, then check it

A new invoice is a draft. Drafts are not visible to the customer and can be freely edited or deleted, so use that: save, open it, read it as your client will.

Check the total, the tax line, the due date, and that the line items would make sense to somebody who did not do the work.

Step 4 — Send it

From the invoice, you can:

• Send it by email to the customer's address.
• Download the PDF to attach yourself.
• Share a link — a public, token-based URL your customer can open without an account. Useful when the invoice needs to reach a finance team rather than one person.

Sending moves the invoice to sent. From there its status tracks reality: partial once some payment is recorded, paid when settled, overdue once the due date passes unpaid.

Step 5 — Record the payment

When the money arrives, record it against the invoice rather than only noting it in your bank. That is what keeps your receivables report honest — an invoice that has been paid but not marked paid will keep appearing as owed, and will keep generating reminders.

What to do next

Two things repay the effort immediately:

• Set up a recurring invoice for anything you bill on a schedule, so it is generated for you rather than remembered.
• Check the receivables report weekly. It is the fastest way to see what is outstanding and how late it is.

If a total ever looks wrong, the Support category has a walkthrough of where the arithmetic comes from.