Basics | Plugins | Howtos

invoicing: Generate invoices

The invoicing plugin adds functionality for automatically generating invoices.

Overview

In applications with this plugin you usually have a command Sales ‣ Generate invoices in your main menu.

You also have a button in the toolbar of a partner.

Both commands open your invoicing plan, i.e. your plan to let Lino generate a series of invoices.

The invoicing plan has a button in the toolbar. Click on this to fill your plan. Lino then gives a series of suggestions, one line for every invoice that Lino suggests to generate.

Click on the button of a suggestion to actually generate that invoice.

Or click on the button in the toolbar to generate all suggested invoices.

Concepts

invoiceable

A database object that can generate an invoice item.

invoicing order

A database object that can act as a starting point for running an invoicing plan.

invoicing plan

A ephemeral database object that represents the plan of a given user to let Lino generate a series of invoices.

See Plan for a description of the individual fields.

It has a list of invoicing suggestions.

invoicing suggestion

One item of an invoicing plan, which represents a single invoice that Lino suggests to generate.

See Item for a description of the individual fields.

invoicing task

A database row used to group business activities into different parts for which end users can start separate invoicing plans.

Each invoicing task is also a background task that can be scheduled to run automatically.

invoicing event

A database object that is part of a series and potentially causes a new contingent should be invoiced.

can yield a series of invoiceables for a given date.

invoicing events can be instances of any model, but the generator’s get_invoiceable_event_formatter() must understand them.

event pass

A product that, when sold, gives its owner the right to use (participate in) a given number of invoicing events.

event pass type

The type of an event pass. It specifies the number of events, and other information like when to write a next invoice.

invoice recipient

The partner who gets the invoice.

invoiceable partner

The partner who asks for the service or good and who will consume or own it.

This is usually synonym of “client” or “customer”.

Invoice recipients

In applications with this plugin you can open the detail window of any partner to specify an invoice recipient.

For example 10 children from an orphanage attend to different activities. The orphanage pays for it. The price of each activity depends on the age of the child. We want to send the orphanage one invoice (not 10 invoices) every month. On that invoice they want to see the costs separated per child. Every child is an invoiceable partner, the orphanage is invoice recipient.