Invoice Options

Offer customers the option to get an invoice

If offer invoice option is set, then customers will be asked if they require an invoice at the ‘Billing’ section of the checkout and will be presented with a field where they can enter their tax reference number. You can decide whether tax number entry is optional or required with the require tax number on invoices configuration.

You should note, however, that this setup has nothing to do with whether customers will be offered the chance to actually pay by invoice - that is controlled purely by your ‘payment method’ setup. If you want to offer customers the chance to ‘pay later’ (pay by invoice), then you need to set up one or more payment methods that are of the ‘invoice flow’ type and make them either generally available on your site, or attach them to specific customers.

The offer invoice option merely controls the billing flow of the order after it is placed. In normal circumstances, for an order that is say, being paid for by card, the order will be billed as a ‘cash sale’, thereby generating a simple ‘receipt’ document for the customer. Some customers may, however, need a full, formal tax invoice in order to reclaim their expenses. If you’ve selected the offer invoice option such customers would be able to enter their tax number and the order would then be billed as an ‘Invoice’, generating an ‘invoice’ document to be sent to the customer. Note, that payment would still be made and applied immediately as the customer checked out just as if they hadn’t chosen to get an invoice, so the invoice, once received by the customer, will show as paid.

You should note that even if you don’t offer invoices at the checkout, you can still manually promote cash sales to invoices in the admin panel after the order has been placed. This is useful for when customers contact you after ordering and ask for an invoice.

You should also note that if the customer DOES NOT choose the ‘require invoice` option when checking out, but then goes on to select an ‘invoice flow’ type payment method (i.e. a payment method like Bank Transfer, that allows them to pay later), they will automatically be asked for their tax number (again, you can control whether it is optional or required) and billing will be as an ‘invoice’ not a ‘cash sale’.