One click invoice for all outstanding client items (tasks, expenses/products)

Self-Hosted | v4/Legacy
1

I have been loving invoiceninja (I am self hosted) but there are a few things that confuse me relating to invoicing the various items. I am not sure if the functionality I seek is missing or I simply don’t know where to look:

  1. There seems to be no way to add expenses to the same invoice as tasks? (I can add a product on the same invoice I am using for tasks however, so maybe I should add my expenses as products instead?)

  2. It would be really handy to be able to create one invoice for all outstanding items for a client. At the end of the month I have expenses and products and tasks to invoice, and rather than having to create these things separately it would be great to be able to collect all items for a client in one invoice. Is this possible?

  3. Although it is great to be able to define a product, is there no way to have that product tied to a client? My workaround has been to use expenses to track these, but not sure if that is correct. Currently I have to do that or remember that the client purchased that product (like hosting) in addition to the hours I have spent on tasks, there is no way to track it outside of expenses, or is there?

2

  1. If you set the client for the expense you can click ‘More actions’ on the expense details page to add it to an invoice.

  2. Thanks for the suggestion, we’ll consider it for the future. Feel free to create an issue on our GitHub repo.

  3. I’m not sure I understand what you mean by ‘product tied to a client’, can you please explain what you’re looking for.

3

Thanks for the response!

  1. I know I can do this to create a separate invoice, but is there no way to add this to my task invoice (like I can with a product)?

  2. I will put this in GitHub, thanks

  3. I bill on the 1st and 15th of the month. At that time I need to bill clients for all items outstanding. That includes expenses (travel for example), tasks (time spent on project), and products (1 year of hosting for example). Currently, there is no way that I can find to pre-fill that product so that I remember to invoice it on the 1st. So I have been using expenses for products because at least it remains in my list until invoiced. Products can of course apply to anyone at any time, but I am looking for a way to pre-fill this. I suppose I could pre-create an invoice and then keep adding products to it, but then we are back to the problem of how I add my tasks to that product invoice. Any suggestions?

4

  1. You should see a list of open invoices to add it to.

  2. Is the product the same on every invoice? Maybe you could use a recurring invoice but set the app to not auto-email so you can first add the tasks and expenses.

5

  1. Where would I see this list of open invoices? I can’t find it in the dropdown of actions on the expenses page, nor on any draft invoice.

  2. Again, if I go to create an invoice from a product, how can I then add expenses and tasks to the very same invoice? I can find no button, dropdown, or other interface to allow this. It seems that I am forced to create separate invoices for each except in one case: When I start with a task invoice, I am able to add a product (via an “Add Product” grey button on the invoice page).

6

1a. Also in the invoices list, the action menu on the right has no option to “add expense (or product or task) to this invoice”

7

  1. You should see it when clicking more actions on the expense details page if a client has been selected.

  2. Same as #1, if a client is set the open invoices should be shown.

8

  1. I finally found it thanks. But would it not be more useful if this was also in the actions dropdown on the main expenses page next to each item, instead of having to go into the expense details?

  2. ditto number 1 above.

9
  1. Yes, but it would require us to load all of the open invoices for each row. It could have an impact on performance. It’s more likely we’ll add the ability to add existing tasks/expenses directly from the create/edit invoice page.
10

Understood. Thanks again for the help!

11

I love Invoiceninja, but would agree the UI on this is a little clunky.

12

It so wants to go there. :slight_smile:
add expense

13

Or a dropdown:

Add…
-Task
-Expense
-Product