Payment link?

Okay, this is another newbie question but I’ll give it a shot anyway :slight_smile:

When the client opens the link in the email and clicks on “Pay Now”, they get to a page where they have to type in their details etc. and only then they can actually make the payment. Is there a way to send this link directly? Let’s assume I have 5 different client, each paying 10 $. Can I generate an “invoice template” to charge 10 $ and send it to the clients, who’ll complete their own details on the page (which they have to do anyway)?

Try using a ‘Buy Now’ link from /settings/client_portal

Will this give me a link that I could use more than once (for more than one client) instead of emailing separate invoices?

Okay, I experimented a bit with the “buy now” option and it seems to be what I was looking for. If I understand it correctly, the links generated on that page are saved “forever”?

Another question: At the moment, the system gives buy-now invoices an automatically generated number such as 0008… Is there any way to change it - or at least to make the count begin with a different number?

By the way, this is potentially also a legal issue: At least in my country, each invoice must have a different number, though not necessarily successive numbers.

Since Invoice Ninja doesn’t know which invoices one might have issued without using Invoice Ninja, it would be better if the user could dedicate a certain prefix to Invoice Ninja invoices. Let’s say the user chooses to use the prefix 9876 - then Invoice Ninja would automatically assign the numbers 98760001, 98760002 etc.

Okay, it was a stupid question, please ignore it :slight_smile:

I do have a different question though: Now that the clients type their own details, how can I change the decimal mark from a comma to a point?

  • The links aren’t saved in the database, they’ll work as long as the product exists.
  • You may want to use a separate company for the buy now links.
  • We show a decimal/comma depending on the account’s/client’s selected country and/or currency.
  1. Yes I understood in the meantime that the link is actually not a “pay link” in the usual sense of the word but a link that generates a new invoice even before the client submits his/her details. In fact, once I have the link I can just replace the product number to generate a different invoice. The problem is that the client could do the same. Another problem is that some clients click the link first just to have a look and a day or two later they click it again to actually pay - that would result in a new invoice with every click. So I have to click it the first time myself, in order to generate the invoice, and then I have to copy the URL for the client. I’d say this is a half-automatic solution. Any plans to have fully automated pay links?

  2. A separate company as in a new Invoice Ninja account? Why would I want that?

  3. Yes and the thing is that it defaults to comma but that is confusing to my clients who aren’t used to that at all. I think it would be much better to give your users (account owners) the option to bypass these conditions by choosing the default (comma/point) themselves. There are so many things you allow us to change (names of fields etc), choosing the decimal mark shouldn’t be a huge challenge…

  1. Sorry, that’s how it works. I’m not sure I understand your suggestion for “fully automated pay links”, how would it work exactly?

  2. If a client doesn’t pay the invoice you can end up with blank clients/invoices, using a separate company would keep the records separate. This is may or may not work for you depending on the specifics of your business.

  3. Which currency/country do you have set for your account, changing the settings should change the separator.

  1. This is probably not the place for comparisons with other invoicing services, but if you’d like, I can send you an email with some examples. The pay links generate an invoice and create a new client record only when the client completes the payment, not every time the link is clicked. (Maybe a temporary invoice is generated for the payment page and is deleted if the payment is not completed.)

  2. Yes, exactly, a lot of blank invoices and blank clients. But I don’t think this is an accounting problem - it is an interface problem because I will have to clean this mess up every once in a while…

  3. Just for troubleshooting, I tried setting the country to US, but it didn’t help. The currency is Euro. When I send an invoice to a client in the US, it needs to show “100.00” and not “100,00”.

  1. Sure, if you could send an example to contact@invoiceninja.com it would be helpful. If invoices are deleted after the fact how could we sure the invoice numbers remain sequential?

  2. Are you using the latest version?

  1. Sent. I understand the question but I think the approach should be different to begin with - a pay link should not begin with an invoice, but result in it, and numbers are given to such invoices only when the client has paid. It is also possible to make paylink invoices have their own prefix so they don’t collide with manual invoices.

  2. I’m using the web. With manual invoices I can choose the client’s country but that’s not possible with “buy now” links, hence my request to be able to set an account-wide default.

  1. Many of the gateway we use require us to send them the invoice number to start the payment process.

  2. If you set the account country to the US it should correct the formatting for your clients. We’ll look into adding the ability to set the country in the buy now link.

  1. Tried it, didn’t work. And even if did: It is automatically added to the invoices, which is not an option because it’s not true…

Which currency are you using?

You can remove the field from the invoice on /settings/invoice_design#invoice_fields. I realize it isn’t ideal, just trying to find a solution with the current code…

Euro.

Thanks! I’m able to replicate the problem, we’ll include a fix with our next release.

Did you mean the release announced today? Does it apply to the web version?

The one in the email today was our latest release, I think this fix is in the following release.

Any updates on setting the decimal mark for payment links?