Create and send an invoice

An invoice is the centre of Finance. Bookings, orders and subscriptions all produce invoices rather than being billed directly, so this is the page you will use most. You build an invoice from your Offerings, send it to a client on WhatsApp with a link they can pay, and watch it move from Draft to Paid.

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Create the invoice

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Send it on WhatsApp

Sending flips the invoice from Draft to Sent, posts the amount to the client’s statement as money they owe you, and mints a pay link. The message goes out on WhatsApp by default, preferring DMLY’s approved dmly_invoice_sent template. An approved template is what lets the message reach a client outside the 24-hour window; inside an open window a freeform message still goes through. See Connect WhatsApp. Every Sent invoice also gets its own public PDF link: a page that opens with no DMLY login, so a client can view or download it straight from that WhatsApp message. There is no copy-link button for it in the invoice list; it travels with the send instead. It is what fills the template’s pay-link parameter when there is no payment gateway link to offer, so the message never goes out with a blank link, and, if the client’s WhatsApp window happens to be open at the moment you send, the invoice PDF itself follows right behind as a second message, delivered as a document. Building a flow of your own around an invoice? The same link is available to it as {{invoice.pdf_url}}. A Draft has no such link, matching everything else about a draft: there is nothing client-facing to open until you send it.

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The pay link and the QR code

Open Payment link & QR on an invoice to get everything you need to collect the money. Under Share via you can send the link on WhatsApp, SMS or Email. WhatsApp is the default and the one to reach for. The link always matches the Balance due, not the original total. If a client part-pays, the next link you share is re-minted for what is still outstanding; you never have to work out the remainder yourself. An invoice with nothing left to pay, no contact attached, or one that has been voided will not produce a link.

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The PDF

Download PDF gives you the invoice as invoice-<number>.pdf, using the same layout as the print view. It is branded from your business details: logo, address, email, phone and registration number, with your workspace name as the business name. Fix anything wrong there rather than on the invoice. That’s your own copy, downloaded from inside DMLY. It is different from the public link a client gets automatically when you send the invoice, covered above. That one needs no login and works even for someone who has never seen DMLY. Invoice numbers are issued per workspace and never collide: INV-0001, INV-0002, and so on. Numbers are zero-padded to four digits, and the prefix is yours to change in Finance settings.

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The statuses

Overdue is applied automatically by a nightly job, not the moment the clock passes midnight; an invoice paid in the meantime is skipped. Refunded and Partially refunded are worked out from what you have given back rather than set by hand, and an invoice only reaches either once it has nothing left to collect. Refund part of a bill that still has a balance and it keeps reading Partially paid (or Overdue), because an outstanding balance is the more useful headline; the refund is recorded on the invoice either way. Void outranks all of them, so a voided invoice reads Void whatever money moved. A refund is never treated as a negative payment. It does not reduce what the invoice has taken, and it does not raise the balance due, so refunding can never reopen an invoice you have already settled.

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Reminders: chase the money automatically

You don’t have to watch due dates yourself. Two ready-made automations in the template library cover the chase:

• Invoice payment reminder starts the moment an invoice is sent, then waits until a day before the due date and messages the client: the amount, the due date, and a Pay invoice button carrying the pay link. The part that makes it safe to leave running: when the wait ends it looks at the invoice again, and if the client has already paid (or you voided it), the reminder is skipped, not sent. As the template puts it, it “Stops automatically if the invoice is already paid.”
• Overdue invoice escalation picks up the ones that slip through: it fires on the Invoice overdue trigger, sends the pay link, waits three days, and follows up.

Invoice overdue fires once per invoice: the nightly sweep that stamps an invoice overdue is also what fires the trigger, and an invoice can’t go overdue twice. So an escalation flow never re-fires day after day on the same unpaid bill; build the follow-up cadence inside the flow, as the template does. See Triggers.

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Record a payment yourself

Not every payment comes through a gateway. Record cash, a bank transfer or a card-machine charge against the invoice and it lands in the same ledger as an online payment. The methods available are Cash, Bank transfer, Credit / debit card, Cheque, EFTPOS and Other. You can also record a payment against a client directly from their client profile.

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Voiding an invoice

Voiding cancels an invoice without deleting it. Two things are worth understanding:

• Only the unpaid balance is credited back. Money the client already paid stays recorded against the invoice. Crediting the full total would double-count what you have already received and push their statement balance negative.
• Loyalty points earned on that sale are taken back, so a voided sale does not leave points behind that were never really earned.

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Invoices and loyalty points

Loyalty is off until you switch it on under Loyalty in Finance settings. Once it is on, a paid invoice earns the client loyalty points, and a personal coupon is created for them automatically once their balance crosses your redeem threshold. Minting that coupon needs three settings filled in, not just the threshold: a redeem threshold above zero, a discount value above zero, and a coupon code prefix. Leave any one of them blank or at zero and points keep accruing while no coupon is ever created, with nothing to tell you why. If clients are earning points but never receiving rewards, check all three. Invoices raised from an appointment are the exception: their points are awarded when the appointment is completed, not when the invoice is paid. This stops a client earning points for a session they never turned up to.

The invoice sent but the client got no WhatsApp message

The notification is only dropped when two things are true at once: dmly_invoice_sent is not approved by Meta, and the client’s 24-hour window is closed. A pending or rejected template still delivers a freeform message if the client messaged you within the last 24 hours. So check both: your template status under Connect WhatsApp, and whether the client has messaged you recently. Also confirm the contact is reachable on WhatsApp at all; a contact with no WhatsApp identity cannot receive one.

There is no pay link on the invoice

A link needs all of: a connected gateway, a contact on the invoice, a balance above zero, and an invoice that is not voided. A fully paid invoice has no link because there is nothing left to pay.

The client paid but the invoice still shows as owed

A gateway payment applies to the invoice only when the provider tells DMLY it succeeded. Every gateway needs its webhook endpoint set manually in the provider’s own dashboard; DMLY does not register it for you. If that step was skipped, charges succeed at the provider and never reach the invoice. See Payments and gateways.

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