> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.dmly.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Overview
> How DMLY Finance bills your clients with invoices, orders, subscriptions and payments — and how it differs from your own DMLY plan.
**Finance** is where you bill *your clients*: the invoices you send a salon customer, the
order you take for products, the monthly plan a client pays you for. It is your money, from
your customers, into your bank account.
It has nothing to do with what you pay for DMLY. Your own DMLY plan and its receipts live in
[Billing](/billing/plans) and are a completely separate system — a different set of records
that never appears in Finance. Two things called "subscription" exist in DMLY, and they are
not related:
A **client of yours** pays **you** on a recurring basis, from an Offerings Plan. This is
the one documented in this section.
**You** pay **DMLY** for your workspace. Nothing here affects your clients or shows up
in Finance.
## The six tabs
Finance opens as one hub with six tabs:
The bill you send a client.
Every payment in one ledger — online, manual, or refunded.
A sale of products that moves stock when you confirm it.
Recurring billing for a client, from an Offerings Plan.
A client's running ledger. You never write to it directly.
Money going out. Not linked to a client and never billable to one.
Nothing on a statement is written by hand. Recording a payment posts a credit and refunding
one posts a debit — those two are what move a client's balance most of the time. Sending an
invoice posts a debit, and voiding one posts a credit for whatever was still outstanding.
[Coupons](/finance/coupons) are not a tab in this hub. They live under the **Settings** button
in the Finance page header, alongside Taxes, Invoice, Expenses, Loyalty, Shipping and
Gateways.
## How the pieces relate
The **invoice** is the bill a client receives and pays, and payments attach to it. Not
everything routes through one, though. An [order](/finance/orders) becomes an invoice only
when you run **Generate invoice** on it — confirming an order moves stock and nothing more.
An appointment skips invoices entirely: booking payments are taken as a direct gateway pay
link (see [Appointment payments](/appointments/payments)).
You raise an invoice by hand, generate one from an [order](/finance/orders) on demand, or
let an auto-charge [subscription](/finance/subscriptions) renewal generate one for you.
Sending moves the invoice from **Draft** to **Sent** and delivers it to the client — on
WhatsApp by default — with a pay link.
An online payment through a connected gateway reconciles the invoice automatically. You
can also record a payment yourself if they paid you in cash or by bank transfer.
Paying part of the balance marks it **Partially paid**; clearing the balance marks it
**Paid**.
Line prices are copied from your [Offerings](/offerings/overview) at the moment the invoice
is created. Editing a service's price later never changes an invoice you already issued —
which is what you want, and why you should fix a wrong price by voiding and re-issuing rather
than expecting the old invoice to update.
Every line on one invoice must be in the same currency. DMLY does not convert between
currencies, so a mixed-currency invoice is rejected rather than guessed at.
## Raising an invoice turns a contact into a client
When you create an invoice for a contact, DMLY moves that contact's lifecycle stage to
**client** for you. That is the intended behaviour — someone you bill is a client — but it
means your client list changes as a side effect of invoicing. See
[Client profile](/contacts/client-profile).
## You need a gateway to take money online
Out of the box you can raise invoices and record payments you collected yourself. To send a
pay link a client can actually click, connect a payment gateway first. DMLY supports Stripe,
PayPal, Paystack, Razorpay, MyFatoorah and Mercado Pago.
Gateways are connected under **Configurations → Integrations**, not in Finance. Finance
settings → **Gateways** only restates the point — **Connect a payment gateway to accept
online payments and share pay links.** — and links you there; it says this whether or not a
gateway is already connected. The message that appears only when none is connected is in the
**Payment link & QR** modal: **No payment gateway is connected yet. Connect one to generate a
payment link.**
With more than one gateway connected and no provider chosen, DMLY uses the one you
connected first. If you care which processor takes a payment, choose it explicitly rather
than relying on that.
Connecting is done by pasting API credentials, and **no gateway registers its webhook for
you** — you set the endpoint in the provider's own dashboard. Skip that step and payments
will be taken but your invoices will still show as unpaid. See
[Payments and gateways](/finance/payments-and-gateways).
## Sending is WhatsApp-first
An invoice goes out over [WhatsApp](/channels/whatsapp) by default, using a Meta-approved
template. WhatsApp will not deliver a template Meta has not approved, so if invoice messages
are not arriving, check your template status before anything else.
The **Payment link & QR** action on an invoice opens a modal with a scannable code you can
show at a counter, **Visit link**, **Copy link**, and **Share via** checkboxes for **Email**,
**SMS** and **WhatsApp**. The action is hidden on paid and void invoices, and on any invoice
with no client attached. **Download PDF** gives you the branded invoice as a file, using your
workspace name, logo and business details.
## The statuses you will see
| Where | Statuses |
| ------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Invoice | **Draft**, **Sent**, **Partially paid**, **Paid**, **Void**, **Overdue** |
| Payment | **Pending**, **Succeeded**, **Failed**, **Refunded** |
| Order | **Draft**, **Confirmed**, **Cancelled** |
| Subscription | **Active**, **Paused**, **Cancelled**, **Expired** |
A payment only ever moves forward through its statuses — a refunded payment never returns to
succeeded.
Every order you create starts as **Draft**, because the **Confirm order immediately** switch
in the order builder is off by default. A Draft order is the only one you can delete; its
other action is **Confirm order**.
The order list also offers **Fulfilled** and **Refunded** labels. Neither is reachable for
an order you create in Finance; they belong to the separate e-commerce store sync. Ignore
them.
## Voiding, not deleting
Only a **Draft** invoice can be deleted. Once you have sent one, void it instead — voiding
keeps the record, credits the client's statement for the amount still outstanding, and claws
back any loyalty points earned on that sale.
Voiding is how you cancel a sent invoice, and the record stays visible forever. Do not send
a draft you are unsure about expecting to delete it later.
## What runs on its own
Once a day, DMLY marks invoices past their due date as **Overdue**, reminds clients about
renewals coming up in three days, and rolls subscriptions that are due. Subscriptions set up
for **Auto-charge** are charged against the client's saved card, and the renewal generates and
sends an invoice on its own.
Without Auto-charge, a renewal only advances the billing period. No invoice is created, no
statement entry is posted, and the client is sent nothing — so nothing is owed in Finance
until you open the subscription's row menu and click **Generate invoice** yourself.
If an auto-charge fails, DMLY retries every two days and pauses the subscription after the
third failure, notifying the client each time. See
[Subscriptions](/finance/subscriptions).
## Set your defaults first
Before your first invoice, set your currency, due days, numbering and tax in
[Finance settings](/finance/settings) — these become the defaults on every invoice you raise,
and fixing them afterwards means re-issuing documents.