Welcome to Invoices for Salesforce, the application designed to let you manage your sales invoices in Salesforce.
Invoices for Salesforce automatically creates invoices out of your sales captured in opportunity records. For each sale the application creates:
The invoice and invoice line items are records of two new custom objects introduced by Invoices for Salesforce: Invoice and Invoice Line Item respectively. There is no need to customize and mainatin these objects because Invoices for Salesforce automatically does it for you. For more information see Invoice and Invoice Line Item Objects.
Once created, the invoices are shown in the Invoices related list of the source opportunity page, the account page associated with the opportunity, or both, depending on the customization of the Opportunity and Account page layouts as described in Configuration and User Permissions.
The invoice PDF, which is the actual document you send to your customers, is captured in an attachment to the invoice, so the record and the PDF version are kept together.
The content and layout of the invoice PDF for a sale is based on the invoice template assigned to the sale's opportunity. For more information see Preparing your Sales for Billing.
You create invoice templates with a WYSIWYG editor that shows a representation of the invoice PDF page, and a toolbox from which you select different types of text and graphic elements you add to the page. The textual content includes static as well as dynamic data from your records.
The dynamic data from your records you add to the invoice template is expressed in terms of merge fields. Merge fields are placeholders for data that, upon invoice creation, are replaced with data from your records. So for instance, to include the billing address of your customer to the invoice you use merge fields for the Account Billing Street, Billing City, etc. In another example, you use the merge field for the Opportunity Amount to include the invoice total to your invoices. The concept of merge fields is used in Salesforce in email templates and merge templates. For more information see Invoice Templates.
Every time you save a new or an existing invoice template, Invoices for Salesforce checks for new new merge fields added to the template to automatically update the customization of the Invoice and Invoice Line Item objects. (This only applies to Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer Editions of Salesforce. Professional Edition users need to customize these objects manually as described here). For each new merge field the application creates a new field of the same type in the Invoice and Invoice Line Item object, depending on whether the merge field corresponds to a field of the sales or the product objects. The idea is that you think about invoices in terms of the invoice document, and the application automatically handles the customization of the objects that capture these invoices for you. An important implication is that an invoice template defines the blueprints for both, the invoice PDF and the content of the invoice and invoice line item records. For more information see Invoice and Invoice Line Item Objects.
At any point in time the opportunities in your organization include your sales as well as the pending deals you want to track. In order to efficiently set apart your sales from all the opportunities in your organization at the time of billing, Invoices for Salesforce introduced billing scenarios. At its core a billing scenario represents a collection of sales grouped together for the purpose of billing. You can create different billing scenarios to manage the billing of different products, and sales with different billing requirements such as products paid at once and products paid in installments. Billing with Invoices for Salesforce is always done in the context of a billing scenario. For more information see Billing Scenarios.
Once you have created your invoice templates and billing scenarios, you are ready to start billing. You can create invoices in two modes: bulk billing and single invoice mode. Bulk billing was designed to let you create all the invoices for your sales at each billing cycle in a few clicks and a few moments. You can use single invoice mode at times when you need to create a single new invoice, or re-create an existing one. For more information see Creating and Processing Invoices.
Invoices for Salesforce also assits you in the delivery of the invoice PDF documents to your customers. This is called, in Invoices for Saleforce jargon: invoice processing. You can process invoices in two ways: email and print.
When your customers accept electronic copies of invoices, you can automatically email the invoice PDF to them as the invoices are created. The email is based on one of your email templates, and the invoice PDF is attached to the email. When your customers require a printed copy of the invoices, the application can automatically aggregate the invoice PDF of all the invoices created in a single processing batch in a single printout file. These printouts files are stored in a folder of your choice under the Documents tab, so you can easily locate them, open them, and print the complete invoices batch in one go, instead of having to open and print each invoice one at a time.
Invoices for Salesforce tracks the invoices creation and processing, so you know at all times how and when the invoices where created and delivered, and if delivered, what was the delivery channel: email or print. As the invoice records are captured in Salesforce, once you receive their payment you can update your records, and you can generate reports and dashboards to gain visibility and manage the invoices payments and their collection process. For more information see Post Billing Activities.