Billing Several Orders on One Invoice

A brokerage that books you every week doesn’t want a separate bill for every shoot. It wants one invoice at the end of the month that lists every property. Spatiko calls this a consolidated invoice, and your client sees it as a combined invoice: one numbered document that bills one client for many orders, grouped by property.

You can build one by hand whenever you like, as this page shows. To have Spatiko create them for you every week or month, see weekly and monthly billing.

Combined invoices are part of invoicing, which is on Starter and up. See the pricing page. You also need permission to manage invoices.

Three ways to start one

All three open the same New consolidated invoice dialog:

• Invoices → New consolidated invoice. The button sits at the top of the Invoices page, next to Bill last period. You pick the client inside the dialog.
• A client’s Billing tab → Bill many orders. The dialog opens with that client already chosen.
• Orders list → Invoice together. In the List view, tick the shoots you want to bill and choose Invoice together from the selection bar. It only works when every selected order belongs to the same client: “A combined invoice bills one client. Select shoots that all belong to the same payer.” Only the orders you ticked are selected, whatever their dates, and orders that haven’t been delivered yet are included.

Pick the payer, the period, and the orders

Choose the Payer. The dialog then lists every order of theirs that still has something to bill.

• Period from / Period to narrows the list to a date range, and starts on last month. The shortcuts Last month, This month, and All time cover the usual cases. Orders are dated by the shoot. An order with no shoot date uses its delivery date, and failing that, the date it was created.
• Include orders that haven’t been delivered is off by default, so only delivered work is offered. Turn it on to bill shoots you haven’t delivered yet.
• Every order in the period starts ticked. Untick the ones you want to leave out. The footer shows how many orders you’ve picked and the total to bill.

Click Create draft and Spatiko opens the new invoice. The due date comes from the Net Terms default in Settings → Payments, and you can change it on the draft.

Which orders can go on it

• One payer per invoice. An order is only offered when the payer is its main client. Orders are grouped by client, not by company, so two agents from one brokerage get separate combined invoices. On a split-billed order, any co-payer keeps their own per-order invoice.
• Only unbilled work. Cancelled and archived orders are never offered. Nor is an order that’s already on another combined invoice that’s still a draft or open. If part of an order was already billed, for example by a deposit invoice, only the remainder goes on. In that case the order appears as one “Balance due” line with its address.
• 60 orders at most on a single invoice.
• One currency, your business’s.

Once an order is on a combined invoice — draft, issued, or paid — you can’t change its main client. To switch it while the invoice is still a draft, remove the order from the draft first.

Review and edit the draft

A combined draft works like any other invoice draft. It has no number yet and everything is editable. The difference is that its lines are grouped by order. Each group has the order’s own line items, a separate travel fee line, and the order’s discount spread across its lines. Each order is taxed at its own rates, so an order with a tax override keeps it.

On a draft you can also:

• Add orders. This opens Add orders to this invoice, which lists that client’s other unbilled orders.
• Remove an order. Click the ✕ on the order’s row in Orders on this invoice. The order goes back to being unbilled. You can’t remove the last order, so delete the draft instead.
• Refresh from orders. This rebuilds every line from the orders as they are now. Use it after you’ve changed an order since drafting.

Adding orders, removing one, or refreshing rebuilds the lines from the orders, and that replaces any line edits you made. Make your hand edits last.

Issue and send it

Issue & send works the same way as for a single invoice. The invoice gets its permanent number and its orders are locked. To change which orders an issued invoice covers, Revise it while nothing is paid, or issue a credit note once money has come in.

The invoice page shows the order count and billing period next to the number. The Orders on this invoice section lists each order with its share of the total and how much of that share is paid.

What your client receives

The client gets an email with the subject “Invoice INV-… from” followed by your business name. It says how many orders the invoice covers, lists the orders and the period, and has a View & pay invoice button. The invoice PDF, which the client downloads from the invoice page, prints the period at the top and groups the lines by property, closing each group with an Order total — plus the order’s subtotal and tax when it has tax or a discount.

The button opens a public invoice page. The client doesn’t need to sign in or have a portal account, which suits a brokerage’s accounts team. The page shows the invoice number, the due date (or Paid in full), the orders and period, each property’s lines, and the amount due. It has two buttons:

• Download PDF.
• Pay with the amount due. This button only appears if you’ve connected Stripe or Square. Otherwise the page asks the client to contact you to settle it.

The page runs on your custom domain if you’ve set one up. If a link has expired, the page asks the client for a fresh copy. Resend the invoice or copy the link again.

To send the link another way, open the invoice’s ⋯ menu and choose Copy payment link. That link is the same one the invoice email carries.

How payments are applied

Payments go against the invoice, not against its orders. The client can pay from the public page, or you can use Record payment on the invoice for a check or bank transfer.

• Oldest order first. A payment covers the orders in date order. Each order counts as paid once its share is covered, so its downloads unlock then if you use the pay-to-download gate.
• Orders can’t be paid on their own. Try to record a payment on one of the orders and Spatiko points you to the combined invoice instead. The client’s gallery for that shoot has no pay button. It says the shoot is billed on the combined invoice and asks them to pay using the link in their invoice email.
• No overpayment. A combined invoice has no single order to keep extra money on, so Spatiko refuses a payment bigger than the amount due.

A payment on a combined invoice sends the same receipt and notifications as any other payment. Each order’s Billing card shows an “On INV-…” row with how much of that order’s share has been paid.

Unpaid combined invoices get automatic reminders like any other invoice. Each client gets one reminder email for their combined invoices, sent separately from reminders about single-order invoices.

Cancelling an order that’s on one

• On a draft, the cancelled order comes off the draft. If it was the only order, the draft is deleted.
• On an issued or paid invoice, Spatiko issues a credit note for that order’s lines, as a write-off or as account credit. The invoice is never voided or revised, because it still bills the other shoots, which stay payable.

Go deeper

• Weekly and monthly billing — have Spatiko create these invoices for you every period.
• How invoices work: statuses and lifecycle — drafts, numbers, voids, and the Invoices list.
• Companies — why a brokerage’s agents are still billed one client at a time.
• Recording cash, check and other manual payments — logging the check a brokerage mails you.
• Delivery galleries — what the client sees on each shoot while the invoice is open.