Invoice statuses
The statuses
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Draft | Not sent. Only you can see it, and you can change anything. |
| Open | Sent, money still owed |
| Partially paid | Some paid, a balance remains |
| Overdue | Unpaid, past its due date |
| Paid | Settled in full |
| Cancelled | Voided |
| Written off | Given up on as bad debt |
| Pending proposal | Created by a proposal that hasn't been accepted yet |
Three of these are ways of describing "open"
An invoice is really one of five things: draft, open, paid, cancelled or written off. Partially paid and Overdue are two ways CoreHue describes an open invoice, so you can spot it in a list.
Overdue outranks Partially paid. A balance past its due date reads as overdue whether or not part of it has been paid.
That's worth knowing, because an invoice with no due date can never show as overdue. No reminder is ever sent for it either. If you want chasing to happen, set due dates.
Pending proposal is a proposal's invoice waiting on the client. Until they accept, the invoice can't be paid, and its link shows them nothing. Accepting opens it up.
Cancelled or written off
Both close an invoice, and your accountant will care about the difference.
Cancelled means it shouldn't have existed. Wrong contact, wrong amount, duplicate, or the job was called off before it started.
Cancel invoice sits in the invoice's three-dot menu, on an open, partially paid or overdue invoice.
An invoice with payments recorded against it can't be cancelled outright. CoreHue stops with This invoice can't be cancelled yet and lists those payments with the options that fit: Refund payment or Record refund, Correct payment, Remove erroneous payment, or Write off balance instead. Once nothing is left to account for, the cancellation goes through.
Write off, also in the three-dot menu, is for an invoice that was correct and genuinely owed, where you've accepted it isn't going to be paid. Any payments already collected stay on the record, the outstanding balance leaves your expected revenue, and reminders stop. You can add a reason, which is kept for you rather than shown to the client. It's offered while the invoice still has a balance.
Use write off for the client who went quiet after a real job. Use cancel for the invoice you created by mistake.
Reopening
Reopen invoice, in the header of a written-off invoice, puts the balance back and starts chasing again.
A cancelled invoice is not reopened. It stays as a record, and Duplicate gives you a fresh invoice to send instead.
What you can and can't edit
Editing is about payments, not about whether you've sent it.
No payments recorded: everything is editable, draft or open. A sent, unpaid, even overdue invoice edits exactly like a draft.
A payment you recorded by hand: the invoice locks. Remove every manually recorded payment and it unlocks.
A card payment through Stripe: the invoice locks permanently, because that money genuinely moved. If you need to charge more, create another invoice.
Paid, cancelled or written off: locked. Create another invoice if the financial details need to change.
This is deliberate. An invoice is a financial record. Being able to quietly rewrite one a client has paid is how disagreements turn into disputes.
Deleting
Delete invoice, in the three-dot menu, only exists on a draft that has never been sent and has nothing recorded against it. Anything else is cancelled instead, so the record survives.
A deleted draft leaves a permanent gap in your numbering. That's correct. Repeated numbers would not be.
Sending and resending
Sending a draft makes it open. Once it has been sent the main button reads Resend invoice, which sends the same document again rather than making a new one. That's what you want when someone has lost the email.
You can also record a payment against a draft. CoreHue warns you first with Invoice is in draft, because recording a payment marks the invoice as sent.