How to Create and Send Client Invoices in QuickBooks Online

If you invoice clients directly (for coaching packages, wholesale orders, corporate wellness contracts, retainer work, anything where work goes out before money comes in), QuickBooks Online has a solid built-in invoicing system. Before I walk through how to use it, though, it's worth asking whether you should.

Do you actually need QBO to handle your invoicing?

If you're a service provider who takes payment at the time of service (massage, yoga, most retail), you probably don't need to invoice in the traditional sense at all. Your booking platform or POS handles the transaction, and that revenue just needs to get recorded in your books, not invoiced.

If your booking or scheduling platform already sends invoices and collects payment (Acuity, Square Invoices, Honeybook, etc.), there's no reason to also invoice through QBO.

QBO invoicing is the right call when:

• You invoice for work that isn't tied to a booking platform (consulting, coaching packages billed up front, wholesale orders, corporate contracts).

• You need more control over invoice formatting, payment terms, or line-item detail than your other tools offer.

• You want your invoicing and your books in the same system with no sync issues.

If that sounds like you, here's how the process works.

Before you start: make sure your products and services are set up

QBO invoices pull from a list of Products and Services you've defined. Each one is tied to a name, a price (if fixed), and an income account in your Chart of Accounts. I covered this setup in my QBO setup walkthrough if you haven't done it yet. Without this step, you'll be filling in line items manually every time, which defeats most of the point.

Step 1: Start a new invoice

Click the green + New button in the upper left, and under the Customers column, select Invoice.

Step 2: Add the customer

Choose the customer from the dropdown. If this is a new customer, you can add them directly from the invoice screen. For a new customer, fill in at minimum their name, billing email, and (if you want payment reminders to work) their mailing address. You can always add more detail later.

Step 3: Set your invoice terms

A few fields matter here more than they might seem:

Invoice date. This is the date you're issuing the invoice, which usually means today.

Due date. QBO will auto-fill this based on the terms you select (Net 15, Net 30, due on receipt, etc.). If you haven't set default terms for this customer, you'll need to pick one. For most service work, Net 15 or Net 30 is standard. Due on receipt is for work where you want to be paid immediately.

Terms. This determines the due date math. If you don't have a standard terms preference set up, do that now (Settings gear > Account and settings > Sales > Sales form content > Preferred invoice terms). It'll save you from picking terms on every invoice.

Step 4: Fill in the line items

For each thing you're billing for, add a line with the product/service, description, quantity, and rate. If you set up your products and services properly, most of this auto-fills when you pick the item.

If you bill hourly, your "quantity" is hours and your "rate" is your hourly rate. If you bill by the package or project, quantity is 1 and rate is the package price. If you need to itemize multiple services, add a separate line for each.

Tax, if you collect it, gets handled in a line of its own. If you're not sure whether you should be collecting sales tax on what you sell, talk to your tax preparer. Rules vary by state and by what you do.

Step 5: Review and send

Scroll down and double-check the totals. Preview the invoice if you want to see what your client will receive.

When you're ready, click Review and send. QBO will let you edit the email text (default is fine for most uses, but customizing the message lives here), and then click Send invoice to send it directly to the customer email on file.

If you'd rather send the invoice another way (your own email, printed and mailed, etc.), use the dropdown next to Save and send and pick Save or Print or Preview instead.

After the invoice is sent

Creating an invoice isn't the end; it's the beginning of tracking whether and when it gets paid.

QBO will automatically track the invoice as open until the payment comes in. When you receive the payment (either through QBO Payments if you've set that up, or manually when a check or transfer arrives), you'll record it against the invoice to close it out. Payments that hit your bank account through your bank feed need to be matched to the corresponding invoice, not categorized as new income, or you'll end up double-counting the revenue.

For staying on top of which invoices are still open and how overdue they are, the A/R Aging Summary report is your best tool. I wrote a full walkthrough of that in How to Track Unpaid Invoices in QuickBooks Online.

If you want the whole invoicing setup handled

QBO invoice setup (designing your template, configuring your products and services, setting up payment terms, syncing with payment processors) is the kind of thing I do for clients all the time. If you'd rather have it set up right the first time instead of figuring it out as you go, book a free call and we can talk about it.