Invoicing customers

Sequence provides a flexible, compliant invoicing solution. Automate invoicing with billing schedules or create one-off invoices in the dashboard. Invoices can be found in the ‘Billing’ tab. You can sync invoices and credit notes with your Accounting & ERP systems using our native integrations.

Sequence automatically calculates line items (including usage-based charges) for invoices from billing schedules. Line items correspond to prices associated with the billing schedule.

Invoices include a cover page with business and customer details, charges summary, payment info, and a customer memo. The second page shows line item groups and individual line items.

Customize the style of your invoice and credit notes to keep billing and invoicing experiences aligned with your brand. Reach out to a member of the team to set your color theme and add your company logo to invoices and credit notes issued to customers.

Sequence supports regular sales tax, reverse charge and tax exempt invoices. When a reverse charged customer is invoiced, the invoice includes a label indicating the invoice is subject to reverse charges as well as the tax id of the buyer (if provided). A zero tax rate is applied to reverse charged invoices.

Sequence automatically generates incremental invoice numbers with custom formats. Reach out to a member of the team to make a change to the format or numbering sequence. Alternatively, manually define your invoice number during invoice finalization.

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Managing invoices

Sequence supports multiple states to capture the lifecycle of an invoice, from initial creation to marking an invoice as paid. By default, new invoices are created as drafts. You can edit any part of a draft invoice, including line items and recipient information.

Invoices have the following status: Draft, Final, Sent, Voided

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Sending invoices to customers

Provide customers a delightful billing experience and send branded invoices from Sequence. Send invoices individually, via a bulk workflow or fully automatically. When you send an invoice through Sequence, your merchant email address will be included in CC.

Invoice email notifications include a breakdown of the subtotals and a PDF attachment of the invoice. Your customers can get a detailed view of the invoice by viewing it in their customer portal. If you have Stripe enabled, your customers can go to the Stripe checkout directly from here.

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Editing invoices

Sequence is designed for financial operators and provides a flexible editor to make any adjustments to draft invoices. Rename, change rates and quantities or add/remove line items from invoices.

Invoice adjustments:

• Edit existing line items (Name, Rate, quantity, tax rate)
• Add new line item groups and line items
• Remove line items
• Apply Invoice Discounts

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In-progress invoices

With Sequence, you can track upcoming invoices ahead of time with in-progress invoices. While an invoice is in-progress, you can recalculate it to account for new usage data. You can also see a preview of the line items and the invoice PDF. In-progress invoices cannot be edited. Once the invoice date is reached, the invoice will change its status from in-progress to draft, at which point you can make changes or send the invoice to your customer.

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Payment status

Once an invoice has been finalized, you can update its payment status to one of the following options.

If you reconcile invoice in your ERP or Accounting system, you can use our Xero or QuickBooks integration to automatically update the payment status in Sequence for invoices.

Example invoice lifecycle:

1. Sequence billing schedules creating draft invoices at month-end
2. Billing operator reviews and finalizes open invoices
3. Billing operator issues invoices to the customer
4. Payment is received
5. Invoices are marked as paid

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Recalculating invoices

Recalculating Invoices reduces the time spent on manual invoice updates, and makes it easier to test invoices in your sandbox environment.

Recalculate an invoice to update usage-based line items with new data. To recalculate an invoice, click the ‘recalculate’ option above the invoice preview.

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Invoice numbering

By default Sequence will automatically generate your invoice and credit note numbers. These will be sequential, ensuring there are no gaps. The default invoice and credit note prefixes are SEQ and SCN. You can change the prefix in settings. We recommend using a separate numbering sequence to avoid any clashes with your Accounting suite or ERP. To adjust your starting number, reach out to the team. An invoice or credit note will be assigned a number when it is finalized or voided.

If you would rather specify the number each time you finalize/void an invoice or credit note then this is an option that can be set on your account. You will then be prompted to enter the number when you finalize or void an invoice/credit note. This can be useful if you are generating invoices in multiple systems and want to avoid duplicate numbers. An easier alternative is to use a different prefix in different systems. This way you can still benefit from Sequence’s automatic numbering without risk of duplication.

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Invoice dates

This setting allows you to adjust Sequence invoice dates to match your current receivables and accounting process. Sequence supports three different accounting date settings for invoices.

1. Billing date (recommended): This will set the invoice date ‘Billing date’ to the day after the billing period. For example, if an invoice for a monthly rolling contract has 1st - 31st March as the billing period, the invoice date will be 1st April.
2. Billing period end date: Set the invoice date to the last day of a billing period. For example, if an invoice for a monthly rolling contract has 1st - 31st March as the billing period, the invoice date will be 31st March.
3. Invoice issue date: Set the invoice date based on when you chose to issue the invoice to your customer. For example if you issue your invoice on March 4th, the invoice date will be March 4th.

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Create a one-time invoice

• Dashboard

1. Go to the Add New button and click Invoice

2. Add line items to the invoice

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Local invoice compliance

Ensure your invoices adhere to the laws and regulations of the involved countries. While Sequence supports a range of countries and currencies, please ensure you comply with local e-invoicing and regulatory requirements. For country-specific invoicing guidelines, view this example guide.