Standalone Invoices

Summary 

This article explains how to use standalone invoices in OpenSolar's CashFlow feature. Standalone invoices are useful for billing subcontractors, additional expenses, service visits, or any project-related payment outside the core project pricing. The article details how to create and send both project-related and project-independent standalone invoices, as well as how to track their progress.

Table of Contents

• Why Use Standalone Invoices
• Sending Standalone Invoices
  • Project Standalone Invoices
  • Invoices without Projects
• Tracking Invoice Progress

Why Use Standalone Invoices

There are many situations where you might find standalone invoices useful. We built CashFlow to allow you the flexibility that solar business requires.

Here are a few examples of use cases for standalone invoices:

• You need to collect payment for a subcontractor who is not part of your OpenSolar network.
• Your customer wants to pay for an additional expense that was not included in the original contract.
• You need to invoice your customer for a service visit or other work performed after the installation is complete.
• You want to keep track of all your project-related payments in one place, even if they are not part of the core project pricing.

Sending Standalone Invoices

There are two ways to send invoices, with or without creating a project in OpenSolar. 

Project Standalone Invoices

This is best for sending an invoice for a separate cost for a specific project. For example, if you want to send an invoice for an electrical upgrade associated with a solar project, but don't want that to be part of the solar project invoices, you can use project standalone invoices to create and send an invoice to the customer associated with the project. 

1. On a sold project, navigate to the post-sale Payments page
2. In the Invoices section, select “+ Custom Invoice” to open a custom invoice dialog.

3. Fill out the fields in the custom invoice dialog. For more information on the components of CashFlow invoices, please refer to our CashFlow Invoice Breakdown help center article.
   1. Add a title and description to describe the purpose and details of the invoice
   2. Add/remove payment methods that should be available to the customer to pay this invoice
      1. If you have any credit card payment methods available, note that surcharging is enabled by default for custom invoices, and can be controlled here.
   3. Line item 1: Enter the details of the product or service you are billing for, including product, product description, quantity, price, discount, and tax rate. 
   4. Add Line Item: If you want to add more than one line item, select this again.
4. Select the “Save & Preview" button.
5. Review the invoice preview. Select “Back” to make any necessary changes. 

6. Once the invoice appears exactly as you want it to, select “Next” to preview the send invoice email. 

7. 1. The “To” field will automatically be populated with the customer contact for the project. If you have edited invoice details for this project, the revised details will appear here.
   2. Add any relevant bcc emails selecting “Add recipient and selecting/adding email addresses. Standalone invoices do not automatically include any project contacts - these must be added manually here.
8. Edit the email subject and message as needed. 
9. Click on the "Send Invoice" button to send the invoice to the customer. The customer will receive an email with a link to the invoice. They can click on the link to view the invoice and make a payment. You will be notified when the customer has paid the invoice.

Invoices without Projects

This is best for sending invoices for non-solar projects, or any scenario where there isn't a need to create a project record in OpenSolar. 

1. Navigate to CashFlow>Invoices

2. Click "+ Custom Invoice"

3. Select an existing contact or create a new one for the invoice

4. See steps 3-9 above

Tracking Invoice Progress

Once sent, the invoice will be added to the Invoices Dashboard (CashFlow>Invoices). 

If sent from a project, the invoice will also appear in the invoices section of the post-sale project page, listed before any invoices that have not yet been sent. The standalone invoice will not be included in the total project value in the CashFlow Management section of the page. 

Have more questions? Submit a request

Additional Resources:

• CashFlow Invoice Breakdown