How do I handle Invoicing?

Decorating is a business where you buy the goods, do the work, and then ask to be paid. Every job is financed by the shop until the invoice clears, which is why a shop can be busy, profitable on paper, and still short of cash.

Two habits fix most of it, and neither is about invoicing faster.

Take a deposit before you order blanks

The moment you place a purchase order for garments, the shop's money is committed. If the customer walks — or simply goes quiet for six weeks — you are holding boxes of shirts printed for an event that already happened.

A deposit before blanks are ordered is standard practice for a reason. Fifty percent is common; on custom work with no resale value, more. The size matters less than the timing: it must come before the PO, not before shipping.

It also filters. A customer unwilling to put down a deposit on a job they claim is urgent is telling you something useful, early, while it is still cheap to find out.

Invoice from the order, not from scratch

The second habit is not rebuilding the job in accounting software. Every time an invoice is retyped, three things can go wrong: a quantity is transposed, a rush charge is dropped, or the invoice goes out days late because it is a separate task that queues behind production.

Invoicing from the order means the line items, quantities and pricing are the ones you actually produced. The invoice becomes a step in the job rather than an administrative chore afterwards.

Know what is outstanding without a spreadsheet

Ask most shop owners what they are owed and you get an estimate. The number is knowable, and it changes what you do this week — whether you can take on a big blanks order, whether you chase the two invoices that are actually late rather than emailing everyone.

What is worth being able to see at a glance:

• Invoiced but unpaid, and how long each has been outstanding.
• Delivered but not invoiced — the silent one. Work you have finished and not yet asked to be paid for.
• Deposits taken against jobs not yet complete, which is cash in your account that is not yet yours.

That middle category catches most shops out. A job that shipped three weeks ago and was never invoiced is worse than a late invoice, because nobody is chasing it — the customer does not know they owe you, and you do not know either.

Make paying easy

An invoice with a payment link gets paid sooner than an invoice with bank details at the bottom. Not because customers are unwilling, but because paying becomes a thirty-second job instead of a task for whoever does the bank runs on Fridays.

Offer both card and bank transfer. The fee difference is significant on larger orders, so which one you steer a customer toward is worth thinking about.

How this works in PromoSoft

Invoices are generated from the order, carrying its line items and pricing. Payments record against the order, so what has been paid, what is outstanding, and which method was used are visible on the job itself. Deposits are recorded the same way, against the order they belong to.

Related: ACH vs credit card payments · sales reporting.