Create an invoice

An invoice needs almost nothing to go out: a client and one line item. Everything else is there when you want it.

From the sidebar, go to Revenue → Invoices and click New invoice. Enter the client (their email is all that’s required; if they’re already a contact, the rest fills in). Add line items, each with a description, quantity, unit price, and a billing type of either fixed (a flat amount) or hourly (quantity is hours, unit price is your rate).

Tax and discounts apply to the whole invoice, not to individual lines: pick a tax type that fits where you operate (VAT, GST, HST, a sales tax, or none), and set any discount or surcharge as a percentage or flat amount. Pick the currency, optionally a due date, and click Send. Your client gets a branded email with a link to view and pay.

You can bill each invoice in its own currency, which helps when clients pay in different ones. Wrenbase records each invoice in the currency you sent it in and doesn’t roll multiple currencies up into one at an exchange rate.

Following an invoice

After you send, you can follow an invoice from draft, to sent, to paid, right on the invoices list. Wrenbase also shows where your client is on their side, so you can tell an opened invoice from one that’s been scheduled for payment without emailing to ask.

One distinction worth knowing: paid means the payment has been reported, and settled means you’ve confirmed the money is actually in your account. For anything paid outside Wrenbase, marking it settled is your confirmation the funds really landed.

How invoices reach a client

Each client has a delivery preference, set on their record, and it decides how everything you send them arrives. There are two choices:

• Send link (the default): your client gets an email with a link to a secure page where they can view, download, and pay. Nothing is attached to the email, so a forwarded message can’t hand the invoice to anyone else, and it keeps your sending costs down.
• Send with attachments: your client gets the invoice as a PDF attached to the email, along with any documents you’ve added to that invoice. Use this when a client’s accounts-payable system or bookkeeper needs the file by email rather than a link.

It’s the same setting for invoices and quotes, and it applies to every document on them. There’s no per-file switch: with Send with attachments, everything on the invoice travels in the email; with Send link, everything stays on the page. To route a copy to a client’s AP inbox as well as their main contact, add that address under Additional recipients.

Resending an invoice

If a client says they never got the invoice, open it and choose Resend email. It sends the same invoice again to the same people, using the current delivery preference; it doesn’t create a new invoice or change anything on the one you already sent. To avoid accidentally sending the same thing twice, resend waits a few minutes between attempts and won’t fire while a send is still going out.

Attaching documents

Sometimes the bill needs to travel with paperwork. Attach it to the invoice or quote and your client sees it on the same page where they pay. Common things to send: a contract, a statement of work, a timesheet, an itemized receipt, or a portfolio. If you’re a freelancer or agency, this is how you send a portfolio and SOW with a quote so the client sees your work while they’re deciding, then a signed contract or timesheet with the invoice.

Open the invoice or quote, find Documents for the client, and add a file. Give each one a short name, like “Signed contract” or “March timesheet,” so your client sees that instead of a filename. You can add up to three files, 5 MB each, before or after you send. The page your client sees always shows the current set.

PDFs work for everyone. Excel files can be enabled for your account on request. Every file you attach is scanned for viruses before it’s accepted, so anything that doesn’t pass is turned away automatically.

Whether these files go by link or as email attachments is one setting on the client, not a choice you make per file. See Link or attachments below. Wrenbase accepts PDFs for now.

Finding documents later

Documents you attach also show up under a project’s Files tab, filed alongside the invoices and bills for that project. Use the Custom documents filter to see just these, and select the ones you want to pull down as a zip when the client or your accountant asks for the set.

Quotes

A quote is what you send before the work is agreed: here’s the price and scope, do you want to go ahead? It looks like an invoice, but your client accepts or declines it instead of paying.

Create one under Revenue → Quotes, the same way you build an invoice. Once a client accepts, you convert it to an invoice in one step. The conversion carries everything over, line items, currency, tax, PO number, and notes, so you don’t retype anything, and the invoice stays linked back to the quote it came from.

Payment requests

Sometimes you need someone to pay you but a full invoice is more than the moment calls for: a deposit, a retainer, a one-off charge. A payment request is the lighter document for that, with the same result, a link where the other side pays.

Use an invoice when there’s a “bill for delivered work” mental model, and a payment request when there isn’t, like a booking fee or a deposit to hold a date. Create one under Revenue → Payment Requests: set the amount and what it’s for, then send.

Recurring invoices

If you bill a client the same amount on a regular cadence, a retainer or a subscription, set up a recurring schedule under Revenue → Recurring. You define the invoice once and choose how often it repeats: weekly, every two weeks, monthly, quarterly, or yearly, with a start date and an optional end.

Each schedule can send on its own or wait for you to review each one first. You can pause a schedule and resume it later, which keeps the setup intact when a client goes on hold.

Credit notes

When you’ve already sent an invoice and something needs to come off it, an overcharge, a return, a goodwill credit, a credit note is the record. It’s the clean way to reduce what a client owes without editing or deleting the original invoice.

Create a credit note from the invoice it corrects, give the reason, and set the lines you’re crediting. Wrenbase numbers each one and won’t let the total credited exceed the original invoice.

Templates

If you send the same kind of invoice over and over, save it as a template under Revenue → Templates so new invoices start pre-filled. A template holds the parts that stay the same, line items, currency, tax, your hourly rate, and notes, but not the client, so you pick who it goes to each time.

A template is for work you bill repeatedly but on no fixed schedule. If it’s the same client on a set cadence, a recurring schedule is the better fit, since it handles the timing too.

Related

• Payments: how clients pay and how the money reaches you
• Branding: make your invoices look like yours
• Contacts: the clients your invoices go to