Creating, sending and chasing invoices
Updated
On this page
Sidebar: Invoices. The top of the page shows total invoices, awaiting payment, paid, and total revenue with the outstanding balance underneath.
Statuses
Draft, Sent, Paid, Overdue, Cancelled. Clients see a Sent invoice labelled "Pending" in their portal.
Creating one
Three routes:
- Create Invoice on the invoices page — pick a client, add a description, an amount, a due date and notes. This makes a single-line invoice in Draft.
- Collect Payment on a client's profile — lists their unpaid appointments and reservations grouped by pet, and rolls the ones you tick into one invoice. This is the right route most of the time.
- Reservation checkout — settling a stay produces its invoice automatically.
Sending
A draft invoice has a Send button. It marks the invoice as Sent and emails it to the client. Watch the toast, because it tells you the truth:
- "Invoice sent to client" — the email went out
- "Invoice marked as sent, but the email could not be delivered" — the invoice moved on, the email did not
- "Invoice marked as sent, the client has no email on file" — add an email to the client record
If the second message appears repeatedly, check Business Settings, Email Settings, Delivery Log. See Controlling which emails Alaga sends.
Getting paid
- Pay Now on an invoice opens a hosted payment page in a new tab for card providers that support it. If your browser blocks the popup, the toast offers an Open link.
- Clients can pay themselves from the portal, under Invoices and Payments, with a Pay button on anything unpaid.
- With a terminal-based provider, take the payment at Checkout instead.
- Mark Paid records payment taken outside Alaga.
Row actions also include viewing the invoice and downloading a PDF.
Overdue and reminders
Two automations run without you:
- Every hour, invoices that are Sent and past their due date flip to Overdue. Due dates are evaluated in your business's own timezone.
- Once a day, clients with overdue invoices are emailed a reminder, oldest first. The same invoice is not chased more than once every 7 days, and clients without an email address are skipped.
Invoice numbers
Invoices created from the invoices page or from Collect Payment are numbered sequentially per business, in the form INV-00001. Invoices generated by a package sale use an older code-based format, so they look different — that is expected, not a fault.