How to Create an Invoice from an Estimate in QuickBooks 2019 – Part 1
Watch this QuickBooks 2019 video tutorial and we will discuss creating an invoice based on the estimates that were created. We will demonstrate progress invoicing, as well as go through the different options found in the invoice screen.
Hey there. Welcome back. We are in module four where we’re talking about working with customers and jobs. We’re all the way down now to section three, Invoicing from Estimates, and this is part one. There are two parts to this.
You’ve got those estimates that you’ve created and they’re just sitting there. The customer actually asked you to do the work and now you want to get paid. In order to get paid, you’ll need to send an invoice to your customer and that’s where this section comes in. Let’s go ahead and get started and talk about how to create invoices from estimates.
One of the things we talked about in section two when we were talking about creating the estimate is the fact that if you’re actually on the estimate you can create an invoice right here. But remember, I told you that you’re probably not going to be on this screen when you’re ready to invoice your customer. Let me go ahead and close this estimate and I’ll show you how to create that invoice.
I’m going to head over to the Home screen. If you’re following the flowchart on the Home screen you’ll notice you’ve already estimated the job so the next thing in this flowchart is Create Invoices. At this point, this will be considered accounts receivable as soon as you save this.
Notice this screen looks very similar to the estimates. The first thing it asks you is to pull in your customer and your job. And in this case, it was Tom Allen Sunroom.
Now, what should happen is you have an estimate already set up is you should see this window that says Available Estimates. These would be any estimates you’ve created that you have not yet pulled the entire thing into an invoice.
If you’ve already invoiced everything then this will not pop up for this particular customer and job.
If this doesn’t pop up for some reason and you think it should some things to look for. You want to make sure that this name here is the exact name of the estimate you created. If this just said Tom Allen but the estimate said Tom Allen Sunroom that would not be an exact match and then it wouldn’t pull this window up.
The other thing that happens very often is because you can flip back and forth between the windows when you have the open window list open a lot of times you don’t Save & Close your estimate and then that would cause it to not show up as well.
So just kind of know if this window doesn’t show up you’ll figure out why.
I’m going to choose the particular estimate that I want to pull from and I’m going to click OK. If you remember when we set up our company file, one of the things it asked us, would you like to do progress invoicing?
I explained to you that that basically meant if you have an estimate you can pull in a portion of that estimate until you’ve actually invoiced everything.
Here is your progress invoicing window and you get a few choices here. Notice the first one says Create an invoice for the entire estimate. You can also create one for a percentage of the entire estimate.
You would just put in whatever percentage you wanted. And the bottom one lets you create an invoice for selected items or for different percentages of each item. I want to just show you this one for a moment and then I’ll come back and we’ll pull in 30%.
But if I choose this bottom one and click OK what this shows me is each of the items that I have on my estimate and I can choose to put in a quantity for each one. So I may say something like three of these and one of these. Or I could come over in the percentage column and say that I want to invoice for 10% of that and 30% of that. However, you want to do it’s certainly okay.
I’m going to go ahead and cancel that for a moment and just so you’ll know when you do cancel it keeps the customer and job here. You have to actually go clear the form down at the bottom, then you can pull your customer and job back in again like this.
Here’s my available estimate window again. I’m going to choose my estimate and then click OK. And what I really want to do this time is just create an estimate for 30% of the entire estimate. I’m going to click OK and now you’ll see that it’s brought in 30%.
What I want to do now is if I wanted to add something to this I could, maybe like a shipping charge or some kind of miscellaneous charge. All I’d have to do is on the next available line just go down and find whatever it is that I want to add to this.
Now let’s say in this particular case that we want to go ahead and add a delivery charge. I’m going to add one of these at $25 and this will not affect the estimate at all. You can always go in and add miscellaneous items like that.
A couple of things to notice. If you look at the bottom left, again you have a place for a customer message. These would be some that are prepopulated by QuickBooks.
You could add your own if you wanted by choosing Add New. There’s also a place for a memo, just like we saw with the estimates. And also your customer tax code, whether they should be charged sales tax or not.
Here it tells you the amount of the sales tax, the total if there were any payments already applied to this particular invoice, and the balance due.
Back up here you have the date of the particular invoice. Let’s say that this one is dated December the 29th, it has your invoice number, and remember I told you that this will start with number one. So, you will want to change your invoice number to some number and then the next one will be numbered sequentially. You’ve also got a place for the terms and the due date of that particular invoice.
Let’s go back up here and look at your tabs again. We talked about the fact that most everything that you would want to do on a regular basis is under the Main tab. You will see that you can search through your invoices.
If you’re looking for a particular one you can use your arrows that go to the next or previous. You could use your Find option like we talked about again with estimates.
The next one over is your New Option. You’re going to be able to save this invoice and create a new one if you’d like. You can also save this as an invoice or as a PDF.
And here’s where you want to delete your invoice or notice you can just void it if you prefer to leave it in here and just have it with a zero balance.
Here you can make another copy of this invoice. Again you would do that if you needed two invoices and you want to make a slight change on one. You can also memorize an invoice or mark it as pending. Remember, if you mark it as pending it’s still in QuickBooks.
It doesn’t delete it but it doesn’t really show up on reports and things like that until you’re ready for it too. You would have to come back here and activate it.
You can print this. Notice you can preview. I want to show you what this invoice is going to look like. It’s going to be very plain at the moment. Let me zoom in here.
And you can see that it has the company name and the address. It says Invoice here on the right. There’s the date of the invoice and the invoice number, your bill to, ship to. You can see the project name is what they’re currently calling this field.
Later when we talk about customizing we can change that to say Job Name. And then you’ll notice also all of the items that you’re invoicing for and at the bottom, you’ve got your subtotal, sales tax, total, payments and credits and balance due. And again we’ll want to customize that.
I’m going to hit Close and I’m going to pull down Print again real quick because I want to show you here’s where you can print the invoice or print the batch. In order to print the batch, you would need to have several created and then choose the option to print later.
When you’re ready to print the batch you choose Batch and it knows which ones to print. Notice you could also print a packing slip, a shipping label, or an envelope right from here or save it as a PDF. So you’ve got a lot of options there under the Print.
Let me go ahead and stop the video right here, and let’s go ahead and look over at part two, and we’ll keep going and I’ll show you what all these buttons mean.
Cindy McGuckin
Cindy McGuckin is an IT trainer with over 20 years of experience. Cindy currently manages the IT Training Department at Trident Technical College, she's a Member of the Association of IT Professionals, Charleston, SC chapter and the Treasurer of the South Carolina Association of Continuing Higher Education.Cindy is a Microsoft Office and QuickBooks expert and her online courses have received hundreds of 5-star reviews. Her no-nonsense approach to teaching complicated topics makes her classes engaging and interesting.
