I have used square.com’s invoicing feature extensively and have just now started utilizing their API.
My question is: Is there any way to send multiple invoices based on one order? When using invoices on square.com, you could send multiple invoices based on 1 item such as “water”. I am trying to replicate this so my clients do not have to create an order every time they want to send an invoice.
Let me know if there is anything you can help me with or any workarounds.
Thanks
Hi @helpaspectv welcome to the forums!
If you’re trying to just have different payment options (like a deposit, and then later a balance), you can set the payment request in the Invoices API. However, if you’re wanting to send out invoices for multiple customers, then unfortunately you would need to create a new order and new invoice for each of them, since currently the invoices are tied to a single order and customer.
Please let me know if I misunderstood or if you have additional questions!
I see, is there a way to have an invoice generated immediately after an order is created? I’m trying to find a solution where my clients don’t have to repeat the same process twice in order to send an invoice. What would you recommend as the most user-friendly method to do this?
Hm, maybe I’m misunderstanding your use-case here. If you’re using the API, you can of course create the invoice immediately after the order (and passing the order into the invoice) by calling the appropriate endpoints. Can you clarify what you’re trying to do?
My team is creating a billing software with square’s invoicing & customer API. The goal was for a user to generate an “item” similar to square.com’s website, then send multiple invoices based on that item.
However, we soon discovered the API was significantly different than that of the website. So far, we are at the point where a user has to generate an order with all the required information, then go to a different page to fill out an invoice, then finally publish the invoice. Our main focus is to make it as user-friendly as possible by combing the first two steps of creating an order and invoice at the same time because these steps are essentially repetitive in the case of invoicing.
We are trying to replicate the ease of use for invoicing similar to square.com, but as mentioned earlier, the api is different. So the main question is: Is there a way to replicate the simplicity of invoicing using the API?
What are you having them do on the invoice page? As far as I can tell, the invoice just needs a few items: order_id, location_id, customer_id, what the delivery method, and how many payment requests you intend on doing…these all can come from the API, without needing to ask the customer for anything (aside from customer_id, but presumably you would’ve already gotten that through a different page, or if they have a login). So after you create the order, you can create the invoice with the above information without asking the customer for anything.
Yes, that’s exactly how it’s set up right now.
My clients will be primarily using this dashboard to send invoices of the same description and dollar amount to ~30-40 people throughout the year (dues and fees). So the way it’s set up now, they have to first create the order then create an invoice which is extremely repetitive to do for that amount of people. Trying to find a work around where we can combine the two steps
Right, I’m trying to ask what you mean by “two steps”, I’m not following. On the backend, you can just create the order, and then create the invoice via the API, without asking for more information from the customer. Please clarify if I’m misunderstanding still.