Ecommerce: Creating and Customizing Tax Invoices

You can create tax invoices for customers or for your own internal or tax purposes. The store has two types of tax invoices – regular for sales and cancellation for refunds – and you can generate these automatically or manually. You can customize invoice numbers, as well as delete, download, and print specific invoices or in bulk.

Note: the built-in tax invoices feature allows you to create unique invoices and are legally compliant, but please consult with a tax advisor on requirements for your specific region.

To enable or disable tax invoices:

1. Select the Ecommerce tab from the left menu and open your store.
2. Click on “Settings,” then “Taxes.”
3. Locate the Settings section and select “Set up tax invoices.”
4. Click “Enable Tax Invoices.”
5. Select the desired generation method and if you want invoices automatically sent with order confirmations.

Once enabled, you can view a “Manage Tax Invoices” menu within an individual order, under the tax invoices section. Once disabled, this menu will disappear.

Note: cancellation invoices will not be generated automatically and must be created manually (see below).

Manually Creating Tax Invoices

You can manually create and edit standard and cancellation tax invoices.

Standard tax invoices are automatically generated by default, but you can choose to manually create and send these. Once this is created, you can further edit this invoice as well.

Cancellation tax invoices can only be done manually. These invoices would be created if you need to process a refund for an order and invoices will be created for each individual product.

The difference between standard and cancellation tax invoices is that cancellation tax invoices will show negative totals and subtotals, as well they have their own unique number that does not correspond to a standard invoice.

To manually create a standard or cancellation tax invoice:

1. Select the Ecommerce tab from the left menu and open your store.
2. Click on “My Sales” and “Orders.”
3. Locate the relevant order, click the “Manage Tax Invoices” menu and click “Create Tax Invoice.”
4. A new page will open; choose between regular (which is a sale) or cancellation (which is a refund).
5. Select “Create Tax Invoice or “Create Cancellation Tax Invoice” depending on the intention of this invoice.

If an order is placed manually, you can create a standard tax invoice by clicking “My Sales,” then “Edit Orders.” Click to select the “Generate tax invoice upon order placement.”

Every single invoice created for each order (manual and automatically generated) are available by visiting the specific order and clicking on the Tax Invoices section. You can print or download invoices here.

Deleting Tax Invoices

To delete a tax invoice:

1. Select the Ecommerce tab from the left menu and open your store.
2. Click on “My Sales,” then “Orders.”
3. Locate the relevant order and under the Tax Invoices section click “Delete.”
4. You will be prompted to confirm; click “Yes.”

This permanently deletes the tax invoice. If you delete an order, all tax invoices will be deleted.

Note: deleting a tax invoice may affect your numeration. Consider if you need to update future tax invoice numbers (see the “Customize Tax Invoice Numbers” section below).

Downloading and Printing Tax Invoices

This can be done individually or in bulk.

DOWNLOADING/PRINTING INDIVIDUAL TAX INVOICES

To download or print tax invoices for one individual order:

1. Select the Ecommerce tab from the left menu and open your store.
2. Click on “My Sales,” then “Order.”
3. Locate the order, click on the Tax Invoices section and select “Download PDF” or “Print.”

Standard tax invoices are also attached to all order placement email notifications that you will receive when customers place order (as long as this is enabled in your notifications, and you haven’t opted to manually generate standard invoices).

DOWNLOADING TAX INVOICES IN BULK

You can download several tax invoices within a specific time period. This may be useful if you need all tax invoices within a year for your yearly taxes.

To download in bulk:

1. Select the Ecommerce tab from the left menu and open your store.
2. Click on “Settings,” then “Taxes.”
3. Locate the “Tax Invoices” section.
4. Select “Get all tax invoices at once.”
5. Pick the desired time period.
6. Select “Get Tax Invoices.”

You will receive an email (this will go to the email address where your store is registered) containing a link to this bulk download. This will be in .zip format and the invoices will be .pdfs when you expand the file. This link is valid for 48 hours.

Customize Tax Invoice Numbers

Note: this customization will affect only future tax invoices. Existing tax invoice numbers cannot be edited.

You may want to adjust your tax invoice numbers to comply with region’s tax law, due to business process, or because you’ve manually deleted an invoice which is causing a discrepancy in invoice numbers.

These tax invoice numbers are not related to order numbers; they are generated sequentially and by default start with ‘1.’ You can customize these numbers and set future invoices to any positive integer. You can also include a prefix or suffix or set the minimum number of digits (zeros will be added at the beginning to comply with this request).

To customize future tax invoice numbers:

1. Select the Ecommerce tab from the left menu and open your store.
2. Click on “Settings,” then “Taxes.”
3. Select the “Tax Invoices” section.
4. Click “Settings.”
5. Select “Next tax invoice number” and enter the desired information (prefix/suffix, the next tax invoice number you want the store to create, or minimum number of digits required).
6. Click “Save.”

Case Study

You manually created a tax invoice (e.g. #22) for an order that has since been cancelled. You don’t want to have this order/tax invoice number recorded in your system so you delete the order. Unfortunately, the next tax invoice number will be generated as #23 assuming this previous tax invoice number still exists. In order to keep the sequence of numbers going correctly, you can follow the instructions above to enter the next invoice number as #22.