Here's how to send an invoice that you've created in FreeAgent to a client.
Open the invoice by clicking on it from the All invoices screen.
This opens the invoice.
How you can send it
You can choose to save the invoice as a .pdf for printing or for sending as an e-mail attachment from your own e-mail programme. Alternatively, you can send it by e-mail directly from within FreeAgent.
Or, you can set automatic rules so that FreeAgent will send the invoice for you and also send reminder e-mails to your client and send a thank-you e-mail to your client when the invoice is fully paid.
Save as .pdf for printing
To save the invoice as a .pdf, click the Save as PDF button.
Choose where on your computer to save this file so that you can browse to it again when it's needed.
Once you've saved the .pdf and sent or given it to your client, remember to click the "Mark as Sent" button here to mark the invoice as sent in FreeAgent, so that it will appear in the accounting section and the overview screen, and will show as sent in the list of invoices.
E-mail from the system
To e-mail this invoice directly from within FreeAgent, manually, without using the automatic e-mail settings, click Send by Email.
This brings up the "Email an Invoice" screen.
In the From box, you can choose from any of your users' e-mail addresses. You may need to set up a new user.
You can also choose, by ticking the little box under the From box, whether you want to e-mail a copy of the invoice to this user's e-mail address.
In the To box, if you've already entered an e-mail address for this client on the Contacts screen, you'll see that here, but you can overtype it. If you haven't put in an e-mail address for the client, then the To box will be blank and you'll need to enter a valid e-mail address.
If you put "[contact_billing_email],[contact_email]" in the To field, the e-mail will go out assuming that the contact has one or other of the e-mail addresses entered, and if you use the tag [billing_or_contact_email] in the To field, then if you've put in a billing e-mail address that will be used, but if there's no billing e-mail, FreeAgent will use the contact's main e-mail address.
The Subject field is filled in automatically for you, giving your company's name and the invoice number. But you can overtype this field if you want the e-mail to have a different subject.
The invoice will automatically be sent as a .pdf attachment to the e-mail.
Attach other files
You may also want to attach other files to this e-mail, such as your terms and conditions.
To do this, click the Attach Files link.
This brings up a list of the files you have uploaded into FreeAgent's Files area. Tick the box(es) next to the file(s) you want to send, then click Attach Selected.
You can also upload more files here if you need to.
Attach expense receipts
If this invoice is for a project, and you've attached receipts to the costs that you're billing on to your client, you can choose to attach those receipts to the invoice e-mail too.
Tick the "Attach Expense Receipt(s)" box next to the Attach Files link to do this.
Body of the message
Into the Message box, type the text for the body of the e-mail. We've put some sample text for you to start with. You can also use the tags on the right-hand side to help you build the text.
Below the Send E-mail button, you can see there's a preview of the invoice so that you can double-check it before you send it and even add more items to it.
Once you're happy with the invoice, click the Send E-mail button to send it out.
FreeAgent tells you the invoice has been sent.
Its status has automatically been changed to Sent.
As sent by e-mail
And by going to my e-mail inbox, I can show you what the final message looks like.
You can see that it's put in the exact message I entered for the text in the body of the e-mail, and the invoice is attached to the message as a .pdf.
Don't forget that you can also set up automatic e-mails to send your invoices to your clients.
Check e-mail history
Underneath the invoice you'll find a history of all the e-mails FreeAgent has sent in relation to this invoice, and their status, for example Sent, Bounced, Delivered.
This helps you identify whether your client has received the invoice, or whether your client's e-mail server has blocked it.
I can't see it.
If you manually mark the invoice as sent then you won't see this table under the invoice.
And if there's no value within the Status column then the invoice was sent before this feature was activated in FreeAgent.
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