14.2. Create

To make our first invoice we have to go to a project details screen like the one in the next picture.

At the bottom of the upper left part of the menu you will see a little option called 'Invoice create' that is used to start making an invoice (duh). When we click on this option we are presented with a screen similar to the one in the next picture.

As you can see there are quiet a few pieces of information here. Let's browse through them while I'll try to explain them to you.

• Accountant: Here you select the person that is making the invoice. Default this will be the user creating the invoice (makes sense, no?) but it could be that you are making the invoice on behalf of the manager of your department.

• Invoice ID: Since most fiscal authorities expect a logical and coherent administration it pays off to use a good numbering scheme. In TUTOS there are several ways to customize this. You could use incremental numbers (as we are doing here) but you can also use incremental numbers preceded with the year and month numbers. This makes for easy storage and retrieval outside of a computer system.

• Customer: Here you can enter the customer that should be billed. Since this is not always the same as the customer for whom the work has been done this is a very nice feature.

• sent at: The date at which the invoice will be sent to the customer. This way you can prepare your work and have the invoice sent out at a specific date.

• state: This is the current state of the invoice. Obviously since we are creating the invoice its state is 'new'. But as time marches on it will change state to 'ready to sent', 'to be payed', 'reminded', '1st reminder', '2nd reminder', 'payed' or 'cancelled'.

• Positions: These are the individual posts on the invoice. At this moment, they are still empty since we haven't added anything yet.

• Possible positions: These are the things that are optionaly billable. The first line mentions the project itself, The second line handles about some workhours that have been made. But since someone earlier decided to mark it 'unbillable' that's how it shows up here. Clicking on the ste itself or the coded descriptor in the first column will get you to the screen where you maybe could change the state (if you have enough access rights).

• The third line is billable as is indicated by the (currently empty) checkbox at the end of the row. The same goes for the remainder of the rows.

First thing we will do now is enter a customer (eg. Linux Consulting), and check the checkbox of all rows involving tasks. Then we click on the 'Enter' button to proceed and are presented a screen similar to the one in the next picture.

As you can see, the rows each have their own incremented number, and things like amount, description and individual price are still editable. Also the applicable tax-rate and the related currency can be selected here. You are free to make any adjustments you like like changing the description to something a customer would understand when it would be presented on an invoice. When you're done, simply click the 'Enter' button again. In our example we state that every task costs 500 Euro before proceeding to the next screen.

After clicking on the 'Enter' button we still get to see the same screen but now all changes as we made them earlier are stored in the system. We can click on the 'See entry' menu option in the upper left part of the menu to see the invoice in its final form (see next picture).

So now you now how to make an invoice in TUTOS. Truth be told, there is currently not a lot you can do with it but believe you me, that will change sooner than you think!