Invoice
In accounting, invoice means a claim on a customer.
- Layer
- Lexicon
- Defined in
- Lexicon
- Components
- 6
Not a rule
Bookkeeping convention — not codified. US GAAP governs recognition, measurement and presentation — not the mechanics a bookkeeper uses to get there. Anyone citing a standard for this word is citing the wrong thing.
Every citation in this system, with the text we read and the date we checked it, is in US GAAP and where these rules come from.
Invoice, in use
Quoted from the 9 documents that use the word — what it does to an interface, in the spec's own sentence.
Three general ledgers, three different opinions about what an invoice is.
The complete receivables stack: quote → order → fulfilment → invoice → collection → cash application → revenue.
An accrual that doesn't reverse double-counts the expense when the real invoice arrives and is coded to expense.
Schedules, accruals & roll-forwards — 3. Accrued liabilities
For founders
The same idea written for a founder: what it costs a startup that ignores it, and what to do in a real month.
- What to put on an invoice: a field-by-field guideThe fields a B2B invoice needs to get paid on time: legal names, a numbering sequence, dates, terms, tax lines, PO and remit-to, and how to fix one.
- Card and ACH payments: applying and reconciling themHow customer card and ACH payments land in the bank net of fees, how to apply them to invoices, handle partial payments and reconcile the deposit.
- AR aging and collections: a practical guide for startupsHow to read an AR aging, work out DSO, run a dunning cadence, record a promise to pay, escalate a late account and clear unapplied cash.
What it is not called
Each of these is a real word for a different thing. Using it here is what makes a product read as though it was built by someone who has not done the work.
- bill (that's what we owe)
Components that render this
The concept is not documentation-only. These are the components that name it in their specification, grouped and stated exactly as the catalog states them.
2Cards
Family specAlso in Receivables
Work with this concept
The calculators that compute it and the ledger payloads that carry it. A definition is where a reader starts; these are where they go next.
Defined in Lexicon. This page is generated from that document, so the two cannot disagree.