Few documents are as important to a small business as their invoices. Not only does a quality invoice bring money in the door, it’s a sign of professionalism and reliability. Nothing hits the confidence of a potential client quite as much as the sight of a terrible invoice.

Invoice #853, via PennLive / NYT

In Xero, for legal reasons we don’t generate the official document until you approve an invoice. There’s never been any other way to see what your invoice would look like. Customers had to email test invoices to themselves to see changes to their branding! With the release of live preview for invoicing, happily, that will no longer be required.

Simply click the Preview icon on an invoice in any state (including draft!) to see a live preview of the invoice you’ve entered so far. Any changes to branding or line items will immediately update this view. You’re also able to preview the mobile view alongside desktop. This is worth doing, as we’re now seeing around one in five online invoices viewed from a mobile device.

This view of the document is what your customers will see when they view your online invoice. It’s also very close to the PDF Xero generates from the branding profile (we’re working hard on those last few differences). In fact, we’ve made Preview easy to access while you’re working on your branding profile as well! See it under the options menu for each branding profile in Invoice Settings. Unfortunately, DOCX templates don’t play nice with HTML. If that’s how you’re generating your invoices then this feature won’t be as useful to you. We’re looking into other options for user-generated templates.

Another recent feature, ‘View online invoice’, aimed to make it easier to send out an invoice link. If you’ve set up a service like Stripe or Braintree, your customer can use this link to pay immediately! This was so handy we’ve now given it a permanent home in the Invoice Options menu, renamed as “Share Invoice”.

As you might know if you’ve been following Rod’s Xerocon keynotes, we’re hard at work on a swathe of invoicing improvements. Eagle-eyed viewers may spot some unfamiliar invoicing screens… For more detail on what we’re planning and what’s coming up, watch this space.

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Source: Xero