How to generate a manual invoice in WooCommerce and WordPress?

Are you running a blog, an expert guide, a store and wondering how to invoice in WordPress? In this article, I’ll show how to do it in five minutes. Manually or by automating the whole process. Then you will be able to focus on growing your business.

First, let’s see the process of issuing a PDF invoice in WordPress in a situation where there is no classic order form on the website. This situation occurs especially if the agreement is made through the contact form, or other communication channels. In this situation, you should enter all the customer or product data, tax rate, net price, and other information.

How do I generate an invoice in WordPress from scratch?

Install and enable the free Flexible Invoices for WooCommerce & WordPress plugin. In the menu on the left side of the admin panel, you will see the Invoices tab. If you hover over it, the plugin menu will expand. If you want to quickly issue a document from scratch, select All Invoices, a panel with PDF invoices for WordPress will open, at the top of which will be the Add New button.

After clicking it, a panel for adding a new invoice will open. The first thing to fill in will be the data in the field Seller. You can set this information in the plugin settings, in the General tab, so that each time you start creating a new PDF invoice in WordPress it will be filled in automatically. If you prefer, you can fill in the vendor data on an ongoing basis, each time you create a new invoice.

Is there an option to automatically add customer data?

Yes. After you have filled in the seller data, you can start filling data in the customer fields. In the Customer field, you can search for customers from the database. On the right, there is also a Fetch client data button, allowing getting the necessary customer data into the required fields. You can also add a new customer by manually filling in the available fields: Client name, Address line 1, Address line 2, Zip code, City, VAT Number, Country, Phone, and Email.

The two basic sections, Seller and Customer, are behind you. Now it’s time to fill the invoice with the most important content – Products. There is a separate column with a table where you can find Product, SKU, Unit, Quantity, Net Price, Net Amount, Tax Rate, Tax Amount, and Gross amount.

How do I add products to an invoice in WordPress?

Below the table, there is the Add product button. When you click it a panel with a field for searching products from the WooCommerce Products will open. Next to it, there is a pencil symbol. It allows you to enter the names of the products manually. And then you will be able to start filling the previously mentioned fields. The only defined field with a choice will be Tax rate, where you can find tax rates defined in the plugin (or taken from WooCommerce tax rates settings if the plugin is activated).

By selecting the Add product button again, you may add more products to the PDF invoice in WordPress. If you made a mistake and add too many items, you can use the red cross on the right side of the table and remove the unnecessary items. When you have the list of products ready, don’t forget to add shipping.

Is it possible to issue an already paid invoice in WordPress?

Under the Products, there is the Payment and other info section. This is the place where you can find information about the total amount that the customer will have to pay when he receives the document. You can also fill in the field Paid if the customer has already paid for the order. Depending on the payment, you can choose the status of the invoice. There are two options: Paid or Due.

You can also choose the currency of the PDF invoice outside WooCommerce and the payment method. At the end of this section, finally, there are Notes. Here you can write, for example, the order number, information about tax regulations, and additional annotations.

Is there a way to issue multiple invoices faster?

If you’re still with me, congratulations, you’ve made it through almost the entire invoice process with our plugin. What’s left to do is to set up the issue, sale, and payment dates, which you will define in the Dates and Actions meta box. It’s an intuitive pop-up window with pop-up calendars. So you may simply select the date field and mark the date you are interested in.

And finally, the crème de la crème of PDF invoice in WordPress creation, the Publish button. When you click it, the new invoice is generated and will appear on the list of all invoices. You can still modify the document on the fly by confirming the changes with the Update button. It will appear in place of the Publish button. If you want to view the document on your device, you can download the invoice using the Download Invoice button.

Is it possible to have a faster-invoicing solution with no extra costs?

Yes, you’ve just gone through the invoicing process using Flexible Invoices for WooCommerce & WordPress when you’re on pure WordPress. This option is useful for example if you are running a blog, or you are a specialist collecting orders through regular email correspondence. The process gets faster when you already have a WooCommerce based store.

In this type of configuration, the whole tedious process of filling in data falls on the customer when placing an order. All you have to do is go to the order and find the meta box titled Invoice, then select the Issue Invoice button and that’s it. Quick and pleasant from one to ten invoices. But let’s imagine what happens on a Sunday evening when you look in the store and there are 250 invoices to issue?

On the one hand, you are happy because business is booming. On the other hand, you are aware that you will either spend the whole Sunday evening on invoicing or postpone this duty until Monday morning. The solution is to outsource the administrative duties to a newly hired store administrator. However, there are drawbacks to this solution. If you hire an employee, you always have to devote time to implement and train him/her and, what is important, he/she generates costs, which are not small.

Is it possible to automate invoicing even more? Can I test the PRO version without spending money?

Yes, such automation is possible! See how to do it in WooCommerce. The plugin will issue invoices for you for the order status you choose, for example after online payments. So there is no need to visit the store to issue invoices. You may check the refund requests though, process them and collect data on the number of new orders. And generate the sales report. It sounds like a fairy tale, but it is reality.

The automatic invoicing option is available in the PRO version of the plugin. The cost is still much, much, much cheaper than hiring an administrative support person. Plus, it asks no questions and knows what to do if you configure it correctly. Automatic invoicing can be set up by going to Invoices > Settings > Invoice and setting the order status at which the document will be issued automatically. Plugin allows you to issue invoices in WooCommerce with EU taxes. The PRO version of the plugin has more features than the basic version, and these are:

Finally! Log in to our demo store, where you can freely configure and test the plugin according to your needs. Check to what extent the plugin will realize the scenarios assumed by you. If you have any questions, I encourage you to take a look at the documentation. If you have difficulties with issuing a document, contact our support. We will help you configure the plugin correctly and answer all questions.