Merchant guide

What it does

Every payment taken in your CRM — an invoice paid, a checkout, an order form, a subscription charge — produces a tax document numbered in order with no gaps: a tax invoice, a simplified invoice or a receipt, depending on the amount, the customer and your country's rules. A refund produces a credit note that refers back to the original. A part-payment produces a payment on account and the final payment a closing invoice that lists the earlier ones. Each document is stored for the retention period your country requires, saved as an A4 PDF in your document language, and sent to the customer by email (and WhatsApp when the contact has it).

One line defines the product: the number on the document is ours and it never changes. An issued document is never edited; a mistake is corrected by a credit note, exactly as the tax rules of every supported country require.

Getting started: three steps

1. Your business. Country, document language, legal name, address, registration numbers, bank details, time zone.
2. Tax. Registered for VAT or GST or not; whether your prices include tax; your usual rate; which contact field holds your customers' VAT numbers.
3. How your invoices work. The choice below, with the four settings for Mode A as a checklist.

Then take one real payment, open the console, check the PDF and press Confirm first document. Nothing is sent to a customer before that.

The two modes

Every supported country makes whoever shows tax on a document liable for that tax, and none of them wants two documents showing tax for one sale. Your CRM already makes an invoice, so you choose which document is the invoice.

Mode A — our document is the invoice

We issue the tax invoice, the receipt and the credit note for every payment. Your CRM's invoice becomes a payment request: the customer still pays through it, but the only document that shows tax is ours. Recommended, and preselected, for businesses in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Belgium that sell to other businesses, because their customers need a compliant invoice to deduct the VAT.

Mode B — your CRM's invoice stays the invoice

Your CRM's invoice remains the invoice and we issue nothing for it. For checkout and order-form payments — where your CRM issues no invoice — we issue the receipt, and for refunds the credit note. The simplest choice for consumer businesses; preselected in the United Kingdom and Australia.

The four settings for Mode A

With Mode A your customer must not receive a second document that shows tax. Change these four settings in your CRM, then tick each one in step 3:

1. Rename the invoice title to "Payment request". Payments → Invoices → Settings → Title, Terms and Layout → Invoice title. It is a global setting, so every invoice your CRM sends becomes a payment request.
2. Hide the Tax column from recipients. Payments → Invoices → Settings → Customize Layout → Labels: untick "Tax". Unticked columns are hidden from the customer.
3. Rename the "Invoice received" email subject. Payments → Invoices → Settings → Notifications → Customer → "Invoice received" → Subject: replace "Invoice received" with "Payment request". This email cannot be switched off, and your customer needs its pay link; it just must not call itself an invoice.
4. Switch off automatic sales receipts. Payments → Settings → Receipts: turn off "Enable automatic sales receipts for payments".

Verify with one sale

After set-up, take one real payment. The document is issued and appears in the console, but it is not sent. Open the PDF: the name and address at the top, the lines, the tax breakdown per rate, the total. If something is wrong, choose Update details, fix it, and the next document is right (the first one stays as issued; nothing is edited). When it is right, press Confirm first document. From then on every document is sent automatically, and the held ones go out.

How a refund becomes a credit note

• Void or delete of a paid invoice in your CRM → a credit note for the whole amount. Your CRM only lets you void a paid invoice after its payments have been refunded; each refund is credited as it happens, and the void then adds nothing more.
• After a void, the old payment link in your customer's email stops working (it shows "Invoice not found"). That comes from your CRM and is not an error: your customer's record of the cancellation is the credit note we send.
• An invoice paid in instalments. Each instalment gets a payment on account, and the last one gets the closing invoice that deducts them. Cancelling the closing invoice (console → Cancel) issues a credit note that mirrors it exactly, deductions included; the payments on account stand until they are cancelled or refunded themselves.
• Refund (full or partial) → a credit note for the amount refunded. A refund made in your CRM is picked up automatically, usually within minutes and at the latest at the next periodic check of your transactions, where we notice that the refunded amount has risen. There is nothing to set up.
• The credit note takes the next number in its own series, names the original document and the reason, and is sent to the customer. It is titled the way your country requires — Credit Note, Stornorechnung or Rechnungskorrektur, Creditfactuur, Creditnota / Note de crédit, Adjustment Note — never "Gutschrift".
• A payment refunded in steps gets one credit note per refund, each for what came back that time. The total credited can never exceed the sale.
• The reason. Every country prints why the sale was credited (the United Kingdom and Australia ask for the actual reason, not just "payment refunded"). In How your invoices work you choose: issue the credit note at once with a standing reason (Goods returned, Service not provided, Order cancelled by the customer, Price adjustment, Duplicate payment, Goodwill refund, or one you type), or Ask me each time. With Ask me each time the credit note waits under Needs your attention in the console until you pick the reason, and is then issued with one click. A void or delete never asks; its reason is the void.

Where the payments come from

Payments are picked up automatically from your account; there is nothing to add or switch on. Two paths, one document: your CRM's payment events (fastest) and a check of your transactions every ten minutes (the net underneath). A sale noticed twice is issued once.

Subscriptions. Every charge gets its own document, the first and each renewal, stating the period it pays for (the service period; Leistungszeitraum on German documents). If a renewal charges a different amount from the original order — a set-up fee on the first charge, or a changed price — it waits under Needs your attention instead of being issued with a guessed amount.

Test payments

A payment made in your payment provider's test mode (a test card) produces a TEST document, so you can see exactly what your customers will get without a real sale. It has its own number (TEST-INV-2026-000001, where 2026 is the year of issue; credit notes TEST-CN-…), so your real numbering stays unbroken; it is marked "TEST – not a tax document" on every page; it is never sent to anyone; and it is left out of your exports and your monthly count.

Customers' VAT numbers

Add a text field (for example "VAT number") to your contacts in your CRM and choose it in step 2. When a customer has a number there, it is printed where the law requires it, and the customer counts as a business: they get a full invoice rather than a simplified one. Your own number and your customers' numbers are checked with the public register: VIES (the EU's VAT-number check) and ABN Lookup in Australia; the UK check follows once HMRC has granted access. The document says VAT number checked on <date> only when the check passed. A register that is down never delays a document.

A customer who paid through a payment link gives only a name and an email. Where your country allows it, the document is then a simplified invoice or a receipt; the console offers Add VAT number on it so the next document for that customer is a full invoice.

Exports

The console exports a CSV of all documents, one month, or one year (in your time zone). Each row carries the number, type, date, customer, net, tax per rate, gross and currency — the columns an accountant's import expects. Each PDF can be opened from the list.

A closing invoice shows the full sale and deducts the payments on account, whose VAT their own documents have already declared. Add up the column VAT to report for this document (in an Australian export, GST to report for this document), not "Total VAT", so that the tax is counted once.

What each country gets

What we do not do

• We do not change what your CRM charges. If a sale should carry no VAT — a reverse charge (the business customer accounts for the VAT) or an export — set the product's tax in your CRM; we document it.
• We do not edit an issued document, ever. A correction is a credit note.
• We do not send anything on your behalf before you have confirmed the first document.

Support

Email [email protected] with the name of your business and, if it is about a document, its number. A person answers.