Invoices

A demand for a specific period. Draft while you check it, Issued once approved — and an issued invoice is never edited.

An invoice is a demand for payment covering a specific period: this is what you owe for March.

Draft, then Issued

An invoice starts as a draft. Drafts are working documents — they carry no document number, and you can change or delete them. You see them on your preview of the statement, marked Draft, so you can check the result before anything is final; the tenant or owner never sees a draft.

Approving an invoice issues it. At that moment it gets its number, lands on the ledger, and becomes visible to the recipient.

An issued invoice is never edited. Not by you, not by anyone. If it is wrong, you correct it with a credit note.

That sounds rigid, and it is the point. An invoice is a financial record you have put in front of somebody; if it could be silently rewritten afterwards, neither your books nor their copy would mean anything. The trail of what was issued, then what corrected it is the thing an auditor, a tenant and a tribunal all rely on.

A draft invoice can be changed or deleted. Approving it issues the document, after which it is fixed — a correction is a separate credit note.

Approved, but not yet issued

On a lease that is still a draft or being onboarded, approving an invoice makes it a pro-forma: final in content, but with no number yet. It gets its number when the lease goes live or when it is first sent.

Until then nothing has left the building, so a pro-forma can be taken back. Click Revert to draft next to it on the lease’s Invoices tab, and it becomes an ordinary draft again — fix it, delete it, or approve it again.

Revert is offered only while the invoice has no number and has never been emailed. It is not offered when a credit note points at it, when it went out on a statement, or when interest has already been made final on it. A numbered invoice is corrected the usual way, with a credit note.

Document numbers

Numbers are assigned at approval, in sequence, with no gaps. Invoices and credit notes each run their own sequence.

Gap-free numbering is a SARS expectation, which is why the number is assigned when the document is issued rather than when the draft is created — a deleted draft would otherwise burn a number and leave a hole.

Tenant invoices and owner invoices

Tenant invoices are what the tenant owes: rent, utilities, anything else on the lease.

Owner invoices show the owner’s income from the unit, itemised (rent, and each tenant charge that is the owner’s income), less the owner’s costs: your management fee, maintenance, levies paid on their behalf. They reduce the payout rather than demanding money. See income for the owner.

Both come from charges, and the two are kept strictly apart. A tenant never sees an owner’s costs.

Ad-hoc invoices

Not everything is monthly. A once-off charge — a repair a tenant is liable for, a letting fee — can be raised as an ad-hoc invoice outside the regular run, and it carries an effective date so it lands in the right period.

Where invoices come from

Most are generated for you: on a schedule, the engine reads each active lease’s charges and produces that month’s draft. You review, approve, and the tenant receives it.

The monthly cycle is the shape of this, and it is the same every month.

StatementsA running account over time — everything charged, everything paid, and the balance. An invoice is one entry on it.
Credit notesHow you correct an issued invoice. A credit note is a negative invoice that leaves the original standing.
Charges and charge templatesA template is the reusable definition kept on the unit. A charge is a real line on one lease. Editing one never changes the other.
Payments and allocationRecording what came in, and what it settles. A payment reduces a balance — it is not attached to one invoice.