Billing & Finance → Invoices files every invoice by the state its money is in. There are nine tabs — All · Draft · Sent · Collecting · Paid · Part-paid · Overdue · Void · Written off — and each is a link you can bookmark. This is what each one means and what moves an invoice out of it.
The nine states
| State | What it means | What moves it |
|---|---|---|
| Draft | Raised but not sent. Nobody has seen it, and it’s the only state whose lines you can still edit. | Send it. |
| Sent | With the family, inside its payment terms. | A payment, a collection, or the due date passing. |
| Collecting | A Direct Debit is in flight. Not a failure — the bank is working. | The debit clears (Paid) or fails (a parked collection). |
| Paid | Settled in full, by any method. | Nothing — except a refund. |
| Part-paid | Some money has arrived, a balance remains. | The rest of the payment. |
| Overdue | Past its due date and still owed. Reminders are running. | A payment, or a write-off. |
| Void | Cancelled — an invoice that should never have existed. Unpaid only. | Nothing; raise a new one instead. |
| Written off | A credit note for the remaining balance. It leaves your outstanding figures and nets the family’s balance to zero. | Nothing. |
What the family sees
A Draft is invisible to the family. Everything from Sent onwards appears in their portal Invoices page.
On a Sent, Part-paid or Overdue invoice they get a Pay button. On a Collecting invoice the Pay button gives way to an honest line — “Bank debits take up to 4 working days to confirm.” — so nobody pays twice while a debit is on its way. See get paid by Direct Debit.
Void versus Written off
They look similar and mean different things.
- Void cancels an invoice that shouldn’t exist — wrong family, duplicate run, a mistake caught before any money moved. It only works on an unpaid invoice.
- Mark as uncollectible writes the invoice off with a credit note for whatever is still owed. It works on a part-paid invoice, and it’s the right tool when the teaching really happened but the money isn’t coming.
Both need a reason, and both are finance actions. See void or write off an invoice.
Good to know The tabs filter on the invoice's money state, worked out from its payments and its due date — not on a status field somebody set by hand. That's why an invoice moves itself into Overdue overnight, and out of it the moment a payment lands.
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