An invoice is how the work you've done becomes money in the bank, and stub keeps it to a couple of minutes: pick a customer, add your items, send. Everything else — deposits, discounts, online payments — is there when you need it and out of the way when you don't.
Orders sit in the same place. They're the same document as an invoice, usually raised in another system where your customer placed the order, with a status you move along as you work it — there's a section on them below.
Create an invoice
Head to Sales → Create → Invoice (or press N, then I) and take it from there — pick your customer at the top, set the invoice and due dates, then Add item for each line. A line can be a saved product or service picked from the list, or an Item, Description, Quantity and Price you type in on the spot, with Sales Tax on the lines it applies to.
Save your regular products and services once and every future invoice becomes a two-click pick instead of a retype.
Turn on the extras you need
The Options panel on the left of the invoice controls what appears on the document. Each is off until you turn it on:
- Purchase Order — show your customer's PO number.
- Discount — take a percentage or a fixed amount off the invoice. See Discounts below.
- Deposit — ask for a deposit up front, as a percentage or a fixed amount.
- Installments — split the total into scheduled payments.
- Bank account — print your bank details on the invoice.
- Online payments — add a Pay Now button. See Payment links.
Note: If you can't find the discount or deposit field on an invoice, it is because the toggle is off.
Discounts
A discount lands better when your customer can see it — the original price, the amount off, the new total. stub shows exactly that and handles the tax maths for you. The only trick is that the field is hidden until you switch it on.
Off the whole invoice
- Open or create an invoice or quote.
- Tick Discount in the Options panel on the left.
- Scroll to the totals at the bottom of the invoice and click the Discount row.
- Enter a percentage (for example 10%) or a fixed amount (for example R500) — switch between the two in the same field.
- Click Save. stub recalculates the subtotal, the tax and the total.
Off a single line
- Click the line item you want to discount.
- Click + Discount.
- Enter a percentage or a fixed amount, then Save.
A line discount gets its own Discount column in the items table and on the PDF, so the customer sees which line it came off.
How tax works on a discount
The discount comes off first, and Sales Tax is calculated on the reduced amount. A R1,000 service with a 10% discount reads as a R1,000 subtotal, R100 off, R900 taxable, R135 tax at 15%, R1,035 due. See Add VAT to an invoice for the full tax picture.
Tip: Use the Discount field rather than quietly lowering a price. Your customer sees what they saved, and your reports keep the discount separate from your prices.
Bill in another currency
Working with a customer abroad? Bill them in their currency and let stub do the conversion.
On the invoice, click ··· → Currency and choose the currency you are billing in.
stub shows the exchange rate on the invoice and converts back to your operating currency for your books. See Multi-currency & exchange rates.
Send it
Click Send. The window that opens has the email ready to go — check the address, tweak the message if you like, and send. The same window covers every other way to deliver it: copy the invoice Link and paste it anywhere, Download PDF for a copy, or share it over WhatsApp. The open icon shows the invoice the way your customer will see it.
Tip: If you delivered the invoice some other way, click ··· → Mark as sent so your tracking stays accurate.
Orders
An order is an invoice wearing a different hat. Under the hood it is the same document — same customer, same line items, same totals, same payments, and it hits your books the same way. Two things set it apart: where it comes from, and what you can track on it.
Orders usually come from another system — your storefront or a connected app — where the customer placed the order themselves. When one arrives that way the channel's logo shows on the order, so you can see at a glance where it came from. You can also raise one yourself: Sales → Create → Order (or press N, then O).
What an order gives you that an invoice doesn't is a status of its own:
- Open — the order is live and still being worked.
- Completed — done and dusted.
- Cancelled — it fell away.
Set it from the status button at the top right of the order, or straight from the order's row in the Sales list — quicker when you're working through a batch.
Everything else behaves like an invoice: record payments against it, settle it, print a Delivery Note, send a Statement, raise a Credit Note, change the Currency, attach files, tag it or flag it. The Options panel on an order carries Purchase Order, Discount and Deposit — installments, bank details and online payments are invoice-only.
Note: An order has no email Send step. Share it with ··· → View invoice, which opens the page your customer sees in a new tab so you can copy the link, or ··· → Download for a PDF.
Tip: When an order should become a proper invoice, use ··· → Duplicate… and pick Invoice. The customer, line items, PO number, discount, deposit and currency all come across.
Repeat this invoice
If you bill the same customer the same amount every month — a retainer, a subscription, a rental — set the invoice up once and let stub raise it on schedule from then on. Repeat lives on the invoice itself, not in Settings, and it's a premium feature.
- Open an existing invoice, or create a new one, and fill it in as normal.
- In the Options panel on the left, below the toggles, click Repeat.
- Choose Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Yearly — or None to stop a schedule you've already set.
- For Weekly, tick the days it should go out. For Monthly, pick the day of the month and whether it runs every month or only certain months. For Yearly, pick the day and the month.
- Set the Time of day. It's midnight unless you change it, so pick an hour if you'd rather the invoice went out during business hours.
- Ends after caps the series at a number of invoices. Leave it empty for no limit.
- Click Update.
Send each one automatically
Once a schedule is set and the customer has an email address on file, a toggle appears below it: Automatically send to <customer email>. Without it, stub raises each invoice and leaves it in your list to send.
What your customer sees
Each invoice looks like any other — same branding, same line items, same payment options. Nothing about it reads as automated.
Note: Every repeated invoice gets its own sequential invoice number, as SARS requires, and its own status, so you track and chase each one like any other. See Track & chase unpaid invoices.
Tip: Check the invoice carefully before switching Repeat on — a mistake copies forward. stub never changes amounts on its own, so if your fees go up, edit the invoice.
Attach supporting documents
Keep the signed order or delivery photo with the invoice itself — see Attach files to an invoice.