Invoices

Invoices represent amounts your clients owe you. Each invoice has a custom status, line items, an issue date, a due date, optional QR-code payment data, and renders to a branded PDF using your configured Invoice template.

What you can do

Browse all your invoices on the Invoices page, with filters for client, status, date range, and amount. Create a new invoice using a form with three sections: invoice info, client info, and line items. Open an invoice to see its PDF preview and to export or email it, edit it, or open its full edit history. Customize the PDF look on the Invoice template page (see Invoice template), and import invoices from a file on the Invoices import page (see Import CSV).

Fields you fill in

Invoice info:

Invoice number — required free-text accounting reference (e.g. INV-2024-001). Doesn't have to be unique.
Issue date — defaults to today.
Due date — required; must be on or after the issue date.
Status — required, drawn from Custom statuses, configured under Invoice statuses.
Currency — starts on Automatic, which follows the brand → client → project chain and names the level it took the currency from. Picking a client or a project re-resolves it: a client with its own invoicing currency wins over the brand default, and a project wins over its client. Choosing a code by hand pins it, and later client or project changes leave it alone. The invoice always stores a concrete currency, captured when you create it — editing a client afterwards never restates an invoice you already issued.
Amount — taken from the line items.
Invoice type — full or proforma.
QR code data — optional payment link or bank URI; shown on the PDF.
Project — optional; filters the available tasks when you add line items.
Tags — optional.
Flagged + flag description — an optional toggle to mark an invoice for attention. Flagged invoices are highlighted in the list and surface in Alerts, where the description is shown as the reason. Flagging is independent of overdue — use it for anything worth coming back to, like a disputed line item.

Client info (captured per invoice):

Client — optional. When set, the contact and billing fields below are pre-filled from the client at the time you create the invoice.
Client email, client address, company name, tax ID, bank name, bank account, bank routing — captured on the invoice itself. Later edits to the client don't change existing invoices.

Your own freelancer details come from Brand invoicing and are read-only on the form.

Each invoice gets an ID like I-7. Don't confuse it with the invoice number you type in — the ID is Ceum's own reference, while the invoice number is your accounting reference.

Line items

Each line item has:

Description — required.
Amount — required currency value.
Tax — an optional fixed amount, or
Tax rate — an optional percentage that computes the tax from the amount.
Task — an optional link. If you select a task, the description auto-fills from the task name.

You can add, remove, and reorder line items.

Workflows

Issue an invoice

Open the new invoice form.
Set the invoice number, due date, and status. If you've configured a default template, the PDF preview reflects it as you type.
Pick a client. The client's billing fields are filled in for you.
Add line items. Use the task picker on each item to reuse task names.
Save. The new invoice gets the next ID (I-N).

Export the PDF

From the detail page, use Export PDF to generate a fresh PDF and keep it on the invoice, or Export for email to generate one on the fly without keeping it. Past exports stay on the invoice and can be re-downloaded.

Send by email

Use the Email action on the detail page. This composes an Email using the invoice template, attaches either a fresh PDF or a stored export, and records an entry in the email log.

Mark paid

Pick a status marked finished — typically "Paid". A finished invoice stops alerting altogether: it is no longer counted as overdue, and it drops out of the flagged-invoices category too if you had flagged it.

Flag an invoice

Use the row action menu or the Flag button on the detail page to mark an invoice for attention and optionally add a reason.

Delete an invoice

Use the Delete button on the invoice's detail page or its edit page, then confirm. Deletion is permanent — see Tips and edge cases.

Status workflow

Invoice statuses come from Custom statuses. The finished setting marks a status as "done" — usually "Paid". An invoice counts as overdue when its due date has passed and its status is not finished. Overdue invoices show in red on the list and surface in Alerts.

There are no default statuses out of the box; set up your own on the Invoice statuses page.

The PDF

The generated PDF is made up of:

A header with an optional logo (placement and size from the template).
Your company info from Brand invoicing.
The client billing info captured on the invoice.
Invoice details (number, issue date, due date, status, amount).
Line items with description, amount, and tax columns.
Notes.
Payment info (bank, tax, routing) — can be toggled off.
An optional QR code (position controlled by the template).
Footer text.

The template controls colors, label text, which sections appear, and where things sit. Each stored export captures the invoice exactly as it was when generated, so the PDF stays accurate even if you edit the invoice later.

How it connects to the rest of Ceum

Clients — the client link is optional. Deleting a client leaves the invoice in place but removes its link to that client. The billing fields stay, because they were captured on the invoice.
Projects — the project link is optional. Deleting a project leaves the invoice in place but removes its link.
Tags — shared with the tagging system across Ceum.
Email — invoices plug into the email composer, with the PDF attached and linked back to the email.
Changelog — every change is captured.

Import and export

Import — bring invoices in from a CSV file on the Invoices import page. Columns include ID, invoice number, client, issue date, due date, amount, currency, status, notes, and tags. See Import CSV.
Export — invoice rows can be exported to CSV, XLS, or PDF from the Invoices exports page; exporting a single invoice as a PDF from its detail page is a separate flow.
Bulk edit — select invoices on the list and edit or delete them together. See Bulk edit.

Tips and edge cases

Captured billing sticks. Editing a client after you've issued an invoice doesn't change the billing block on the existing PDF — that's deliberate.
ID vs. invoice number. The ID is Ceum's own reference; the invoice number is what you put on the document. Use whichever is more familiar when filtering.
Deletion is permanent. Deleting an invoice also removes its email attachments and stored exports.
Overdue is calculated, not stored. There's no "overdue" status to move into — Ceum works it out from the due date, and highlights the invoice until you advance the status. That's separate from the Flagged toggle, which you set yourself.

Quantity and unit price

A line item can state how its amount was reached. Fill in quantity and unit price and the amount becomes the two multiplied, recalculated as you edit either and locked against direct edits — the detail view and the PDF then show the breakdown under the description. Clear either one and the amount goes back to being a number you type.

Lines created before this existed, and lines you price as a flat amount, carry neither field and behave exactly as they always did. The invoice total is always the sum of the line amounts; nothing anywhere multiplies the pair to produce a total.

Lines billed from tracked work arrive with both filled in — see Invoicing workflow.

By default the pair appears as a small line under the description. Turn on Show quantity and unit price columns in the Invoice template to give them columns of their own instead.

Billing a line by time

Link a task to a line and the line starts billing by time: the quantity becomes hours, taken from the task's tracked time, and the unit price becomes your hourly rate, resolved from the project, then the client, then your brand. The columns read Hours and Rate when every priced line on the invoice bills that way.

Those values are captured once, when you make the link. They do not keep moving afterwards — an invoice you have already sent must not change because someone logged another hour against the task. If the task moves on, the line shows a warning and a refresh button; refreshing brings the new figures across.

Override on a line lets you type the hours yourself. An overridden line keeps your number through a refresh, and stops reporting the task's hours as out of date.
Round hours above the line items rounds every time-billed line to a whole 15, 30 or 60 minutes, up or down. It shows you a before-and-after table first, and rounding counts as typing the hours yourself.
A line whose task type is not marked billable shows an icon saying so. It does not stop you billing it.
If the task is deleted the line shows a broken-link marker, keeps every value it had, and stays editable.

Notes

An invoice has two notes, both under the tags in the right-hand panel.

Note for the client appears on the invoice PDF and on a share link.
Internal note is only ever visible to you.

When a captured block falls behind

The client block, your company block, and each task-linked line are copied onto the invoice rather than looked up live. That is what keeps a sent invoice stable. When the original changes, the block gets a warning border and an icon explaining what moved; Sync on the block, or the refresh on the line, brings the current values across. Nothing refreshes on its own, and nothing is saved until you save the invoice.

On mobile

Create and edit invoices in a native bottom-sheet form; list rows respect compact density. Cached invoices stay readable offline, but creating, editing, and deleting need a connection — only transactions and time entries can be changed offline. See Offline support.
Export an invoice to PDF and hand it off through the native share sheet. Customizing the Invoice template is web-only.