Invoicing workflow

This article walks through the typical lifecycle of an invoice in Ceum, from one-time setup to closing the loop after payment.

1. Prepare

Before issuing your first invoice:

Brand and billing info — open Brand invoicing and fill out your company name, tax ID, bank details, address, contact, and (optionally) a logo. See Brand invoicing.
Invoice template — open the invoice template page. A sensible default is created for you on your first visit; tweak colors, label text, and layout, then save. See Invoice template.
Statuses — define your lifecycle on the Invoice statuses page (see Custom statuses). Mark at least one final status as settled — that's how Ceum knows the invoice is paid.
Default tax rate — set it in Brand invoicing; it pre-fills the tax rate on new line items.
Invoicing currency — also in Brand invoicing. This is what invoices are issued in, and it is separate from the display currency in General settings. Individual clients and projects can override it on the Plus and Pro plans.
Email templates — open the email templates page and customize the invoice-sending template. Available variables include the client name, invoice number, amount, currency, due date, and your name. Customize the overdue-reminder template the same way; it also offers a days-overdue variable.

2. Create the invoice

Open the new invoice form and fill out:

Invoice info — invoice number (your accounting reference), issue date, due date, status, currency, and type (full or proforma). The currency starts on Automatic and follows the client or project you pick; the label names which one it came from. Pick a code yourself to pin it.
Client info — pick a client. The billing fields (company name, tax ID, bank details, client address, client email) are copied from the client when you create the invoice. You can override any of them per invoice.
Line items — each item has a description, an amount, an optional quantity and unit price, an optional tax (a fixed amount) or tax rate (a percentage), and an optional task link. Picking a task pre-fills the description and switches the line to billing by time, taking its hours from the task's tracked time and its rate from your hourly rate. See Invoices.
QR-code data — optional; appears on the PDF if your template's QR-code section is enabled.
Tags — optional.

Save. The invoice gets an ID like I-7.

3. Preview the PDF

The detail page shows a live PDF preview using your default invoice template and your real brand info. To preview a different template, switch your default to it temporarily.

4. Generate and store the PDF

Use the Export PDF action on the detail page. Each export captures the invoice exactly as it was at that moment, so later edits never change a past export. Your stored exports stay downloadable from the detail page, and you can re-export whenever you need a fresh copy.

5. Send by email

From the detail page, use Email. The composer opens with the invoice-sending template loaded and its variables filled in from the invoice. You can attach either a PDF you've already exported or a fresh one generated on the spot. Sent emails are recorded on the Email logs page.

6. Track status

As the invoice moves through your workflow (typically Draft → Sent → Paid or similar), update the status from the detail page or the list. Every status change is recorded in the Entity changelog with who made it and when.

7. Settle the invoice

Move the invoice to a status marked as the settled terminal state. Once it's settled, the invoice:

Stops appearing in overdue checks.
Stops surfacing in Alerts — including under "flagged invoices", if you had flagged it.
Stays in the list (filter by status to find settled ones).

Recording the income

Settling an invoice asks whether to record the matching income transaction. The confirmation appears wherever you make the change — the invoice form, the status cell on the list, the status row on the detail page, and bulk edit — and carries a tick-box:

Confirm saves the invoice with whatever the tick-box says.
Cancel saves nothing and leaves you in the edit, so you can pick a different status.

The tick-box starts from Record income when an invoice is settled under Brand & invoicing → Payment & invoicing, but your answer on the dialog wins for that one invoice. In bulk edit you answer once for the whole batch, and the review step says how many invoices it applies to.

The transaction is derived from the invoice: its total (split into net and tax when the line items carry tax), its currency, its client and project, and its tags, described by the invoice number and dated today. Edit it afterwards like any other transaction if the payment arrived on a different date or for a different amount.

An invoice posts at most one settlement transaction. Moving one out of a settled status and back in again does not post a second — delete the transaction if you want to undo the record.

The MCP tools and the CLI never show the confirmation. They follow the brand setting on their own.

8. Overdue and reminders

An invoice counts as overdue when its due date has passed and it isn't in a settled status. Overdue invoices are highlighted red on the list and surface in Alerts and the alert bell.

To send a reminder, use Email and load the overdue-reminder template; the days-overdue value is filled in from the invoice's due date. Reminders are always something you send yourself — Ceum doesn't send them on a schedule.

9. Cancel or void

There's no built-in void status. To void an invoice:

Create a "Voided" status with the settled toggle on (so it's excluded from overdue). Leave the income tick-box clear when you move an invoice into it — a voided invoice was never paid.
Move the invoice into it.
Optionally add an explanatory flag note to the invoice.

You can also delete an invoice outright from its detail page. Deleting an invoice also removes its exports and email attachments.

Invoicing from tasks and tracked time

Instead of building an invoice field by field, you can start from the work itself. Create invoice takes a selection of tasks or of time entries, resolves which client it belongs to, and opens this form already filled in — one line per task, the tracked hours as the quantity, and the resolved hourly rate as the unit price. Nothing is saved until you save the form. See Invoicing from tasks and tracked time.

On mobile

View, create, and edit invoices — the list and form are available, with native date and picker controls.
Email an invoice — attach an already-exported invoice PDF to an outbound email.
Template editing is web-only — designing the invoice template (colors, layout, labels) is not available on the mobile app — manage from the web app. PDF preview and export also stay on web.