CRM billing — GST invoices & customer credit

How billing in the CRM works

CRM billing is a record-keeper, not a payment company — you bill, the customer pays you directly by UPI, cash or bank transfer, and you tick it off. Open CRM → Invoices to see everything in one place. Every billing page — Invoices, Quotes, To collect, Recurring payments, Supplier bills and purchase orders — starts with a How … works card: tap it for the steps in order and one worked example in rupees (it opens by itself while the page is still empty). (New to the CRM? Start with CRM getting started.)

One-time setup — your business profile

Before the first invoice, tell us who is billing: your shop's legal name, GSTIN if you have one, and how customers should pay you. This takes two minutes and every invoice after that is instant.

CRM → Invoices → Settings

Making a bill is now click-on-the-document: the New-invoice screen shows your REAL bill — your design, your watermark, your letterhead — updating live as you type. Tap any part of the document (buyer, items, notes, terms) and the matching editor opens; parts that come from your Business profile say so and link you there. A Payment received? choice (Not yet / Part payment / Paid in full) records the money on the invoice the moment it's issued — the document previews Amount Received and Balance Due before your eyes. The Display button switches any printed piece on or off without leaving the page — plus text size, a compact layout that fits more per page, and a gentle nudge with one-tap fixes when the bill runs past one page. Add a photo on any line (it prints as a small thumbnail and rides catalog items automatically), draw your signature right on screen with the Signature button, and tap ☆ Save as my default beside Notes or Terms to reuse them on every future bill — or just type for this bill only.

Open any invoice and you get a Refrens-style workspace: the document in its real printed design (the Designed view — a live preview that updates the moment you change anything), and a Document settings panel beside it with show/hide switches, a design carousel, your bank & UPI status, linked documents (revisions, converted quotations, credit notes) and payment records. Every switch saves instantly.

The same Business profile page is also your design studio: pick from 16 print designs in a visual gallery — tap Change design to see them bigger (violet Regal, navy-and-gold Midnight, maroon Crimson ledger and more), set an accent colour, heading and body fonts, choose how amounts show (₹ / Rs / plain), and switch any printed piece on or off. You can also add a faint diagonal watermark (e.g. ORIGINAL), switch the tax-summary tables on or off, and upload a letterhead banner and footer strip that print across the top and bottom of every document. Under Words on your documents you can rename every heading and column on the bill — “Bill To”, the item columns, the signature line, even a closing thank-you line — in your own words or your own language — including the document titles themselves (Tax Invoice, Bill of Supply, Cash Memo, Credit Note). Empty boxes keep the GST-correct defaults; check renamed statutory titles with your CA. Any invoice's 🎨 Design & text button jumps straight here.

Make a GST invoice

An invoice is for any sale or service you want on paper — a customer order, a repair job, a month's tuition. Click New invoice on the Invoices page.

Workshop job cards bill themselves. If you use the Workshop module, a job card's Make the final invoice button opens this screen with the customer and the line items already filled from the card — spare parts and labour as separate lines with their amounts (or the final-bill amount when you recorded just one figure). Check, adjust if needed, and issue.

Two things on the bill itself are yours to set right on the create page: the date (tap it to backdate a sale you're recording late — lists, ageing and GST reports all follow the date you pick) and the number prefix (tap the dashed prefix next to the number — the very next serial is previewed live; changing it moves the whole series from that document onward, and we refuse a prefix another document family already uses so numbers can never clash). A due date you set now also prints on the invoice as “Due: …”, and a quotation's validity prints as “Valid till: …”.

CRM → Invoices

Items & prices opens with a How Items work card — one worked example: a steel almirah sold at ₹12,000 that cost ₹9,000 shows a 25% margin and ₹3,000 profit on each one, and with 3 left (low at 5) its stock chip turns amber.

Link your items with your website's products

If you also sell on a website made here, the CRM can pair each of your items with the same product on the website, so you never keep two lists. Open Items & prices — under the list you see On your websites (also in the page's More menu). It lists every website of yours that sells products and sends its customers to this business.

Send it on WhatsApp — the pay page

Instead of printing and waiting, send the customer a link where they can see the bill and pay you in one tap. On a paid bill, Send on WhatsApp is under Print / share; on an unpaid bill it is under More; on a quotation the big button is simply Send.

We create a private link and open WhatsApp with a ready message — “Invoice INV/26-27/0042 for ₹1,250. View & pay: …”. The customer's page shows the full invoice, a Pay via UPI button, a QR code with the exact amount pre-filled, your bank details, and your payment link if you added one. The money lands in your UPI or bank account directly. The link's WhatsApp preview shows your business name and the amount, so the customer instantly recognises who's asking.

Send by email sits right beside it (same menu, same permission) for customers and accountants who live in email. It makes the same private link and opens your own email app — addressed to the customer when their card has an email — with the subject (“Invoice INV/26-27/0042 from Your Shop”), a short message with the amount and what is still due, and the link. You read it and press Send from your own address; we never send email for you, so nothing is marked as sent. A quotation or a credit note gets its own wording and never asks for money; “pay here” is said only when your page shows a way to pay (UPI, a payment link or bank details).

Collect online — card, netbanking & UPI through your own gateway

If any of your websites has a payment gateway (Razorpay, Cashfree, PayU, PhonePe, Easebuzz, Zoho Payments) or a UPI ID set up, you can collect a CRM bill through it — and the invoice marks itself paid the moment the money lands. Still fully direct: the customer pays through your gateway account into your settlement, we never hold the money.

The link always collects the bill's current balance. If you edit, part-settle or cancel the bill after sending it, the old link politely refuses and asks the customer to request a fresh one — nobody can ever pay a stale amount.

Mark it paid

UPI, cash and bank-transfer payments come to you directly, so you confirm them — one tap keeps your books true. On an unpaid invoice press Record payment (the big button): Mark paid in full, or type the total received so far and press Save — the line under the box says exactly what the bill will show. + Add how it was paid keeps the payment's details with it — cash, UPI, bank transfer, cheque or card, the day, the UTR / transaction id, the reference number, the bank or UPI ID, a note, and (with the Mark payments received permission) a photo of the slip; the bill then lists it under Payments received and the customer's statement shows it. A plain Mark paid keeps no such details — only what you type there is kept. A payment recorded on the bill's own sheet follows the bill: lower the figure and it shrinks to match, mark the bill unpaid and it is removed; a payment recorded on Money records and matched to the bill stays, and the page tells you how much of it is no longer matched. Each line under Payments received has Remove this payment (a reason is required — it stays on record) for money that never came in. More holds Mark as paid in full, Mark as unpaid and Record or correct a payment; a bill fully reversed by a credit note offers only Mark as unpaid there. The same sheet opens from Mark received on every row of To collect (for anyone allowed to record payments). If someone else recorded a payment on that bill a moment earlier, nothing is overwritten: you see “This bill changed — check the amount and try again.” with the fresh figures. (Gateway payments through a Collect online link mark themselves — no tap needed. Bills made at the Bill counter record their Cash/UPI/Card payment in the same moment they're created, and a counter Credit sale with an advance lands here already marked Partial.) The remaining balance keeps showing on the invoice, the pay page and the customer's credit balance until it's settled. Any reminder task for that bill clears itself automatically.

A part-paid bill shows the arithmetic right on the document: below the Grand Total you'll see Amount Received and Balance Due — on screen, on the printed/PDF copy, and on the customer's pay page. The invoice list and To collect show the balance too, and the WhatsApp reminder asks only for what's still due — never for money you've already received.

Find any bill in seconds

The Invoices page is built for a full drawer of bills, not just five. Type any part of a bill number or customer name — or their phone, the amount (24500 or ₹24,500), an item on the bill, the issue day (15 sept) or paid / unpaid — in the search box and it looks through all your invoices, not only the ones on screen. The chips in one row filter by All / This month / Unpaid / Partial / Paid; when a bill goes past its due date, a red Overdue chip appears with the count, and the Unpaid tile shows how much of it is overdue. Every row reads the same on a phone and a computer: the bill number with its kind (Tax Invoice, Bill of Supply…), the customer, the issued date, the due date with “5d late” in red when it has passed, the amount and the balance still to collect. Tap a row to open the bill; the ⋯ at its end gives Open · Edit · Print (on a computer those sit right on the row). Under the head's ⋯ More menu, Columns & rows lets you hide the issued date, the due date or the balance and pick 30, 50 or 100 rows at a time — remembered on this device.

Cancelled a bill? It's never lost — the Cancelled chip shows every cancelled or revised document, kept for your GST records (their serial numbers are never reused). If the bill recorded a service visit at the counter (Mark done), cancelling first asks Was the service done? — No takes the visit off the customer's card, Yes keeps it.And the CSV button (it needs the team permission Export / download data) downloads exactly what you're looking at — the current filter and search — as an Excel-ready file with totals, received amounts and balances, handy for your CA or a quick tally. Quotations get honest labels of their own: Open, Accepted, Declined, Invoiced or Expired — no more guessing which estimate went where — and the Quotes page's chips filter by exactly those states: Waiting for an answer · Accepted · Declined · Expired · Invoiced.

Credit — who owes you what

The credit balance is the running total every shop keeps in a diary (the khata) — here it writes itself. Open any contact (see CRM contacts) and the line under their name says it — Owes ₹4,200 · last paid 5 Sept, Nothing owed or In credit ₹500 (a tap opens the Statement; only a login that may see money gets the line). The coloured Credit balance card below shows the same number: unpaid invoices, minus credit notes, plus any open recurring dues. Positive means they owe you; it even shows when you owe them credit.

Tap Statement — print or send on WhatsApp on that card for the full account. Pick the period at the top — This month · Last month · This FY · All time — and the statement opens with the balance carried in from before it, lists the period's bills, dues and payments, and closes on Balance on <day> for a period that has ended (In credit on <day> when you owe them); All time closes on today's figure, green only when every bill is paid. Print it, download every bill as an Excel file (the button reads Excel, or Excel (all bills) once a period is picked — with the team permission Export / download data), send it on WhatsApp — the message lists what's open, the total due, and your UPI ID so they can settle right from the chat — or tap Send with pay link to put a payment link for an open bill into that message. A dealership with Money records switched on (Business type & features) gets a fuller statement under Money → Money records → Statements — every bill, payout, salary line, entry and payment with its UTR, the running balance, money held for a customer, and Excel / CSV downloads. Each line says what it is — They owe ₹X or You owe ₹X for a record, ₹X received or ₹X paid for money that moved, Returned ₹X for held money given back (it can never be matched to a record) — and the download keeps four money columns: owed to you, owed by you, received, paid. A payment your login may not open (a payout's or a salary's money) still shows on the record it settled as Payment recorded with its amount and day, so the statement always adds up. Every payment line has Remove this payment for money that never moved (a reason is required), and in the cheque register a cancelled cheque can be put Back in hand, so its number is never locked out.

Share link on the Statement gives the customer a page of their own account (it needs the Add & edit contacts, notes, tasks permission and a login that may see money). It opens on their phone with no sign-in and shows your business name, what is due, the bills still open — each with Pay this bill when you made a payment link for it — a Pay by UPI button to your own UPI ID, and every bill and payment for This month · Last month · This FY · All time, closing on the same figure your Statement shows. It says only what concerns them, in plain words: never your notes, a payout's file or loan number, or a payment's UTR. Each customer has one link at a time and it works for 30 days — or pick 7, 30 or 90 days under Keep this link working for in the sheet: counted from today, on the SAME link, so the copy the customer already has keeps working; the sheet shows how many times it was opened (a chat app building its preview does not count). New link stops the old one at once, Stop this link ends it, Send on WhatsApp adds the link to the statement message, and Send by email opens your own email app with the same link, what is due and the customer's email filled in from their card. A stopped or expired link — or a customer you moved to Trash — shows one sentence asking them to contact you, and nothing else; merging two customers stops the link of the one merged away, so share again from the one you keep.

Reminders — never chase from memory

Money slips when reminders live in your head, so the CRM writes them down for you. Every day it checks your books and creates a follow-up task — “Collect ₹2,500 — Invoice INV/26-27/0038” — for each overdue bill (a bill with no due date gets 7 days' grace) and each recurring due, starting 3 days before the due day — or when you choose: Recurring payments → When is each due reminded? — on the due day, or 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 or 15 days before (it needs the Manage staff, attendance, branches & setup permission; changing it never reminds a due twice, and your automations' WhatsApp for a due goes out at that moment too) — a due that is auto-invoiced is followed up through its invoice instead (one reminder, when that invoice falls overdue), never twice for the same money. Each bill or due gets one reminder: once you tick it done or snooze it, it doesn't come back the next morning — only a due date you move later, or a payment you mark as not received after all (a bounced cheque, say), earns a fresh one. Paid bills clear their own reminders, a cancelled plan never raises one — nor does the plan of a customer you moved to Trash from their own page — and customers who've asked not to be contacted are skipped automatically. A customer you move to Trash from the Customers list keeps their plans: new dues, their reminders and any auto-invoices carry on until you cancel those plans in Recurring payments. With Money records → Cheques on, a cheque you deposited that has not cleared is chased with one follow-up after 5 working days (Monday to Saturday) — pick 2, 3, 5, 7 or 10 in What Money records shows; the sheet names the day (a cheque deposited on Monday 5 Oct is chased on Saturday 10 Oct at the usual 5).

The To collect page opens on one card: the total still owed, and under it one bar by age — 0–30 days in green, 31–60 amber, 61–90 orange, 90+ red, each band as wide as its share of the money. Tap a band (or its line in the legend) to see only those bills; tap again for all. The bills follow, oldest first or Biggest first, each row with its age in the band's colour and what is still due after any part payment. The ⋯ on a row holds Mark received (the same payment sheet as the bill's own — if the bill changed meanwhile it shows the live figure and asks again), Remind (a polite pre-written WhatsApp message from your own number), Collect online and Open. A bill you mark received wears a PAID stamp for a moment and leaves the list; the total above changes with it.

CRM → To collect

Recurring payments — rent, tuition, AMC

If someone pays you the same amount regularly — rent, tuition, a service contract, a retainer, a membership — set it once in Recurring payments and the CRM tracks every cycle. Pick weekly, monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, yearly or every-N-days. Each due date appears in “who owes you”, gets its own reminder, and you record what you receive. One search box above the lists finds a customer, a plan, an amount, a phone or a due day in all three — who owes you, the plans and what is coming up. You can also switch on auto-invoice for a plan, and a proper GST invoice is issued for every cycle by itself — never for a cycle you skipped or a due you wrote off; an auto-invoiced due is then reminded through its invoice (your automations, WhatsApp layouts and customer messages for “payment due” still go out on the due day as before).

Stopping a plan never writes money off. Cancel plan stops new dues and new reminders; a due that has not started yet (its date still ahead, nothing received, not on an invoice) is skipped — the customer will not owe it, and the confirmation names each one — but every due that has already fallen due stays owed — in Collections, on the customer's balance and on statements — and you can still record its payment. To forgive them, open the cancelled (or ended) plan and press Write off unpaid dues: it needs the Mark payments received permission, and the confirmation names how many dues and how many rupees before you agree. A due that already went out on an auto-invoice is never written off here — its money lives on that invoice, so settle or cancel the invoice from Invoices — and a due you wrote off never goes out on an auto-invoice later. Changed your mind? Bring back the written-off dues on the same plan (same permission) makes them owed again — until you press Remove from list, which makes the write-off permanent, so removing a plan that has written-off dues needs that permission too. A plan that has run its course — it ended, made all its payments or passed its end date — is never re-activated; start a new plan to bill again.

Running more than one business in the CRM? Every extra business gets the same automatic reminders, recurring dues and auto-invoices — counted only from the day automatic billing began for that business. Due dates older than that are skipped, never billed backwards: a plan that was already behind simply picks up from its next due date, and CRM → Activity notes the dates it skipped. The skipped dates still count toward a plan with a set number of payments, so it ends when you meant it to — a 12-payment plan that skipped 3 bills the remaining 9 — and a plan whose payments all fell before that day simply ends.

GST — how much to pay, and the filing file

How much GST do I pay this month? The top of CRM → GST report answers exactly that: GST collected on the month's sales, minus the credit (ITC) from your purchase bills, applied in the legal set-off order — and the number left is what you pay in cash when filing. It counts website invoices under the same GSTIN too, shows any leftover credit that carries to next month, and warns when purchase bills are missing the vendor's GSTIN (credit can't be claimed without it — add the GSTIN from the bill and the credit counts). It's an estimate from your own books — the final credit comes from GSTR-2B, so confirm with your CA before paying. Composition dealers see their turnover instead (they pay a flat % via CMP-08), and unregistered sellers see “nothing to pay”.

One month picker at the top drives the whole page — the GST to pay, the summary and the filing file all follow it (Custom range is there for the CA who asks for a quarter). When filing time comes, your CRM invoices are already organised: the GSTR-1-style summary — sales to GST-registered buyers (B2B), sales to others (B2C), credit notes and the net — and, first among the buttons, Download the GSTR-1 file for <month>: the GST-portal-ready JSON for GSTR-1; Check the month counts what goes in it; the CSV of the summary is the secondary download for your CA. The filing file (needs your GSTIN; composition dealers file GSTR-4/CMP-08 instead, and we'll tell you so rather than give you the wrong file). Selling on your website under the same GSTIN too? GSTR-1 is filed once per GSTIN — the month check shows how many website invoices that GSTIN has and offers a Combined (website + CRM) download that puts both in one file, and it refuses (listing the numbers) if the two series ever share an invoice number. For the purchase side — the GST you can claim back — see GSTR-2B matching.

For your accountant — Tally files and one Excel workbook

On CRM → Import & export → Download, For your accountant puts a period's books in the shape a CA works with. Pick Last month (the usual monthly ask), This month, This FY, Last FY or two days of your own (up to a year); the line under the chips says what the period holds — bills, credit notes, purchases, payments received and made. Then download Excel for your accountant (one workbook: Sales, Credit notes, Purchases, Receipts & payments and To check) or the two Tally files: import Tally ledgers first (Gateway of Tally → Import → Masters — ledgers your company already has are combined, never doubled), then Tally vouchers (Import → Transactions). It needs the Export / download data permission, and payments of salaries or payouts are included only for a login that may see them.

Every bill becomes a Sales voucher (the customer's ledger, Sales, Output CGST / SGST / IGST and any round-off), every credit note the mirror of one, every purchase bill a Purchase voucher with the input GST split by the supplier's state — a purchase from a supplier with no GSTIN keeps its GST inside the purchase, since no credit can be claimed on it — and every recorded payment a Receipt or a Payment to Cash or Bank. A Bill-counter sale paid at the counter comes with its receipt. The figures are the GST report's own for the same period, every voucher balances to the paisa, and importing the same file again never posts twice. The To check list names what Tally can't be told for you — a bill marked paid with no payment details, an adjustment — so your accountant fixes those by hand. If your Tally company uses different ledger names (“HDFC Current A/c” instead of Bank), open Ledger names in your Tally and type them once; this device remembers them.

Print — full page or thermal receipt

Every invoice prints two ways — on a paid bill under Print / share, on an unpaid one under More: Print or save PDF gives the full themed A4 invoice (same designs and settings as your website invoices), and Thermal receipt (80 mm) prints an 80mm receipt for shop billing-roll printers — the print page is sized to the receipt itself, so there are no browser date/address lines and no blank roll fed after the bill. If your printer still shows extra lines or a wrong paper size, check that computer's print window: keep Margins on “Default” and pick the 80mm paper once. A bill made at the counter with a service marked done and a team member picked prints their first name under that line (By: Asha) on every design, A4 and thermal alike.

Quotations — validity & revisions

A quotation can carry a Valid till date — after it, the customer's link no longer accepts (they're asked to request a fresh quote). Need to change a quotation after it went out? Press Revise (new version) — a new quotation is issued with a fresh number carrying everything forward, the old one is marked superseded, and its link points the customer to the newest version. Your website's own Quotations work the same way.

Pick how it all looks under Invoicing → Settings (Save sits at the top and the bottom of the page; a section bar jumps between its six cards, and leaving with unsaved changes asks first): the A4 design (16 looks) with your accent colour, the Receipt (thermal) design (10 line styles) and bill text size (Normal / Large / Extra large), plus What shows on your invoices — switch off the logo, the business name in the header (handy when your logo already carries your name), bank details, terms, and more, or switch on a Prepared by line that prints who made the bill. To collect with a UPI ID also print a Scan to pay QR with the balance pre-filled — it disappears once the bill is marked paid.

Common questions

Do you take any cut of my payments? No. We never touch the money — the customer pays your UPI/bank directly, and Collect-online payments go through your own gateway account into your own settlement. We only keep the record.

Can I edit an invoice after saving? A saved tax invoice is frozen — but while it's still fully unpaid, press More → Edit (reissue) on the invoice page: the form opens pre-filled, and when you issue, the corrected invoice gets a fresh number while the old one is cancelled automatically (kept in your records for GST — a serial is never changed in place). Once any payment is recorded, the correction path is a credit note instead; the customer’s credit balance adjusts automatically either way. And once a bill already carries a credit note, Edit (reissue) is refused in plain words — “issue a credit note for whatever is left, then create a fresh invoice for the corrected sale” — so one bill can never be reversed twice.

Made a completely wrong invoice? Cancel it from the invoice page's More menu. It stays in your records (cancelled invoices are kept for GST), its number is never used again, and the customer’s credit balance and your stock adjust on their own. If its tax month is already over, cancelling issues a credit note instead of voiding the bill — and if a credit note already reverses it, you’re told exactly that and nothing new is issued.

What about quotations? Make a quote the same way — it has its own number series, the customer can accept or decline it from its WhatsApp link, and one tap converts an accepted quote into an invoice.

Is this the same as my website's order invoices? Same tax engine, different books. Website orders make their own invoices automatically (see GST invoices & reports); CRM invoicing is for everything you bill outside the website.