This article covers:
How the due date is worked out
When an invoice is approved, Operate sets Due Date = Invoice Date + a number of days. The number of days comes from the first of these that applies:
The account's Standard Payment Term. If the account has a live payment term, its Days Due is used.
The organisation's Default Payment Days Due. Used when the account has no payment term, or its term has been deleted.
0 days. If neither is set, the invoice is due on the invoice date.
A due date already on the draft, or when using the overwrite date field in the approval preview, is always used over the above.
Turning the feature on
Go to Settings > General > Operate Settings > Invoicing Settings, make sure All Locations is selected at the top, tick Default Invoice Due Date from Payment Terms and press Save.
The setting applies to all locations and cannot be set per single location. It is only shown when All Locations is selected.
Setting an organisation-wide default
The organisation default is the fallback for accounts that have no payment term. It lives in a field called Default Payment Days Due on the Organisation record.
The quickest way to set it is from the Organisations list view:
Go to Settings > General > Organizations.
Tick the organisation (or several).
Press Update and choose Default Payment Days Due from the list.
Enter the number of days and press OK.
Leave the field blank if you do not want an organisation default. Accounts with no payment term will then be due on the invoice date.
Setting a payment term on an account
Open the account and set its Standard Payment Term field. Where the field sits on the account page depends on your page layout; in the standard layout it is in the Financial Info section. The term's Days Due is what the due date calculation uses.
What you see when approving invoices
Open a draft invoice, or a bill run, and press Preview as usual. With the setting on, the header shows:
This Invoice Due Date: the date the selected invoice will be given when it is approved. It is read-only and updates if you change the invoice Date.
A note under it saying where the date came from.
Overwrite Due Date (or Overwrite All Due Dates when previewing several invoices): leave this blank to accept the calculated dates, or enter a date to use instead.
The note under This Invoice Due Date tells you which rule applied:
Note | Meaning |
Payment term: Net 30 (30 days) | The account's Standard Payment Term was used |
Organisation default (10 days) | The account has no term, so the organisation's Default Payment Days Due was used |
No payment term (0 days) | Neither is set, so the invoice is due on the invoice date |
Manually set on draft | The draft already had a due date, which is kept |
Overwritten | You have entered a date in the Overwrite field |
When you preview several invoices, select each one in the list on the left to see its own due date and note. Each invoice is worked out from its own account, so a bill run can handle a mix of accounts on different terms and calculate the correct date for each invoice.
Changing a due date
You have two ways to set a due date yourself:
Before approving: edit the draft invoice and set its Due Date. The preview shows "Manually set on draft" and keeps your date.
While approving: enter a date in Overwrite Due Date. For a bill run, Overwrite All Due Dates applies the same date to every invoice in the preview.
Invoices created outside the approval screen
The setting applies everywhere an invoice is created, not just the preview:
Invoices paid through the portal or Point of Sale are created and paid in one step, so their due date is set to the invoice date.
Invoices created and approved through the API have their due date set automatically from the payment term when approved, unless the API call supplies a due date.
Resetting an approved invoice to draft clears its due date along with the invoice date, so it is recalculated when the invoice is approved again.
Things to know
Existing invoices are not changed when you turn the setting on. Only invoices approved afterwards get a default due date.
If the preview cannot load the payment terms (for example after a network problem), it shows a warning and leaves This Invoice Due Date blank. Refresh the page to retry. You can still approve: the due date is still applied correctly when the invoice is saved.
A deleted payment term on an account is ignored and the organisation default is used instead.
Credit notes are not affected and never get a due date.
This feature only works with Standard Payment Terms, rental payment term on an account is not used.