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Invoicing

Invoice

The document that states what a customer owes for a period, line by line, with tax and totals.

An invoice is the legal record of a charge: who owes what, for what, under which tax treatment, by when.

In a subscription business it is generated rather than written, which makes it only as correct as the data behind it. Every line traces back to a subscription, a rated usage total, a proration event or a discount, and each of those has to be reproducible months later when someone queries it.

An invoice is immutable once issued. Corrections are made by issuing a credit note and, where needed, a replacement invoice. Editing an issued invoice breaks the audit trail and, in most jurisdictions, the law.