How to create an invoice

Every invoice in WatCoreLite starts life as a Draft — a fully editable working copy you can change as many times as you need before anything is final. Here's the whole flow, start to finish.

1. Start a new invoice

From Invoices, click New invoice. Pick a customer (or add one on the spot), then add your line items — description, quantity, and unit price. If your business uses the Products & Services catalog, typing a product's code fills in the line automatically. Add a discount (flat amount or percent) if this invoice needs one, and an optional Due date if you want one shown on the printed copy.

Got a big order to enter? ✨ AI Fill can turn a customer's order or even a photo of it into ready-to-review line items — see AI Fill: turn an order or bill into line items automatically.

2. Save it as a Draft

Click Save as Draft. At this point nothing is locked in — you can keep editing line items, swap the customer, or delete the invoice entirely if you started it by mistake. A Draft also doesn't have an invoice number yet; that's intentional, and we cover exactly why in Invoice status explained.

3. Finalize it

When the invoice is ready to actually go out, open it and click Finalize. This is the moment it becomes a real, official document:

• It gets its permanent, sequential invoice number.
• Its status moves from Draft to Pending.
• If you track stock, the quantities on this invoice are deducted from your inventory.
• Line items lock — from here on, the invoice can't be edited directly.

If you need to change something after finalizing, the correction path is to void the invoice (with a reason) and create a fresh one — this keeps a clean, honest record instead of silently rewriting history.

4. Get paid

Once an invoice is Pending, open it and click Record payment to log what came in — amount, date, and method (Cash, UPI, Bank Transfer, Card, Cheque, or Other). The invoice's balance and status update automatically from every payment recorded against it, so once the full amount is in, it flips to Paid on its own.

If a customer brings something back later, you don't need to void the whole invoice for it — see Returning items on a sold invoice.

5. Share it

Once an invoice is no longer a Draft, you can download it as a PDF, print it directly, or share it over WhatsApp — see How to share an invoice via WhatsApp, PDF, or print for the details.