Sending Invoices
Sending an invoice emails it to the client on the invoice and flips the invoice's send status from Not Sent to Sent. Send status is tracked separately from payment status — an invoice can be Sent and still Unpaid, or recorded as Paid without ever having been formally sent.
Who can use it
- Company Admin, and any role whose Roles & Permissions matrix grants access to Invoices.
- Permission levels for invoices follow the standard scale — None, Added (records the user personally added), Owns (records assigned to them), or All — so a user may be able to send only the invoices within their level.
- The Invoices module must be enabled for that user type in Settings → Module Settings (modules are toggled independently for Admin, Employee, and Client).
If someone reports a missing Send button, check Roles & Permissions first, then have them log out and back in — permission changes don't always apply to an already-active session.
Prerequisites
- The invoice must already be saved. See Creating Invoices.
- The client record must have an Email filled in, and Receive Email Notifications must be set to Yes on that client. A client with notifications toggled off will not receive invoice email.
- Outgoing email must work. With no custom SMTP configured, mail is sent from the default sender
notification@pmsuite.co. To send from your own domain, configure Settings → Custom Email Setup (Host, Port, Encryption, Username, Password, From Name, From Email — Gmail, Microsoft 365/Outlook, cPanel, Resend, Amazon SES, SendGrid, Mailgun, Zoho Mail, Postmark, and SMTP2GO are supported).
How to Access
Navigation: Sidebar → Finance → Invoices (/account/invoices) → open the invoice → use the send action on the invoice.
You can also send at creation time using Save & Send on the invoice form.
Sending an invoice
- Open the invoice from
/account/invoices. - Trigger the send action. PMSuite composes the invoice email to the client on the invoice and attaches the invoice PDF.
- Confirm the send.
What PMSuite does:
- Generates and attaches the invoice PDF.
- Applies your company's email branding — the attached PDF and the email itself use the logo and branding configured under Settings → Custom Email Setup → Email Branding (Logo, Brand Color, Reply-To, Greeting, Sign-off, Footer, with a live preview).
- Checks the delivery conditions before flipping the invoice to Sent. If company email notifications are off, the client has no email address, or the client has Receive Email Notifications set to No, PMSuite refuses the send, shows an error, and leaves the invoice Not Sent — so the list never says "Sent" for mail that was never queued.
If a delivery condition fails, PMSuite surfaces an error instead of failing silently. Save & Send applies the same checks, and on failure the invoice is not saved and not sent. Fix the underlying cause (see Troubleshooting) and send again.
There is also a mark as sent action for the case where you delivered the invoice yourself. It flips the send status without emailing the client, and deliberately skips the checks above.
Send status vs payment status
These are two independent fields on every invoice:
| Field | Values |
|---|---|
| Send status | Not Sent · Sent |
| Payment status | Draft · Unpaid · Partially Paid · Paid · Refunded |
Consequences worth knowing:
- An invoice can be Sent and remain Unpaid indefinitely.
- An invoice can reach Paid while still showing Not Sent, if you recorded the payment manually without emailing the client.
- Marking an invoice Paid, Partially Paid, or Refunded never changes its send status.
- Sending does not change the payment status, with one exception: sending a Draft invoice moves it to Unpaid.
Payment reminders
Reminders are configured centrally, not per invoice, under Settings → Finance Settings → Invoice Settings:
- Due After (days) — the default gap between an invoice's date and its due date, used when new invoices are created.
- Send Reminder Before/After — controls whether the reminder goes out ahead of the due date or after it, so you can chase either proactively or on overdue invoices.
Because these settings are company-wide, a change applies to future reminder activity across all invoices rather than to one invoice in isolation.
Effect on other features
- Invoice list and filters: The Sent / Not Sent value is a first-class field, so you can separate "never delivered" from "delivered but unpaid" when chasing receivables.
- Payments: A sent invoice can be settled through a configured payment gateway or recorded manually. See Payments, Payment Gateways, and Offline Payments.
- Notifications: Invoice is one of the event types available in Settings → Notification Settings, including the Slack tab — a working incoming-webhook integration that pushes PMSuite notifications one-way into a Slack channel.
- Google Calendar: If Google Calendar Settings are active and verified, invoices are among the object types PMSuite pushes out to Google Calendar. The sync is one-way, PMSuite → Google Calendar; items created in Google Calendar do not appear in PMSuite.
- QuickBooks: Where QuickBooks is connected via Settings → Finance Settings → Quickbooks Settings, the sync is one-way, PMSuite → QuickBooks. Data does not flow back from QuickBooks into PMSuite.
- Recurring invoices: Invoices generated by a recurring series are ordinary invoices and carry their own independent send status. See Recurring Invoices.
Limitations
- Reminder timing is a company-wide setting, not per invoice. Due After and Send Reminder Before/After live in Finance Settings and apply across the company. Workaround: set the values that fit the majority of your clients, and for exceptions adjust that individual invoice's Due Date directly on the invoice, or follow up manually.
- A client with Receive Email Notifications set to No cannot be sent an invoice — PMSuite blocks the send rather than emailing them. Workaround: switch the toggle to Yes on the client record and send again, or download the invoice PDF, deliver it through your own channel, and use mark as sent to keep the list accurate.
- Send status only records that PMSuite accepted and queued the email, not that it reached the inbox or that the client opened it. Workaround: treat Sent as "left our system", and confirm receipt by asking the client directly or by watching for payment activity on the invoice.
- A client's login email cannot be changed by the client or by an admin through the standard UI. Workaround: the internal PMSuite team can change it on the backend on request — raise a support request rather than recreating the client.
Troubleshooting
The invoice still shows Not Sent after I clicked send. That is expected when a delivery condition failed — PMSuite refuses to mark Sent when it knows the mail would be suppressed. Check the error shown at send time, confirm the client has an email address and Receive Email Notifications set to Yes, verify Custom Email Setup credentials, then retry.
Save & Send returned an error.
Save & Send is all-or-nothing: when the delivery check fails, the invoice is not saved either. Resolve the mail problem first, then use Save & Send again — or save the invoice normally and send it afterwards from /account/invoices.
The client says they never got the invoice. Check, in order: the client's Email field is correct; Receive Email Notifications is set to Yes on the client record; and the send status shows Sent. If it shows Not Sent, the email was never queued. If it shows Sent, the mail left PMSuite — check the client's spam folder, and configure Custom Email Setup so mail sends from your own domain.
The emailed PDF has the wrong logo or no branding. Email branding for outgoing mail and attachments comes from Settings → Custom Email Setup → Email Branding. The invoice document's own logo is separate and lives in Settings → Finance Settings → Invoice Settings.
Emails arrive from an address I don't recognise.
Without custom SMTP, PMSuite sends from notification@pmsuite.co. Configure Custom Email Setup to send from your own domain instead.
The invoice shows Paid but Not Sent. Nothing is wrong — the payment was recorded without the invoice ever being emailed. Send it if the client needs a copy for their records.