Info
This function addresses (for example) merchants that are now starting an online business alongside their brick and mortar store, and thus have special requirements regarding invoice and order numbering.Note
Each country has its own laws regarding order and invoice numbering. Please inform yourself about the regulations that apply to your country.Skip to:
Invoice numbers and order numbers are important information to include on your order documentation. Our software ensures that these details are available on all of your order documents. Order and invoice numbers are assigned automatically and follow a specific sequence. You may prefer to add a prefix or influence the length of the number. That's possible! And we'll show you how:
Where. How. What.
- In the sidebar of your cockpit, navigate to Settings > Shop.
- Select Order documents & emails.
- Use the card Invoice numbering if you'd like to adjust invoice numbers, or Order numbering for adjusting order numbers.
Info
The procedure for adjusting the number is the same, so we'll explain it below using the example of invoice numbers. - To adjust your numbering, you can assign a prefix (1), specify the next invoice number (2), and you can also adapt the length of the invoice number (3). In the preview (4) you can immediately see how the number is composed, and you have the possibility to make changes before you save.
In the following we will outline the individual fields more precisely for you.
Prefix
The prefix helps you to individualize your numbering. Be creative - within the following limits:
- You can enter up to 20 characters in the field.
- You can use letters and numbers as well as the characters # + - _
To make things a little easier for you, the field comes with a placeholder text. This will give you a better idea of the possibilities you have. For the prefix, a year or the name of your website is just as suitable as a sequence of numbers and letters that you may already have in use. Also, adding a prefix specific to your online sales will help you tell the difference from your online and offline invoices.
Next invoice number
Now the actual invoice number comes into play. In this field you can enter the next invoice number that will be assigned. According to your specifications, this is the next number automatically generated by the software, which will appear after the prefix on the invoice. This number runs consecutively. Once an invoice has been created, the field Next invoice number will display the next available invoice number. The system is built so that you cannot have multiple invoices with the same invoice number.
Note
If you place a test order and also generate a test invoice during this process, this number is not tracked as a real invoice number, i.e. the numbers are only assigned sequentially for real orders. The same applies to order numbers.Length of invoice number
Depending on the order volume you expect, you can determine the length of the invoice numbers. Your invoice numbers can be up to 20 digits. If, for example, you have entered a 3-digit invoice number in the field Next invoice number but expect an order volume in the 5-digit range, select "5 digits". The invoice number will then be preceded by two zeros.
Preview
As soon as you make an entry in one of the above fields, you will instantly see in the field Preview how it would appear on your order document.
Let's try it out
Okay, so what did we have in mind? In our example above we assume that in addition to our online business we also have a retail store. In order not to mess up the order documents for the online sales with those in the retail store, we decided to use a prefix to clearly mark the online sales. This enables us to have separate invoice sequences for both our retail store and our online business.
As for the next invoice number (in our case the first one), we decided on a 3-digit sequence, because we don't expect more than 100 online sales this year. But we don't want to give our customers the impression that we haven't sold anything yet. So we decide to start at 100. To be on the safe side, we set the length of the invoice number to 4 digits. You never know.
We like the preview very much, and we do exactly the same for order numbering. And now we save everything, and that's it.