Invoicing & Payments

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Team

Create invoices, send them by email with a PDF attachment, and get paid online through Stripe.

Just need one invoice?

If you don’t want to set up a full workspace for a single one-off invoice, try the free Invoice Generator . It builds a clean invoice PDF in your browser, with multi-currency support, an optional tax or VAT line with a reverse-charge note, and your logo. No account is required. The first download asks for an email address so you can subscribe to occasional updates; after that, the same browser downloads without asking again. Your invoice details are never sent to our servers, and your business and client details are saved in your own browser for next time you use it.

Creating an invoice

There are two ways to create an invoice:

From scratch

Go to Invoices → New Invoice and fill in the details. Starting from a client or project page, or from the invoice list filtered by a client, fills in the client for you, along with that client’s VAT rate:

Select a client (required). The client picker is searchable. Start typing a name to filter the list. All clients show here, even ones you haven’t started a project with yet, so you can invoice a retainer or one-off work without having to create a project first. If the client isn’t in Kiaro yet, add them right here: see Adding a client while you invoice.
Select a project (optional). This list is filtered to the projects belonging to the client you just picked; type to search within them.
Add line items: Each line item has a description, quantity, and unit price. The line total is calculated automatically.
Set the tax rate: Kiaro pre-fills this from the client’s Default VAT rate when the client has one set, otherwise from the Default tax rate in Settings → Invoices → Tax Information, otherwise 0. You can override it per invoice, and changing it on a saved invoice does not affect other invoices. The same pickup applies to invoices created from time entries and from milestones.
Add a discount (optional). Below the line items, click Add discount, choose Amount or Percent, and enter the value. See Discounts.
Set issue and due dates
Add notes: Optional notes that appear on the invoice (e.g., payment terms). If you’ve set Default notes, the box starts with them

Kiaro remembers the last client you invoiced and pre-selects them the next time you open this form, so repeat billing for the same client is one click lighter.

Invoice numbers are generated automatically and are unique within your workspace.

Adding a client while you invoice

You don’t have to leave the invoice to add a new client. In the client picker, type the client’s name and choose Create client ”…”. Kiaro asks for two things:

Client name (required)
Email (optional). You need it to email the invoice from Kiaro. Skip it if you’ll use Finalize & download and send the PDF yourself.

Click Add client and the new client is selected on the invoice straight away, using your workspace currency and default tax rate. Anything you’ve already typed on the invoice stays put.

The client is added as an active client, the same as one made with Clients → New Client, so on the Free plan it counts towards your limit of 3 active clients. At the limit, Kiaro doesn’t add the client. It offers the Solo plan, or you can set an existing client to Past or Inactive to free up a slot. Fill in the rest of the client’s details, such as their billing address, later on the client’s page, which shows what’s still missing.

This option is only on new invoices. When you edit an existing invoice, pick from your existing clients.

Client snapshot sidebar

As soon as you pick a client, a Client Snapshot panel appears on the right of the form. It always confirms the currency and tax rate that will land on this invoice and shows the client’s primary contact (with a one-click mail link), so you have a sanity-check before you start filling line items. Below that, if you have prior history with this client, you also see: typical days-to-pay, currently open invoices (per currency), and unbilled time across their projects. Rows with no data yet are hidden, not stubbed out. Open the panel on mobile from the Client Snapshot toggle above the form.

From time entries

If you track time with hourly rates on your projects, you can generate invoices directly from your time data. Go to Invoices → From Time Entries (or Time → Create Invoice from Time):

Select a client
Optionally filter by date range
Review and select uninvoiced billable time entries
Check the Invoice date and Due date below the list. They’re pre-filled from your payment terms in Settings → Invoices → Invoice Defaults (today, and today plus your terms). Change them here if this invoice needs different dates, or clear the due date to leave it off.
Click Create Invoice

Kiaro groups the selected entries by task, calculates line item amounts from hours multiplied by the project’s hourly rate, and creates a draft invoice. Each task row shows the sum behind its amount, for example 9.5h × $150.00, so you can check the maths before you create the invoice. The time entries are marked as invoiced so they won’t be included in future invoices.

Time a retainer already bills

If the client has an active retainer, the hours it covers are not listed here: they’re billed on the retainer’s invoice, so invoicing them from time would bill them twice. A note above the list says how many hours that is. Time on fixed-fee projects, and time logged before the retainer’s billing start, is still listed. The same rule applies when the AI command bar or a connected AI app creates an invoice from time. See Which time counts.

Showing non-billable time at no charge

If the client has non-billable time in the same date range, a Show non-billable entries at no charge checkbox appears below the list. Tick it to put that work on the invoice as free lines, so your client sees the extra effort they got.

Each task gets one line after the billable lines, for example Extra revisions - 2h (no charge, normally $300.00). The “normally” amount uses the project’s hourly rate and is left out when the project has no rate.
The lines are $0, so the subtotal, tax and total don’t change.
The entries are marked as invoiced so they aren’t offered again. Deleting or voiding the invoice releases them.
You need at least one billable entry selected. Kiaro won’t create an invoice made only of free time.

See Time Tracking for more details on setting up hourly rates and logging time.

Line items

Each invoice must have at least one line item. Line items include:

Description: What the charge is for
Quantity: Number of units (supports decimals for hourly billing)
Unit price: Price per unit, entered as an amount in the invoice’s currency (for example 150.00)

On the invoice page and the PDF, the unit price column is labelled Rate.

The subtotal, discount, tax, and total are calculated automatically from your line items, discount, and tax rate, and update below the line items as you type.

If you start filling in a line item, Kiaro asks you to complete the description before saving. Completely empty rows are still allowed (the default empty row at the bottom won’t block you), but a row with a price or quantity but no description will be flagged inline so it isn’t quietly dropped on save.

Tax

The tax rate defaults to the client’s Default VAT rate when the client has one set, otherwise to the Default tax rate in Settings → Invoices → Tax Information, otherwise 0. You can change it on any individual invoice. Tax is calculated as a percentage of the subtotal after any discount.

Discounts

You can take a discount off any invoice, the same way as in the free Invoice Generator :

Below the line items, click Add discount.
Choose Amount for a fixed amount off (for example 250.00 in the invoice’s currency) or Percent for a percentage off (for example 10).
Enter the value. The Discount, Tax, and Total lines update straight away.

The discount comes off the subtotal before tax, so tax is charged on the discounted amount. For example, a 1,000.00 subtotal with a 10% discount and 21% tax comes to 900.00 plus 189.00 tax, a total of 1,089.00.

A fixed discount can’t be more than the subtotal, and a percentage can’t be more than 100%. To remove a discount, click the × next to it and save.

The discount shows as its own line between Subtotal and Tax everywhere the invoice appears: the invoice page, the PDF, the client portal, and the invoices CSV export. A percentage discount is labelled with its rate, for example Discount (10%). The amount your client pays online is the discounted total.

Like the rest of the invoice, the discount can only be changed while the invoice is a draft. To change the discount on an invoice you’ve already sent, void and reissue it; the new draft keeps the original discount so you can adjust it.

If you sync invoices to Xero, the discount is sent as a separate negative Discount line using the same account and tax code as the invoice, so the total in Xero matches the total in Kiaro.

Default notes

Text you add to every invoice, such as your payment terms, a late fee policy, or the wording for reverse-charge VAT, can go in Settings → Invoices → Invoice Defaults → Default notes instead of being typed each time.

Every new invoice starts with these notes, however it’s created: from scratch, from time entries, from a milestone, a retainer’s automatic draft, the AI command bar, or a connected AI app. On the New Invoice form the notes box is pre-filled, so you can edit the text for that invoice or clear it. An invoice you clear is saved with no notes.

Changing your Default notes only affects invoices you create afterwards. Existing invoices, including drafts, keep the notes they already have. To change the notes on a draft, click them on the invoice page; on an invoice you’ve already sent, see Changing Sent Invoices.

Editing a draft on its page

On a draft invoice, change the due date and the notes by clicking them on the invoice page. There is no form to open and nothing to save.

Due date: Click it and pick a date from the calendar, or use a shortcut: Today, Tomorrow or Next Monday.
Notes: Click the notes (or Add notes), type, and click away to save. Cmd+Enter (Ctrl+Enter on Windows) saves too.

Press Esc while typing to cancel and keep the old value. For line items, tax, discount, client and bank account, click More fields, which opens the full invoice form. If you send the invoice while another tab still shows it as a draft, or someone else changed it, Kiaro refuses the change, says why and reloads the page with the latest values. Once an invoice is sent, the due date and notes are plain text. To change them on an issued invoice, see Changing Sent Invoices.

Saving as draft

The invoice form always saves a draft: click Save draft at the bottom. You can save and reopen a draft as many times as you like. A draft has no invoice number yet; it gets the next number in your sequence when you send it or use Finalize & download.

Sending, finalizing and marking paid happen on the invoice page, not in the form. After you save, you land on the draft, where Send, Schedule Send and Finalize & download are at the top. Once the invoice is sent or finalized, Mark as Paid records a payment you received outside Kiaro.

When you’re editing an existing invoice, a small Last saved X ago indicator appears next to the Save button so you can see at a glance how recent the saved copy is.

Currency

Each invoice captures its currency at creation time. Kiaro picks the currency in this order:

The client’s billing currency if one is set on the client record
Otherwise the workspace default from Settings → Invoices → Invoice Defaults

Once an invoice is created, its currency is locked. Changing the client’s or workspace’s currency later does not retroactively affect existing invoices.

Supported currencies: USD, EUR, GBP, ZAR.

PDF generation and preview

Every invoice can be previewed and downloaded as a PDF. The PDF includes:

Your business details from invoice settings (logo, address, VAT ID)
The client’s Bill To block with their full billing address and tax number
Line items and totals in the invoice’s locked currency

The client’s tax number is labelled with whatever you set as Tax ID type in Settings → Invoices → Tax Information, so a US workspace prints “EIN” rather than “VAT”.

Where the Bill To block comes from

While the invoice is still a draft, the Bill To block reads live from the client’s profile. If the VAT number, company name or address is wrong, fix it at Clients → (the client) → Edit and the draft picks it up. There is no need to delete the draft and start again.

The invoice page shows the same block under the line items so you can check it without opening the PDF, along with a note about where the details are coming from.

When you send the invoice, or finalize it for download, the details are copied onto the invoice and locked so later changes to the client can never rewrite a document you already issued. After that, use More → Correct billing info on the invoice itself. See Changing Sent Invoices.

Bank accounts and payment instructions

Add the bank details clients should pay into under Settings → Invoices → Bank Accounts. Give each account a label (for example “International” or “SA”) and a currency, then fill in the structured fields: account holder, bank name, account number or IBAN, SWIFT/BIC, routing or branch code, and country. Anything that doesn’t fit a field, such as a payment reference, intermediary bank, or company registration number, goes in Additional instructions. Older accounts that used the single free-text box still work exactly as before; open one and fill in the fields whenever you’d like cleaner, copy-ready details. Bank accounts save automatically, so there’s no separate Save button for this section.

Choosing the account on an invoice

Every invoice has a Pay to picker, so you always see, and can change, which account a client will pay into. This appears on the regular invoice form and on invoices created from tracked time. Kiaro pre-fills it for you in this order:

An account you pick explicitly on the invoice
Otherwise the account whose currency matches the invoice’s currency, preferring the one you’ve marked Default when several share a currency (so a EUR invoice picks your EUR account, and two ZAR accounts respect your default)
Otherwise your default account

While an invoice is a draft, the picker follows your current setup: if you add, edit, or change the default account, drafts update to match. The choice is frozen once the invoice is sent, so sent, paid, and voided invoices always keep the details they went out with.

Where clients see it

The chosen account is shown as the Payment Instructions block on the invoice itself, in the client portal, on the downloaded PDF, and in the copy attached to the email. Structured accounts render as clean labelled lines, and in the portal your client can copy the account number, IBAN, or SWIFT with one tap. This applies to every way an invoice is created, including from tracked time or a milestone.

On the client portal’s payment page, the bank details appear only while the invoice is open (sent or overdue). Once an invoice is voided, its payment page shows “This invoice was voided. There is nothing to pay.” with your business name, and no bank details or payment form, and the PDF downloaded from the portal leaves the bank details out.

Logo and branding

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Team

Upload your business logo under Settings → Invoices → Branding. The logo saves automatically as soon as you upload or remove it, so you do not need to click Save Settings afterwards, and switching to a new logo replaces the old one immediately.

On paid plans your logo and accent colour appear on your invoices, proposals, and the client portal. On the Free plan those documents carry Kiaro branding instead; your business name still appears so clients know whose workspace they are in. See Plans & Pricing for the full breakdown.

Sending invoices

Click Send on any invoice to email it to the client. The email includes:

An HTML email with the invoice summary
The invoice PDF as an attachment
A payment link (if you have Stripe Connect configured)

Sending an invoice automatically sets its status to Sent and sets the issue date to today if not already set.

Resending invoices

After an invoice has been sent, More → Resend invoice appears on the invoice detail page. Use this when a client didn’t receive the original email or needs it sent again. Resending re-emails the full invoice with the PDF attachment and payment link. The resent email carries the same online payment as before, so a client who opens both emails is offered one payment, not two. Once that payment has gone through, the payment page says so and offers no new payment form, even before the invoice shows as paid.

Schedule send

Don’t want to send now? On draft invoices, click Schedule Send, pick a date, and choose a send time.

Times run in 15-minute steps: 09:00, 09:15, 09:30, 09:45, and so on. Your invoice goes out within a minute of the slot you choose, so a send set for 09:15 leaves at about 09:16. Slots that have already passed today are not offered.

All times are shown and interpreted in your workspace timezone, the one set in Settings, not your computer’s. If you travel or work from a different timezone, the send still happens at the time your workspace says.

Once scheduled, the invoice page shows a Sends [date] at [time] marker and the button changes to Edit schedule. Open it to move the send, or choose Remove schedule to cancel it and leave the invoice as a plain draft. The invoice stays a draft until it actually sends, then moves to Sent like any other invoice.

If you send or finalize the invoice yourself before the scheduled time, the schedule is cleared and it doesn’t go out twice. While an invoice is being sent, its schedule can’t be changed or removed: Kiaro asks you to try again in a minute.

Finalize & download (send from your own email)

If you prefer to send invoices through your own email client, click Finalize & download on any draft. Kiaro will assign the next sequential invoice number, finalize the invoice, and download the final PDF so you can attach it to your own message. The invoice number is drawn from the same sequence as invoices you send through Kiaro, so your numbering stays in order regardless of which channel you use.

Invoices you issue this way show a Downloaded badge in your invoice list and on the invoice page, so you can tell at a glance which invoices you delivered yourself versus the ones Kiaro emailed (which show Sent). A downloaded invoice is treated exactly like a sent one everywhere else: it is still outstanding, still payable online, can still go overdue, and is still pushed to your accounting integration if you have one connected.

Two things to know:

Once finalized, you can’t edit line items or amounts. If you spot a mistake after finalizing, use Void & reissue to start a corrected draft.
To check the layout without finalizing, use Preview PDF. Draft previews carry a faint “DRAFT” watermark and a placeholder identifier in place of an invoice number, so they can’t be mistaken for a final document.

How emails look to your client

Invoice emails are personalized to look like they come from you, not from Kiaro:

Sender name: “Your Name via Kiaro”, so your client sees your name first
Reply-to: Your email address, so when the client replies, it goes to your inbox
Greeting: Uses the first name of the first To recipient (e.g., “Hi Sarah,”) instead of the company name
Footer: “Sent on behalf of [Your Business Name]“

Who receives invoice emails

Recipients come from each contact’s Invoices setting on the client’s Contacts tab. Invoices, manual reminders, upcoming and overdue notices, and the payment receipt all follow it. If nobody is set to To, the primary contact receives the email.

The Send, Resend and Reminder dialogs show To and CC pickers prefilled from those settings. Change them for one send, or use Add contact to add someone new on the spot (up to 10 recipients per email). Scheduled sends take the recipients from the client’s settings at the moment they send. The invoice page shows Sends to with the current recipients.

The button in the email opens only that invoice’s payment page, so forwarding the email does not give anyone access to the rest of your client’s portal. People who have portal access sign in from your portal login page, which the email links to when the portal is on.

Customizing the email text

Under Settings → Invoices → Email Preferences → Custom Email Text (optional) you can set your own subject line and message for the invoice email and for the automatic overdue reminder. Leave a field blank to use the default. To build on the default rather than start from scratch, click Use default text to drop it into the field, then add your own line (for example, keep “Please find attached invoice {number} for {amount}.” and add “Thank you for your business.”). Your custom message replaces the opening line of the email; the invoice details, the pay button, and your business footer are always added automatically.

You can include these tokens, which are filled in when the email is sent: {number}, {amount}, {business}, {client}, {due}. Overdue reminders also support {days} (days past due).

Copy Payment Link

If you have Stripe Connect set up, sent and overdue invoices have More → Copy payment link. It copies the link to the invoice’s payment page in your client portal. Use this if you prefer to send invoices from your own email: paste the link into your message so clients can still pay online. Unlike the button in Kiaro’s invoice email, this link asks your client to sign in to the portal first, so it only works for contacts with portal access on a client whose portal is enabled. See Client Portal.

Invoice statuses

Draft: Being prepared, not yet sent. A draft has no invoice number and can’t be marked paid until you send it or use Finalize & download. Only draft invoices can be deleted.
Sent: Delivered to the client by email
Downloaded: Finalized for you to send yourself via Finalize & download. Treated the same as Sent: still outstanding and payable, but delivered by you rather than emailed by Kiaro
Paid: Payment received (updated automatically via Stripe or manually)
Overdue: Past the due date without payment
Voided: Cancelled with a reason. It stays in your list for the record but no longer counts toward revenue. See Voiding an invoice

A draft that is being sent at that moment can’t be deleted: Kiaro asks you to try again in a minute, and once it has been sent it can only be voided. Deleting a draft makes the time entries and milestones it billed available to invoice again.

Payment reminders

Kiaro sends payment reminders automatically, or you can send them manually.

Automatic reminders

When enabled (the default), Kiaro sends reminders on a configurable schedule:

Before due date: A “heads up” reminder X days before the invoice is due (default: 3 days). This prevents overdue situations by reminding clients before the deadline.
After due date: A gentle overdue reminder X days after the due date (default: 1 day).
Repeat reminders: If still unpaid, follow-up reminders every X days (default: 7 days), up to a maximum count (default: 3 reminders per invoice).

All of these are configurable in Settings → Invoices → Email Preferences. Set any “days before” to 0 to disable pre-due-date reminders.

The before-due reminder goes out once, on the first daily run that falls within that many days of the due date, and never on the due date itself. It is skipped if a reminder was already sent for the invoice.

Manual reminders

On any sent or overdue invoice, click More → Send reminder to send a reminder immediately. You can add a personal note that appears in the email, for adding context like “Just checking if this came through OK?” The note appears in a highlighted block above the invoice details.

One email about an invoice goes out at a time, including the automatic reminders. If the invoice, or another reminder for it, is being sent at that moment, Kiaro asks you to try again in a minute instead of sending a second email. The lock usually clears within seconds; if a send was interrupted part-way, it can last up to five minutes. If an invoice email goes out but Kiaro couldn’t record it as sent, you see “The invoice went out, but Kiaro couldn’t record it. Don’t send it again now.” The invoice stays locked for those five minutes, so it isn’t emailed a second time by mistake. An automatic reminder that finds the invoice being sent waits for the next daily run, and one that would repeat a reminder you just sent is skipped.

Email copies

Enable “Send me a copy of every email sent to clients” in Settings to receive a BCC of every client-facing email: invoices, reminders, upcoming and overdue notices, proposals, portal invitations, and payment receipts. You always know exactly what your client received, in your own inbox.

The copy covers mail Kiaro sends on your behalf to a client. It deliberately excludes anything addressed to you already (payment notifications, digests) and anything carrying a sign-in link or security code, which is never copied to a second mailbox.

Controlling reminders

Go to Settings → Invoices → Email Preferences to:

Toggle automatic reminders on or off globally
Configure the schedule: days before, days after, repeat interval, max reminders
Enable BCC copies: receive copies of all client-facing emails
Customize email text: write your own subject lines and body text for invoice and reminder emails

Email history

Every email Kiaro sends on your behalf is logged and visible on the invoice detail page timeline, so you always know what was sent and when.

Following up on overdue invoices

When an invoice is 14 days past due, Kiaro shows a follow-up banner on the invoice and a brand-purple gradient strip on the invoice list rows.

Click Draft follow-up to open a side sheet. Pick Generate draft and Kiaro writes a stage-aware subject and body using the invoice’s amount, due date, days overdue, and your style guide. Edit either field, then Copy to clipboard and paste into your email client. Send from your own inbox so the reply lands with you.

When you finish, click Mark as followed up in the sheet (or I followed up on the banner) to log the touch. The banner hides until the stage escalates.

The tone of the draft moves through three stages:

Friendly reminder at 14 to 20 days past due with no prior follow-up.
Polite but direct at 21 to 29 days or after one prior follow-up.
Formal, request payment confirmation at 30+ days or after two prior follow-ups.

Kiaro never sends this email for you. If you want a Kiaro-branded reminder, use Send reminder on the invoice page instead.

Online payment via Stripe

If you’ve connected a Stripe account (see Stripe Connect), sent invoices include a payment link. Clients can pay directly from the email or from the Client Portal. When payment completes, the invoice status updates to Paid automatically, and the invoice page shows Paid via Stripe with the payment date under the totals. Invoices you mark as paid yourself show Paid with the date.

You do not need the client portal switched on for this. If a client has portal access turned off, their Pay Invoice link opens that one invoice’s payment page and nothing else: no portal navigation and no access to your other work for them. Turning the portal on later changes nothing about how payment works. It also gives that client the full portal.

When a client pays, two emails go out automatically: a receipt to the client, and a notification to you so you do not have to keep checking. Yours names the client, the invoice, the amount, and links straight to it in Kiaro. Marking an invoice paid yourself sends nothing, since you already know.

For a payment you received outside Kiaro (bank transfer, cash, cheque), click Mark as Paid on a sent or overdue invoice. A draft can’t be marked paid, because it has no invoice number yet. If your client paid before you sent the invoice, use Finalize & download to give it its number, then mark it paid.

Invoices marked paid before this rule existed may have no invoice number. They show No number in the Invoice # column. If one was marked paid by hand, use Void & reissue to replace it with a numbered invoice.

Payments and voided invoices

Voiding an invoice closes its online payment first, so a client who still has the payment page open can no longer pay it. If a payment is already processing, or has just gone through, Kiaro doesn’t void the invoice and tells you to refund it first. See Voiding an invoice.

If money still arrives for a voided invoice, the invoice stays voided. Kiaro records the amount, emails the workspace owner, and in most cases lets an owner or admin refund it from the invoice page; when Kiaro can’t, the email and the invoice page say to refund it from your Stripe dashboard. It never refunds on its own, and it sends your client no receipt that reads as if the invoice were settled. See If a client pays after you void.

When the payment button can’t be added

Sometimes Stripe refuses to set up payment for an invoice, most often because Connect onboarding was started but never finished, so the account cannot accept charges yet. Other causes include a currency your Stripe account cannot process, or a restriction on the account.

The invoice still sends: the client gets the email, the PDF, and your bank details. It will not have the Pay Invoice button. Kiaro tells you so right after sending, with the reason Stripe gave, so you can fix it in Settings → Invoices and resend. Check there if you expected a payment button and your client says they cannot see one.

Export

Export your invoice data from the invoices list page. Click Export and choose CSV or Excel (.xlsx). The export respects the filters currently applied to the list.