Creating Tax Invoices

Tax invoices are financial documents on the orders in your store. You can use them in your internal accounting, present them to the local tax office or send them to your customers. In the EU and in countries like Australia, New Zealand, or India, invoices are required by law to calculate taxes. In other countries, managing them can be voluntary.

Note: If you are unsure whether you need tax invoices for your business, please, consult with advisors or tax authorities in your country.

Enabling Tax Invoices

You can enable tax invoices if you want to use Ecwid’s built-in feature for the invoices in your store. These invoices will have unique numbers and are legally compliant.

To enable tax invoices:

  1. From Store management, go to Settings → Taxes & Invoices.
  2. Scroll down to the Tax invoices section and click on it:

3. On the opened page, click Enable Tax Invoices.

4. Set up your invoices as you like in the Settings section.

You can set how and when your invoices are generated and sent. You can also customize the default tax invoice template and the tax invoice numbers used in your store.

Once you enable tax invoices for your Ecwid store, a specialManage Tax Invoices dropdown menu and the Tax invoices section will appear on the pages of the individual orders in My Sales → Orders.

Disabling Tax Invoices

If you decide to use a third-party system outside of Ecwid to manage your tax invoices or if tax invoices are unnecessary for your business, you can disable the invoices for your store.

To disable tax invoices:

  1. From Store management, go to Settings → Taxes & Invoices.
  2. Scroll down to the Tax invoices section and click on it.
  3. On the opened page, find and click Disable tax invoices:

After you do this, you will no longer see the list of settings for tax invoices. TheManage Tax Invoices dropdown menu and the Tax invoices section will disappear from the pages of your orders in My Sales → Orders.

Creating Tax Invoices for Orders

There are two types of tax invoices available in store:regular invoices for your sales and cancellation invoices to provide a refund for the order. By default, regular invoices are automatically generated and sent to your customers when the order is placed. Cancellation invoices are created and sent only manually.

Note: You can change the default settings for your regular tax invoices and set when they are automatically generated or choose to create and send them yourself.

To create a tax invoice for an order:

  1. From Store management, go to My Sales → Orders.
  2. Click the order.
  3. Click Manage Tax Invoices dropdown menu, then click Create Tax Invoice (or click Create tax invoice link in the Tax invoices section; this link is available only if no invoices have been created for this order):

4. On the opened page, choose Regular (Sale) or Cancellation (Refund).

5. Click Create Tax Invoice.

You can create any number of invoices for any order at any time.

All the invoices that have been created for a particular order (including the autogenerated ones) are available in the Tax invoices section on the page of this order. You can print the invoice or download it in PDF to send to your customers by email or any other way. You can always delete invoices if you need to.

Note: You can also create regular tax invoices when placing an order manually in My Sales → Order Editor. For that, tick the Generate tax invoice upon order placement checkbox.

Autogenerating the Regular Tax Invoices

Regular tax invoices for your sales can be automatically generated when the order is placed (this is the default option), paid, or shipped. Optionally, you can choose to attach these invoices to your order confirmation emails.

To set up automatic generation for regular tax invoices:

  1. From Store management, go to Settings → Taxes & Invoices → Tax invoices.
  2. Scroll down to Settings.
  3. Click the Autogenerate tax invoice section.
  4. In the Generate tax invoices automatically dropdown, select the option that suits you: Autogenerate when order is placed, Autogenerate when order is paid, or Autogenerate when order is shipped:

5. (optional) Enable the Attach tax invoices to Order Confirmation email toggle so that the generated invoices are sent to your customers automatically.

6. Click Save.

Now all the regular tax invoices for the orders in your store will be autogenerated. In case you choose to attach tax invoices to the order confirmation emails, the invoices will be emailed to your customers automatically. In case you choose not to attach tax invoices to the order confirmation emails, you will need to send invoices to your customers yourself.

Once the tax invoice is generated for the order, you will see it in the Tax invoices section on the page of this particular order in My Sales → Orders.

Creating the Regular Tax Invoices Manually

You can disable automatic generation for your regular tax invoices and create invoices for the orders in your store only manually.

To enable manual creation for regular tax invoices:

  1. From Store management, go to Settings → Taxes & Invoices → Tax invoices.
  2. Scroll down to Settings.
  3. Click the Autogenerate tax invoice section.
  4. In the opened menu, select I create tax invoices manually:

5. Click Save.

Creating Cancellation Invoices

Once created, regular tax invoices cannot be further edited. In case you want to make a refund for an order, you need to manually issue a special cancellation (refund) invoice. The difference between cancellation and regular tax invoices is the negative totals and subtotals. Note that cancellation invoices have their own unique numbers that do not correspond to the number of the regular tax invoice for the order.

Note: Cancellation tax invoices are issued for all the products in your order. If you want to make a partial refund or correct a mistake in your invoice, you can issue a special correction tax invoice manually outside of store.

To create a cancellation invoice:

  1. From Store management, go to My Sales → Orders.
  2. Click the order you want to make the refund for.
  3. Click the Manage Tax Invoices dropdown menu, then click Create Another Tax Invoice.
  4. On the opened page, choose Cancellation (Refund):

5. Click Create Cancellation Tax Invoice.

Once the invoice is generated, you will see it in the Tax invoices section on the page of this order. You can print the invoice or download it in PDF to send to your customers by email or any other way, if needed. Cancellation invoices are not sent to your customers automatically upon creation.

Sending Tax Invoices to Your Customers

In case youchoose to attach your automatically generated tax invoices to the order confirmation emails, then the regular tax invoices will be emailed to your customers automatically.

Note: Invoices that are automatically generated after the order is paid or shipped will be attached to the Order Status Changed emails.

If you choose not to attach the autogenerated tax invoices to the order confirmation emails or you create your regular invoices manually, you need to send invoices to the customers yourself. You will also need to send yourself the cancellation invoices for your orders.

You can access all the tax invoices that have already been created for an individual order on the page of this order in store admin.

To access invoices for an order:

  1. From Store management, go to My Sales → Orders.
  2. Click the order.
  3. See the Tax invoices section:

You can print your tax invoices or download them in PDF and send them to your customers by email or any other suitable way.

Downloading Tax Invoices in Bulk

You can request an archive with all the tax invoices that are available for a certain time period in your store (e.g., to present them to the tax office when it’s due in your country).

To request invoices for bulk download:

  1. From Store management, go to Settings → Taxes & Invoices → Tax invoices (or My Sales → Orders).
  2. Scroll down to the Get all tax invoices at once section at the bottom of the page and click it.
  3. Set the time period for which you want to download your tax invoices:

4. Click Get Tax Invoices.

Deleting Tax Invoices

In case you have created a tax invoice for an order by mistake, you can delete it.

To delete a tax invoice:

  1. From Store management, go to My Sales → Orders.
  2. Click the order for which you want to delete an invoice.
  3. Click “...” in the Tax invoices section, then click Delete:

4. In the opened popup, click Yes.

The tax invoice will be deleted permanently. You can create a new one in its place, if you need.

If you delete the order in My Sales → Orders, all the tax invoices for it will also be deleted.

Customizing the Tax Invoice Number

You can modify the numbers of your tax invoices to adjust them to your business process and your country’s legislation (e.g., add a special code in the prefix). Changing the future tax invoice number may also be necessary if you have deleted an erroneous invoice or created some of your invoices outside of Ecwid.

Numbers of the tax invoices in your store do not depend on the order numbers and use sequential ascending numbering. This means that every next tax invoice number directly follows the preceding one. By default, numeration starts with “1”, but you can personalize the numbers of your tax invoices and set the number of the future invoice to any positive integer.

Tax invoices can have any prefix or suffix added to the numeric part. You can also set the minimum number of digits in your invoice (zeros will be added in the beginning if the actual number is smaller).

To set up your future invoice number:

  1. From Store management, go to Settings → Taxes & Invoices → Tax invoices.
  2. Scroll down to Settings.
  3. In the Next tax invoice number section, click Edit Number → Edit Number Format.
  4. In the opened menu, enter prefix and suffix (if needed), then enter tax invoice number in the Counter section (that is the number of the next invoice to be created in your store), and the minimum number of digits for your invoice.
  5. Click Save.

Changes will affect future tax invoices only. The numbers of the already issued ones will remain the same.

To reset the tax invoice counter:

  1. From Store management, go to Settings → Taxes & Invoices → Tax invoices.
  2. Scroll down to Settings.
  3. In the Next tax invoice number section, click Edit Number → Reset Counter.
  4. (optional) Enter prefix and suffix (if needed).
  5. Click Reset Counter.

Customizing Tax Invoices

You can customize the contents and template of your tax invoices on the Settings → Taxes & Invoices → Tax invoices → Contents of tax invoice page in your Store admin:

  • Upload a company's logo to personalize your invoice
  • Change the invoice title, e.g., to make it legally compliant
  • Add the taxpayer identification number
  • Provide additional information about your company (such as bank account details)
  • Add extra details to the invoice footer
  • Or make even deeper changes in the tax invoice HTML template