Automated Invoice Creation & Sending
Approved order and service data becomes an invoice: a PDF with an embedded ZUGFeRD record, sent by email and posted as an open item in your accounts. Anything incomplete is not sent but listed – with the reason and the person who has to act.
The hard part is not creating invoices – it is stopping them
Nobody enjoys writing invoices, so it happens in one go at the end of the month: four weeks of work turn into documents across two afternoons. The data needed for that is rarely in one place – the order sits in the CRM, the hours in the time recording tool, the billing address in the accounts, the discount someone negotiated in an email from three weeks ago. It is pulled together by hand, line by line, while the day job carries on around it.
Producing the document is the easy part; a PDF in your own layout is a template. The difficult question comes before it: may this job be invoiced at all? Has the work been signed off, is the timesheet approved, is the discount within what was agreed, is the customer record complete enough to send to. An experienced colleague answers all of that in seconds and barely notices she is doing it – but almost nobody has ever written it down.
Those unwritten checks are the actual work, and they are why invoice automation has to do more than send: it has to be able to stop. A wrong invoice is not fixed with a correction. It needs a credit note or cancellation, a new invoice, an explanation – and it often pushes payment back by a full payment run at the customer end. A good invoice run is therefore not judged by how many invoices it sends, but by whether the few it holds back are the right ones.
Which invoices are worth automating
We begin with the invoice type that occurs most often and follows the clearest rules. Further types later share the same checks and the same template.
Order and project billing
The most common starting point: approved items, hours and materials become an invoice without being re-entered – including partial invoices for a defined service period.
Recurring invoices
Maintenance contracts, rent, licences: monthly or quarterly, with term, price tier and the agreed adjustment at the turn of the year.
Billing from delivery notes
In trade and the skilled crafts the delivery note or site report is the basis. Part deliveries are carried forward instead of being gathered again each time.
Public sector customers
Authorities and municipal utilities only accept structured invoices – with a routing ID and through the portal they prescribe.
Instalments and payment plans
Deposit, instalments by progress, final invoice offsetting what has already been paid – the order of events lives in the rules, not in someone's memory.
Feeding payments back
Reconciling open items closes paid invoices and hands overdue ones to dunning, instead of letting them age quietly on a list.
An invoice run as it appears on the monitor
The run of 1 August: 48 jobs, 45 invoices out. The interesting part is the three that stayed put.
- ✓45 sent and posted
- !1 waiting for approval
- ×2 stopped, data incomplete
The three that stay put – and why
-
Job A-24178 Meier Anlagenbau GmbH €12,480.00 ! Approval
Discount of 18 % above the stored limit of 10 %. The invoice exists but has not been sent.With the sales director
-
Job A-24206 Stadtwerke Nordheim AöR €6,310.50 × Stopped
Public sector customer with no routing ID in the customer record – the structured invoice cannot be produced.Accounts to complete the record
-
Job A-24231 Kruse Haustechnik e. K. €1,190.00 × Stopped
Two items without an approved timesheet, and the job has only been partly signed off.Query with the site manager
Those three rows are where the value sits. An invoice that does not go out costs one query – one that goes out wrong costs a credit note, a reissue and a whole payment run.
Illustrative run. No invoice number is drawn before the checks are passed, so stopped jobs leave no gap in the number sequence.
From approved order to posted invoice
-
Collect jobs and check them
At the agreed time the run reads every job marked ready to invoice from your CRM or ERP and tests each line against your rules: work signed off, evidence approved, price within the limit, customer record complete.
-
Create the invoice, draw the number
The checked lines become an invoice with tax rate, service period and payment terms. The number comes from whichever system owns the sequence today – and only at this moment, so stopped jobs leave no gaps.
-
Send it in the right format
To businesses as a PDF with an embedded ZUGFeRD record, emailed to the billing address on file; to public sector customers as a structured XRechnung through the prescribed portal. Every delivery is logged with a timestamp.
-
Post it and report back
The invoice goes to DATEV, lexoffice or sevDesk as an open item, the PDF into the customer folder, the status back into the CRM. Whoever phones the customer can see what has been billed.
-
Make the exceptions visible
Everything that failed a check appears on one list with reason, amount and responsible person, plus a message in Teams or by email. After the correction only that single job runs again, not the whole batch.
What changes at the month end
Today
- Every invoice is written at the end of the month in one push
- Data is copied together out of three different systems
- Transposed digits are spotted by the customer first
- Missing evidence goes unnoticed and the invoice still leaves
- Only one person knows what has not been billed yet
With an invoice run
- The run starts on a fixed date, holidays included
- Every figure comes from the system where it is created
- Amounts and tax rates are calculated by the run, not a person
- Incomplete jobs stay put, with a reason and an owner
- Unbilled work sits on a list rather than in someone's head
What an invoice run does not do
Invoices are legal documents. We settle these four points before quoting, and one of them is a reason not to buy at all:
- We do not replace your accounting or your tax adviser. The run creates, sends and hands over; posting, reporting and filing stay where they are. Special tax cases such as reverse charge or margin scheme are only modelled when your adviser specifies the rule and signs it off in writing – we do not guess at this point.
- Below roughly 30 invoices a month this rarely pays off. If you issue twenty invoices and every one of them looks different, a good template and two hours of your time beat €1,490. The same applies if your ERP already has a billing module that simply was never configured: then configuration is the honest answer, and we will say so in the intro call.
- The run is only as good as your master data. If prices are typed freely, timesheets arrive three weeks late and billing addresses live in a notes field, we automate the mess along with everything else. We can guide that clean-up and make the gaps visible, but we cannot do it for you – it is a question of working habits, not technology.
- Number sequences and archiving stay where they belong. Invoice numbers must run consecutively and traceably, and documents must be kept unalterable for ten years. Your billing system and your archive do that, not the workflow: we draw numbers from the leading system and file documents where they are audit-proof. A second number sequence inside the automation tool would be convenient and expensive in a tax audit.
Sits between your source system and your accounts
Scope and price
The entry price covers one invoice type with your checks, delivery and handover to accounting. What moves the price, we say before the quote.
- Connection to your CRM or ERP as the data source
- Readiness checks for billing, defined together with you
- Invoice PDF in your layout with a ZUGFeRD record
- Email delivery with a personalised covering message
- Handover to DATEV, lexoffice or sevDesk
- Exception list with reason, amount and owner
- Documentation, handover session and 30 days of support
What increases the price
- Several invoice types such as instalment, final invoice and credit note
- Structured invoices for public sector customers including portal delivery
- Recurring contracts with price tiers and annual adjustments
- Reconciling incoming payments and handing overdue items to dunning
- Industry software without a documented interface
Several invoice types with instalments, portal delivery and payment reconciliation typically land in the range of our Workflow Advanced package from €2,490. We quote the binding fixed price after the intro call.
All prices excl. VAT · operation and further development optionally via a support package
What you get
-
A production invoice run
Set up from job to posted invoice and signed off against one real month in draft mode
-
Documented checking rules
Which condition stops an invoice, who releases it and how a corrected job runs again
-
Invoice template with ZUGFeRD
A PDF in your layout with a machine-readable record, validated against the format specification
-
Training for accounts and sales
How the exception list is worked through and how to tell that a run finished cleanly
Frequently asked questions about invoice automation
These solutions fit alongside
E-Invoicing (XRechnung & ZUGFeRD)
When the mandatory format is the driver – receiving, validating and issuing in structured form.
Automated Dunning
The step afterwards: open items in view, staged payment reminders, escalation with warning.
Automated Quote Creation
The step before: an accepted quote becomes an order that can actually be billed cleanly.
Accounts Payable Automation
The other direction: invoices arriving at your end, checked and routed for approval.
When does your last invoice of the month go out?
In the free intro call we look at one real month: how many invoices, out of which systems, and which of them are special cases. Afterwards you know whether an invoice run carries at your end or whether the master data has to come first.
Book a free intro callWhere automated invoice creation creates value in everyday work
Approved delivery or order data is converted into consistent invoices, sent and reported back to CRM or accounting with status.
Three concrete operating scenarios to compare with your own process.Invoice completed orders
Approved line items and customer data become an invoice without re-entry.
Run recurring billing
Contracts and service periods trigger predictable invoice drafts with a review step.
Write status back
Sending, due date and payment status update the CRM and next task.
A strong fit when …
Documents, amounts and approvals follow explicit rules; exceptions must remain visible instead of being decided silently.
- You handle recurring invoices using repeatable rules.
- The intake, target system and accountable business role can be named clearly.
- Exceptions are allowed to remain visible and move to people deliberately.
Deliberate automation boundary
Incomplete delivery evidence, special terms, credit notes and unclear tax cases require business approval.
Explore the technical approach and platformsEstimate time savings with your own volume
The calculator uses 10 minutes today and 2 minutes after automation as fixed example assumptions. It does not replace process analysis.
Illustrative estimate based on the visible assumptions — not a guarantee.