Most invoices come from a quote you already sent (see Turn a quote into a job or an invoice). For one-off work or call-outs that never had a quote, you can raise the invoice from scratch.
Ask Mucka
Open Mucka and say:
"Invoice Sarah Walker £180 for the call-out yesterday, two hours of labour."
Mucka pulls up Sarah's record, drafts the invoice with line items, VAT and a 30-day due date by default, and shows it for you to check.
Got a price with the VAT already in it? Just say so: "it's £216 including VAT" or "£216 all in". Mucka works out the price before VAT for you, so the invoice reads £180 plus £36 VAT, £216 in total, and tells you the split. If a few all-in prices would come out a penny off once the VAT is added up, it moves that penny onto one line so the total is the figure you said. If you're not VAT registered, or the invoice is at 0%, the price goes on exactly as you said it. Quotes work the same way.
Or use the form
Head to Invoices and tap Add new invoice. Pick the client and fill in:
- Line items: description, quantity, unit price (Mucka does the totals). Tap Add detail under any line to spell out what that price covers — see Say what a price includes
- Tax rate: defaults to 20%, change per line if needed
- Due date: defaults to 30 days, edit if your terms differ
- Notes and footer: anything the client should read before paying
On a computer the finished invoice sits on the right of the form while you fill it in, and updates as you type — so you can read what the customer gets before you save it. On a smaller screen, the eye button at the top shows you the same thing. See See the quote your customer gets while you build it.
Hit save and you've got a draft invoice ready to send.
From the job itself
If the work is already on a job, raise the invoice there and it comes through with the client, the property and the job attached, so nothing has to be picked from a list.
A job you have finished and not yet billed offers it to you without your having to look. On a computer it turns up in the job's own list of what it still needs, as Raise the invoice, alongside the certificate and the write-up. On your phone it is an orange Invoice button at the bottom of the screen, next to Back and Edit.
It appears from the moment you set the job to finished, and you do not need a quote behind it: a call-out, a service or a CP12 that was never quoted gets the same offer.
The same button then changes to say what the job needs next. Once there is an invoice written up that has never gone out, it reads Send invoice and takes you straight to the email. Once that invoice is away it goes quiet, so it never chases you about a job you have already dealt with. Ticking No invoice needed silences it either way. It only shows for people whose role lets them raise invoices, and the sending half needs permission to send email.
Or, on any screen, open the job and look for Paperwork. That is the section holding everything filed against the job, quotes, invoices, certificates and job sheets, with a row of buttons at the bottom: + Quote, + Invoice, + Certificate.
It folds away to keep the page tidy, so on a job that already has a certificate or a job sheet on it you may need to tap the Paperwork heading to open it. On a job you have finished and not yet billed, Mucka opens it for you and the heading says no invoice yet.
You do not need a quote first. Plenty of work never had one.
Bring in what's on the job sheet
If parts or charges were written on the job — the Parts on a job sheet, or anything recorded against the job's costs — an invoice raised from that job offers them at the top of the line items: "This job has 3 lines recorded on it." Tap Add them and they come in with their descriptions and quantities, so you are not typing the job sheet out a second time. Nothing is added unless you tap it, so a fixed-price job keeps its one line.
Prices come from your price list, never from what was recorded. A line whose name matches an item on your price list takes that item's selling price. A line that matches nothing comes in without a price, shows what was recorded for it as a reminder, and the invoice will not save until you put in what you charge or remove the line. That is deliberate: what an engineer writes down is usually what the part cost, and billing at cost would lose you the margin without anyone noticing.
The time you spent on the job can come across too. If the job was started and finished in Mucka (tapping Arrived when you get there and Done when you finish), the same offer includes a labour line for the time on site: "This job took 1 hour 22 on site." It is priced at the hourly labour rate on your price list and rounded to the nearest quarter hour, so 1 hour 22 comes in as 1.25 hours. If your labour item has its own call-out, first-hour or rounding rules, those are used instead.
A few things stop the time being offered, on purpose:
- You have more than one hourly labour rate on your price list. Mucka will not guess which one this customer pays, so pick it yourself as usual.
- The job was never started and finished, or was jumped straight to done. The invoice says so, and how long it was booked for is not used: that is how long you expected to be, not how long you were.
- The job ran for more than a day between its start and finish, which usually means somebody forgot to tap Done.
- The job sheet already has that labour on it. Then the time is already in the lines recorded on the job, and adding it again would bill it twice.
- Hours have been logged on the job in Timesheets. Those are offered instead (see below), because they say who was there and for how long.
Billing a customer for the hours logged in Timesheets
If you use Timesheets, a new invoice for a customer offers every hour logged on any of that customer's jobs that hasn't been on an invoice yet: "9½ hours logged on this customer's jobs from 6 Oct to 7 Oct, not on an invoice yet." That's the one for a customer you bill once a month for time. Tap Add them and you get one labour line per person per day, like "Labour, Tue 6 Oct: Rhys", in hours.
- The price is your hourly labour rate from your price list, never what you pay the person. If you have no hourly rate, more than one, or one with a call-out or first-hour charge, the lines come in without a price and the invoice won't save until you've set one.
- Hours not approved for pay yet are included, and the offer says how many. Approving is about paying your people, not billing your customer.
- Once the invoice is saved, those hours aren't offered again, so next month's invoice only picks up next month's. Take a line off before saving and its hours stay available. Void the invoice and they're offered again.
- You need permission to see everyone's hours as well as to raise invoices.
Tip: if you write your regular charges (mileage, travel time, an hourly rate) on the job sheet using the same names as your price list, they come through priced and ready to send.
That property matters more than it looks. Your invoice list shows the address the work was at, not the address the bill goes to, so a letting agent with a dozen flats reads as a dozen different jobs rather than twelve identical lines saying the agent's name. Raise the invoice from the job and Mucka fills the property in for you; you can still change it on the invoice if that one is billed against a different address.
What "draft" means
New invoices always start as draft. Mucka doesn't send anything until you choose:
- Save & Send. Opens the email window so you can fire it off straight away.
- Draft. Keeps it in the list to send later.
An invoice doesn't need a job
Sending a new invoice never puts anything on your diary by itself. If the invoice isn't on a job, Save & Send asks first: "Send without a job?" That's there in case you meant to put it on one and forgot. Pick one of:
- Send without a job. The invoice goes out and nothing is booked. This is the one for a quick bill where the job itself isn't worth tracking.
- Link to a job. Shows the customer's open jobs so you can put the invoice on the right one. Only offered when they have some.
- Create a job too. Makes a job for the work as the invoice goes, booked for now, so it shows on the diary and the job keeps up with the invoice after that.
Raise the invoice from the job itself and it is already on that job, so you won't be asked.
You can keep editing draft invoices freely. Once sent, the status flips to sent and the invoice is locked from major edits (so the version the client received always matches the version on file).
Open an invoice that has already gone out and the second button says Save instead of Draft. That is the one to use for anything the customer doesn't need to see again — adding an internal note, tidying a line description. It saves your changes and leaves the invoice exactly where it was: still sent, still on the same due date, no second email to the customer. Save & Send is there when you do want to send it again.
Common gotchas
- No client on file. Add the client first (Add your first client) then create the invoice.
- VAT not showing (or showing when it shouldn't)? VAT follows your VAT registration in Settings — either ticking VAT registered or saving a VAT number is enough. Do one of those and invoices show VAT at 20%; do neither and Mucka doesn't mention VAT at all, because you shouldn't charge it until you're registered. That applies to templates too: if you're not registered, picking a template can't add VAT. Once registered, you can change the rate on any individual invoice or set a fixed rate per template. One-off zero-rated or reverse-charge work can be set per line.
- Forgot the PO number. Commercial clients often won't pay without it. Mucka has a proper box for it — see Put a PO number on an invoice.
- Invoice number sequence. Mucka generates the next number automatically. Don't try to skip ahead or HMRC won't be happy.
- It won't save and you can't see why. Mucka names the line and turns that box red: "Line 2 needs a quantity above 0". Every line needs a description, a quantity above zero and a price of £0 or more. To take money off a bill, don't type a minus line, use the quote's payment schedule, which raises the deposit invoice and deducts it from the final one for you.
- Writing out what the job includes. There is plenty of room on a line description for a full spec. If you want it laid out under the price instead of beside it, tap Add detail on the line, which prints on the customer's copy too.