Invoices and credit notes

A bill is the running tab of a guest's stay and changes while the stay goes on, see Bills. An invoice is the numbered document you hand to the guest: DivePilot makes it from the bill, and once issued it never changes. Every later correction is a credit note. What these documents are called and what they must show depends on your country, see What your documents are in your country. A receipt for one payment is described in Receipts.

When an invoice is issued

• Settle & close issues an invoice for everything on the bill that is not invoiced yet, then closes the bill. Its window lists what it will issue under "Closing also issues". See Take payments.
• Issue invoice, beside Take payment on the balance card of an open bill, issues one now, for example for a company that pays the first week of a long stay. The window shows the invoice as it will look, marked "Preview", with the number and the date set when you confirm, and lists what it will issue under "Confirming issues". Issue invoice in the window issues it. It needs the permission Issue invoices.

A bill can have several invoices. Each lists only its own lines, so the invoice issued at the close holds what came after the earlier one.

What you hand out can also be only credit notes: when lines were reduced after the last invoice and nothing else is left to invoice, Issue invoice and Settle & close issue the credit notes and no new invoice.

A settled bill that closes by itself after the days set on the Closing bills card gets its invoice the same way, with no person named as its issuer. If your country needs business details on an invoice and some are missing, such a bill stays open and is tried again the next day.

Bills closed before your dive centre had invoices stay as they are, without documents. Bills that were still open get their invoice when they close.

Where DivePilot issues tax invoices (see Invoicing by country), the invoice is a tax invoice only when Registered for VAT / GST is switched on in Business & tax; otherwise it is a plain invoice titled "Invoice", and only your legal name and address are needed. See What your documents are in your country.

In the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and the Seychelles, a registered dive centre that bills in another currency is asked for the exchange rate when it issues an invoice, in Issue invoice, Settle & close and Correct buyer, because the invoice also prints its tax total in the country's currency. So is a dive centre registered for VAT in the United Kingdom, whose invoice prints its VAT total in pounds as well, and in the Netherlands and Cyprus, in euros; one that is not registered is asked nothing, because its invoices show no VAT. The rate is frozen on the invoice, and its credit notes reuse it. Use the official rate for the date of supply; in the United Arab Emirates, the Central Bank rate. Such bills are not closed automatically: close them with Settle & close. South Africa asks for no rate: there a tax invoice is issued in rand only. In the Maldives a tax invoice on a bill in another currency asks for the exchange rate to rufiyaa too, in Issue invoice and Settle & close: DivePilot uses it only to compare the bill with MVR 5,000, from which the buyer's name, address and TIN are needed, and prints it nowhere.

What an invoice covers

An invoice covers every line of the bill that is posted, has an amount other than zero, is not on an earlier invoice and is not a reduction waiting for a credit note (see below). Together the lines must come to more than zero: when there is nothing to invoice, DivePilot says so and issues nothing. Credit carried from an earlier bill is money, not a sale: it is never an invoice line and shows among the payments.

What an invoice shows

• your details as the seller: legal name (your dive centre's name when no legal name is set), address, tax ID and, in Thailand, the branch, with your logo
• the buyer: the guest, or the company or person under Invoice to (below)
• the invoice number, the date of issue and the bill number
• the lines: description, diver, date, quantity, unit price, discount, net, tax rate, tax and gross
• the bill discounts, the tax per rate and the totals
• the payments on the bill up to that moment and the balance after them

It is in the guest's language, the language of the bill, and in Thailand every label is shown in Thai as well. It uses the design your dive centre chose on the PDF design card, see Bills. DivePilot stores the PDF when it issues the document, and every download returns that file.

Invoiced lines are locked

Issuing an invoice locks the lines it covers: they show the invoice number and nothing changes them any more. The header of the bill says how far it is invoiced: "Not invoiced", "Partly invoiced" or "Invoiced INV-2026-00042".

Numbers

Each kind of document has its own number series per dive centre and calendar year:

A new dive centre in a country where DivePilot issues payment confirmations starts its payment confirmations at PC-2026-00001 and their corrections at PCC-2026-00001, so they do not read as invoice numbers; its receipts keep RCP-. Dive centres created earlier keep their prefixes.

The year follows your dive centre's time zone, and the sequence starts again at 00001 on 1 January. No number is skipped or removed: an issue that fails uses no number, and a document stays in its series even when what it refers to changes later. Every country is numbered this way except Sri Lanka, where a number takes the form of Gazette 2481/22: the year and month of issue, the prefix as a series code (its letters and digits in capitals) and the serial, such as 26OCT_INV_00001. What the documents are called differs too, see What your documents are in your country.

The prefixes are set on the Invoices & receipts tab, see "Settings" below. A prefix has 1 to 10 characters, letters, digits or dashes, and starts with a letter or a digit. The three kinds never share a prefix, and letter case does not tell them apart. A prefix already used by issued documents of another kind is refused too.

Invoice to: a company or another person

A document names the guest unless the bill says otherwise. Invoice to, in the bill's summary, names someone else: a company or a person, an address of up to four lines, a tax ID and, in Thailand, the branch. Where DivePilot issues payment confirmations, this card is named Customer, as the documents print it, and its button Name a company. Documents print an address only when you type it here, with one exception: in Singapore a credit note to the guest names the guest's address on file, as IRAS asks of every credit note; with none on file it is issued without one. Setting or changing it needs the permission Set Invoice to and is possible until the bill's first invoice. After that the block is locked, and only Correct buyer changes the buyer. Type two letters of the name to see the companies and people earlier bills named; picking one fills in the rest.

Correct buyer

When an invoice went to the wrong buyer, choose Correct buyer beside the invoice's number under Invoice to in the bill's summary, or in the actions of the invoice in the Documents card, and enter the right buyer. One step issues a credit note for the whole invoice, with the reason "Buyer corrected", and a new invoice with the same lines for the new buyer, which names the invoice it replaces. Each invoice, a replacement too, can be corrected once, and only while no credit note refers to it; after that only credit notes change what it says. It needs the permission Correct the buyer.

Changes after an invoice: credit notes

An invoiced line never changes. A change to it becomes a correction line, as on a closed bill, and a correction that lowers an invoiced line is credited with a credit note that refers to the invoice. The credit note names the invoice it corrects among its facts and shows the "Original value" and the "Correct value" of that invoice; the correct value counts the earlier credit notes against the same invoice. In the United Arab Emirates a registered dive centre's credit note is a "Tax credit note" that shows these values before VAT, starting from the value after the earlier credit notes, see What your documents are in your country. A correction line on a bill's own invoice reads "Correction: ..." with no bill number.

Changes you make: credited at once

Void, Discount and Change price on an invoiced line need, besides their own permission, the permission Change invoiced lines. The window asks for a Reason for the change, of 1 to 200 characters, which the credit note shows to the guest. It also says what will happen, measured from the line as it stands after earlier corrections:

• a reduction is recorded on a credit note against the invoice, issued at the same moment as the change;
• an increase stays out of the invoice and goes on the next invoice.

The money then follows the bill as before: on an open bill the balance goes down; on a closed bill the correction lands on the guest's current bill as credit, to be used or refunded.

Changes DivePilot makes: gathered until the next invoice

A booking cancelled or changed after its line was invoiced, and the discounts the bill works out again by itself (volume, standing and bill discounts), never touch an invoiced line. They post the difference as new lines:

• an increase is an ordinary line and goes on the next invoice;
• a reduction waits on the bill, marked "To be credited". At the next Issue invoice or Settle & close of that bill, one credit note per original invoice covers them, with the reason "Booking changed", "Discount recalculated", or "Booking changed, discount recalculated" when both happened.

A booking cancelled with its cancellation dialog works the same way: the reduction of its invoiced lines waits as "To be credited", and the Cancellation fee is a new line for the next invoice, see Cancellation policy.

Issue invoice and Settle & close work in this order: first the credit notes for the reductions waiting, then the invoice for the rest, then, for Settle & close, the close. It is all or nothing: if one step is refused, nothing is issued and the bill stays as it was.

When what is left to invoice at the close comes to zero or less, the difference goes on credit notes against the invoices of the bill, the newest first and up to what each can still be credited, with the reason "Discount recalculated". A bill without an invoice gets no document and closes as before.

Other actions on invoiced lines

• Bill to and Move take only lines that are not invoiced; moving an invoiced line is refused. When the person who booked pays for everyone, invoiced lines stay on the bill they were invoiced on.
• Restore brings a voided line back as a new line that is not invoiced.
• Payments, refunds and voided payments never change a document. Later documents show them among the payments.
• Merging is refused while the merge would change something an invoice or receipt covers, see Merge duplicate customers.

Where to find your documents

• Documents card on the bill: the bill's invoices, credit notes and receipts with their numbers, each with Download PDF, Send by email and, on an invoice, Correct buyer in its actions menu.
• The guest's customer page, tab Bills: the documents of each bill under Invoices & receipts, see Customer profile.
• Invoices & receipts in the sidebar: every invoice, credit note and receipt of your dive centre. Filter by kind and by date, and search by number, guest or company. Each row downloads the document or sends it again, and a receipt whose payment was voided says "Payment voided". The same page holds the exports for your accountant, see Exports for your accountant.

Send a document by email

Send by email sends any document to the guest's address on file, or to an address you type when you may edit customers, as for bills. The email comes from your dive centre in the guest's language, with the subject "Sairee Reef Divers: Invoice INV-2026-00042" (your name, the document's title and number), an optional message and the PDF attached. The daily limit of emails for bills applies to documents too. It needs the permission Send documents by email.

With Email the invoice when a bill is closed switched on, the invoice that Settle & close issues goes to the guest's address on file by itself. A failed email never undoes the close: the document says that the email was not sent, and you can send it again.

Settings

Open Settings, then Invoices & receipts in the Prices & payments group. The tab sets the Number prefixes of invoices, credit notes and receipts, Automatic receipts (see Receipts) and Email the invoice when a bill is closed, and says in plain words what DivePilot issues in your country and which business details it needs. Changing the tab needs the permission Invoice settings, and every change is recorded in the Activity log. A new prefix applies to the next document; issued documents keep their numbers.

Who may do what

They are grouped under Invoices & receipts in the permission editor. See Permissions explained and Roles & presets.

A document never changes

A document is made from what was true when it was issued. Changing your business details, the guest, the price list or the bill design afterwards changes only documents issued later. When a guest's details are erased, their documents are kept as issued, with the guest's name on them; ask your accountant how long you must keep them. The Invoice to block of their bills is cleared. See Archive, export or anonymise a customer. Online refunds and disputes do not change a document either.