Document settings: your business, bank details, numbering, tax and design

Every invoice, application for payment, pro-forma, quote and credit note prints the same things about you: who you are, how to pay you, how the document is numbered, how tax is shown and what it looks like. Document settings holds all of that in one place, for the whole workspace.

Open Commercial › Invoices and choose Document settings at the top of the page. You need Manage commercial.

Before your first invoice

Until your business address and bank details are in, the Invoices tab opens on a Before your first invoice card listing what is still to set, each with Set up beside it. The card also shows the number your next invoice will take and the design in use. It disappears once the essentials are there.

Finding your way round

Settings are split into sections down the left: Your business, Getting paid, Numbering, Tax, Deductions, Terms and footer, Sending and Design. One Save covers every section. While something is unsaved the header says Unsaved changes, and closing asks Discard changes? before anything is lost.

Preview at the foot renders a sample document from whatever the form holds right now — before you save — so you can see the effect of a change.

Your business

"These details appear on your invoices and other documents."

• Trading name — the name you trade under. It is also the name your emails are sent as.
• Legal name (optional).
• Country — see below.
• Address — required before your first invoice.
• Registration numbers — Add registration for each one that must print, such as a company or tax registration number. You choose the label and the value.
• Contact details — Phone, Email and Website. The Email here is where a client's reply lands when you email them a document.

Country suggestions

Choosing a Country (search by name or code) offers that country's defaults where Maliru has them: the tax name and rate, the registrations and bank fields usually printed, the invoice title and, where one applies, a deduction scheme. The offer lists exactly what it would fill in, and "Values you already typed stay."

• Apply suggestions fills in the gaps.
• Keep mine leaves everything as it is.

Nothing is locked to a country. Every value it fills in stays editable, and a workspace in a country without suggestions sets the same things by hand.

Getting paid

• Bank name and Account name.
• The bank fields your clients need — for example a sort code and account number, or an IBAN. Add detail adds a label and a value.
• Payment reference — Document number ("Use the invoice number as the payment reference.") or Fixed reference for every payment.
• Payment terms (days) — how long clients have to pay by default.
• Late payment message (optional) — printed when payment is overdue.

"Bank detail changes are audited." Once changed, the section says who changed them and when, every owner in the workspace is notified, and you can build an alert rule on The bank details on invoices change. A changed account number on an invoice is a common way money goes missing, so it is never quiet.

Maliru prints your bank details so clients can pay you. It never takes, holds or moves the payment.

Where payment terms come from

A document's due date is the issue date plus the first of these that is set: the client's own Payment terms (days) under Clients › Billing, the contract's payment terms, then the terms here.

Numbering

Document type at the top is the type a new document from measures starts as — Invoice, Application for payment or Pro-forma invoice — unless the client's own billing sets a type, which wins for that client. You can still pick another type on any one document.

Each type has its own sequence, set with:

• Printed title — what the document calls itself, such as Invoice or Tax invoice.
• Prefix — INV-, APP-, PRO-, CRN- and QUO- to start with.
• First number and Digits — so INV- with 4 digits prints INV-0001.
• Reset each year — restarts the sequence every year.

The chosen type's card is open; the others, including Credit note and Quotation, sit folded underneath with their next number beside them. "Numbers are assigned when a document is issued." A draft has no number, and a number once issued is never reused — even when the document is voided and deleted.

Tax

"Set how tax is shown on your documents. These are configurable printed values."

• Tax name — VAT, GST, sales tax, or whatever your documents should say.
• Rate (%).
• Treatment — Standard rate, Reverse charge, Zero-rated, Exempt or No tax.
• Printed wording — for reverse charge, zero-rated and exempt, the sentence that explains the treatment on the page. Standard rate adds tax at the rate above, and No tax prints nothing about tax.

A client can have its own treatment and rate under Clients › Billing, and a single document can override both when you create it. Maliru prints the tax you tell it to; it does not work out which treatment applies or file anything with a tax authority.

Deductions

Most businesses need none of this: "only add one if a client withholds tax from what you invoice." A deduction scheme is a labour-based withholding such as CIS, RCT or TDS. See Deductions your client withholds.

Terms and footer

Terms and conditions and a Closing line (such as Thank you for your business.) print on every document.

Sending

The email a document goes out with. Each message template has a Name, the document types it is Offered for, a Subject and a Message. Fields in double braces are filled in from the document: {{number}}, {{title}}, {{total}}, {{due_date}}, {{issue_date}}, {{client}}, {{contact}}, {{business}} and {{reference}}.

A new workspace starts with three examples — Invoice with thanks, Quote and Payment reminder — to edit or replace. Default per document type sets which template the send dialog starts with and which one a batch send uses. See Emailing a document and chasing overdue invoices.

Design

• Style — Classic, Modern, Minimal, Bold or Ledger, each drawn as a thumbnail.
• Layout — Grouped by job (lines under each job with a subtotal), Single list, Summary and schedule (job totals first, the measured schedule after) or Grouped with evidence (grouped by job, with the measure photos as an appendix). You can pick a different layout on any one document.
• Accent colour — a swatch, or any colour as #RRGGBB.
• Logo position — Left or Right, and Density — Airy or Compact.
• Paper size — Country default, A4 or Letter.
• What to print — Item codes, Measured date, Measured by, Uplift names and Notes.

The logo is your workspace logo from Global settings › Branding. On the Free plan documents carry Maliru's credit at the foot of each page and no logo of your own; on Team and above they carry yours.

What is frozen, and when

Issuing a document freezes your business details, bank details and the client's billing details onto it. Changing them later does not rewrite an invoice a client already holds — which is exactly what you want when an account number changes. To print today's details on one issued document, choose ⋮ More actions › Edit on it and tick Refresh company, client and payment details.