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Create an Invoice from a Work Order

Once a work order is approved and complete, you turn it into an invoice from the work order itself. The invoice picks up the unit cost, the line items the technician used, and your default tax rate, and it gets sent to your connected billing system in the same step.

You don't create an invoice from the Invoices page — that page is for looking up and cancelling invoices that already exist.

Before you start​

  • The Invoices feature is enabled for your account. If the Invoices tab in the top navigation bar is missing, the feature flag is off — ask your administrator.
  • You have the invoices.create permission.
  • The work order is in Completed or Billed status. Anything earlier in the lifecycle (assigned, ongoing, waiting approval) is too soon — see Approve & Complete a Work Order.
  • No active invoice exists for the work order. If you cancelled an old one, you can create a new invoice; an active Sent or Paid invoice blocks creation.

Steps​

  1. Open the work order

    Select Work Orders in the top navigation bar, then select the Edit action for the work order you want to invoice.

  2. Open the Create Invoice modal

    In the Invoice card on the right (below the status), select the green Create Invoice button.

  3. Decide whether to bill for the unit

    • Include unit price — toggle on to bill for the equipment itself, off to bill only for labor and items. Defaults to on. The unit price comes from the device model's cost field, shown next to the toggle.

  4. Confirm the tax rate

    • Tax Rate (%) — defaults to your account's default tax rate. Change it for tax-exempt customers (set to 0) or for jurisdictions with a different rate.

  5. Review the breakdown

    The table at the bottom recalculates as you toggle the unit price and change the rate. Confirm the Grand Total matches what you intend to bill.

  6. Create the invoice

    Select the green Create Invoice button at the bottom of the modal.

What happens next​

  • The invoice is created with status Sent and a generated invoice number (e.g. INV-2026-0042).
  • TuffOps sends the invoice to your connected billing system in the same request. If the connection succeeds, the invoice gets back a clickable View link to the external invoice.
  • The Invoice card on the work order updates to show the invoice number, status badge, breakdown, and a Cancel Invoice button.
  • The invoice appears at the top of the Invoices list.

Common situations​

SituationWhat to do
The customer is tax-exemptSet Tax Rate (%) to 0 before creating. The breakdown updates so unit and items VAT both go to $0.00.
The customer supplied the unit themselvesToggle Include unit price off. The invoice covers only labor and parts.
The work order has no items, just a service chargeAdd the charge as an item on the work order before creating the invoice (Submit a Work Order for Approval). The invoice can't add line items itself.
You need to invoice a portion now and the rest laterTuffOps doesn't support partial invoicing. Either invoice the full amount or split the work into two work orders, one per phase.
You want to mark the work order as Billed without creating an invoiceUse the Mark as Billed button on the work order's status widget. That's a status change only — no invoice is created and nothing is sent to your billing system.

Troubleshooting​

The Create Invoice button isn't there.

Three possible causes, in order of likelihood:

  1. The work order isn't Completed or Billed. Check the Status badge — anything else and the Invoice card is hidden.
  2. The Invoices feature flag is off for your account. Look for the Invoices tab in the top navigation bar; if it's missing, the feature is disabled.
  3. You don't have the invoices.create permission.
Save fails with "An invoice already exists for this work order."

There's an active Sent or Paid invoice for this work order. Open the Invoice card and either accept the existing invoice or cancel it (Cancel an Invoice). After it's cancelled, the Create Invoice button reappears.

The invoice was created but the View link isn't there.

Creation succeeded locally but the call to your billing system failed. The invoice exists in TuffOps with status Sent and you can still cancel it from here, but the external system doesn't know about it yet. Check the work order's Invoice card — if the View link doesn't appear after a refresh, contact TuffOps so we can re-send. The work order is safe to leave as-is in the meantime.

The Grand Total looks wrong.

Walk through the four lines in the breakdown:

  • Unit Subtotal — 0 if you toggled off Include unit price, otherwise the device model's cost.
  • Items Subtotal — sum of quantity × price for every item the technician added on the work order.
  • Unit VAT and Items VAT — each subtotal × the tax rate.

If the items subtotal is wrong, the fix is on the work order itself, not the invoice. Cancel the modal, fix the items, then re-open Create Invoice.