Daily receipt or invoice: which one to issue in SamBooks
6 min read
Figure out in a minute whether a sale should be recorded as a daily receipt or actually requires a full invoice.
What it's for
SamBooks offers two different ways to record a sale: the daily receipt (Daily receipts section — "corrispettivo" in Italian) and the sales invoice (Sales invoices section). They're not interchangeable: the choice changes which fiscal document is generated, whether and how SDI gets involved, and what happens in your books. This guide explains when to use which — for how to fill in each one, see the related guides at the bottom.
Before you start
You don't need a special permission to read this guide, but recording either a daily receipt or an invoice requires a role with write permissions on invoicing (Gestore or Amministrativo). Companies under the flat-rate scheme (regime forfettario) don't have a Daily receipts section at all — they don't settle VAT — so every sale, even over the counter, goes through an invoice.
Step by step
1. Check whether you can name the buyer
This is the criterion that decides everything: a daily receipt has no field to identify the customer — no company name, no VAT number, no tax code; the registration dialog simply doesn't have that field. It's built for an anonymous over-the-counter sale to a private individual — a shop, a bar, mass-market e-commerce — where the only thing that matters is how much you collected and at which VAT rate. The moment you need to name who bought, you're outside the scope of a daily receipt: you need an invoice.
2. Customer with a VAT number: always an invoice, never a receipt
If the customer is a business or a professional with a VAT number, the sale must always be invoiced (normally with document type Invoice, TD01), whatever the amount and even if payment was immediate like in a shop. There's no path to fold a B2B sale into a daily receipt.
3. Anonymous individual, over-the-counter sale: daily receipt
This is the typical shop, bar or B2C e-commerce case: you record the gross total collected for the day, by VAT rate, without knowing or needing to know who bought. SamBooks works out the taxable amount and VAT on its own from the gross you enter, and generates the accounting entry automatically — the how-to is in the dedicated daily-receipts guide.
4. A private customer who asks for an invoice: invoice them, don't fold it into the receipt
Even a private individual can ask for an invoice instead of being included in the day's receipt: SamBooks' customer directory supports a private person identified by tax code alone, with no VAT number. In that case, that sale must not also go into the day's receipt total: either exclude it from the gross you record, or invoice it before closing the receipt, so the same amount isn't counted twice.
5. A sale up to €400, a minimal document: the simplified invoice (TD07)
If the private customer wants a document with their name on it but doesn't need a full invoice, you can pick document type "Simplified invoice" (TD07) on the same "New invoice" page: just the customer's VAT number or tax code is enough, no full address needed. The limit is the document total: it can't exceed €400 — above that, SamBooks rejects the creation and you need an ordinary invoice.
6. Online sales and Stripe payments: classification is automatic
If you sell through a connected e-commerce store, SamBooks classifies every order on its own: B2C sales in Italy or another EU country, under the €10,000 yearly cumulative threshold, generate a daily receipt automatically (channel "E-commerce"); B2C EU sales above that threshold switch to OSS handling — a different topic from this guide, no IT daily receipt; B2B sales with a recognized VAT number always generate an invoice, as a draft or issued depending on your configuration. A Stripe payment from an Italian private individual follows the same logic and generates a daily receipt with no manual action.
What actually differs between the two paths
| Daily receipt | Sales invoice | |
|---|---|---|
| Identifies the customer | Never | Always (even minimal, on the simplified type) |
| Generates an XML for SDI | Never | Yes, once transmitted |
| Creates a payment due date | Never — the payment already happened | Yes, if the invoice has a payment schedule |
| Accounting entry | Always automatic, at the same instant | Only when issued (when it gets its number) |
| Numbering | "COR/{year}/{number}", its own series | Chosen series, assigned on SDI transmission |
| Correcting it | Edit/delete if not yet transmitted; otherwise a return | Credit note (TD04) if already transmitted |
If something goes wrong
- I recorded a sale as a daily receipt that was actually B2B: the revenue and VAT still flowed into your books (the accounting entry is created either way), but the customer never got a document with their name on it and can't deduct it. If the receipt isn't "Transmitted" yet, delete it and issue the correct invoice; if it's already "Transmitted", the only way to remove it from the register is a return, available only for receipts with an e-commerce origin.
- I invoiced an over-the-counter sale that I could have recorded as a receipt: it's not a compliance mistake — you can always choose to invoice a private customer even if they didn't ask — but it doubles the work, since an invoice still goes through SDI while a receipt doesn't. If this happens often for low-value sales, consider a daily receipt or a simplified invoice instead.
- I can't find a customer field in the receipt registration dialog: that's correct, it doesn't exist by design. If you need to record who bought, that sale isn't a daily receipt — it's an invoice.
- An e-commerce sale is over the OSS threshold and I don't see a daily receipt: that's expected — above €10,000 cumulative per year of B2C sales in other EU countries, SamBooks switches to OSS handling instead of an IT daily receipt.
Ask Sam
Sam doesn't decide for you whether a sale should be a daily receipt or an invoice — that's a call you make based on who the customer is — but once you've decided, you can ask Sam to carry it out: "record today's receipt, €300 at 22%, manual channel" or "create an invoice for customer Rossi Srl for €300 + VAT".
Frequently asked questions
Can an occasional customer with a VAT number end up in a daily receipt? No: the moment there's a VAT number to record, you need an invoice. The daily receipt has no field to store one.
A private customer asks for an invoice instead of a receipt — what do I do? Issue an invoice — ordinary, or simplified if the total is within €400 — with their tax code on it, and don't include that sale in the day's receipt.
What's the difference between a simplified invoice and a daily receipt? The simplified invoice still identifies the customer (VAT number or tax code) and is capped at €400; the daily receipt identifies no one and has no amount limit.
Can I fix a daily receipt if I realize I should have issued an invoice? Yes, if it isn't "Transmitted" yet: delete the receipt and issue the correct invoice. If it's already transmitted, you need a return (available only for e-commerce origin) before you can re-invoice.
Do online sales always go through a daily receipt? Only if they're B2C in Italy or the EU within the €10,000 threshold. Above the threshold, or with a customer VAT number, SamBooks switches to OSS or to an invoice respectively.
Do I have to choose every time, or does SamBooks do it on its own? For manual sales, you choose, based on the customer criterion. For e-commerce orders and Stripe payments from Italian private individuals, SamBooks classifies and records them automatically.