Create a Sales Invoice in SamBooks
13 min read
From the “New invoice” form to a saved draft: customer, document type, line items, discounts and totals for recording a sale and moving it toward issuance.
What it's for
This is where every sales invoice in SamBooks starts: an immediate invoice to an Italian or foreign customer. The same form also produces advance invoices, professional fee invoices and credit or debit notes, each through a path of its own that this guide doesn't cover. Saving never issues anything: it always creates a document that hasn't been transmitted yet — Draft or Ready — and it stays under your control until you decide to send it to the Italian Exchange System (SDI). Transmission is a separate step: see Send an invoice to the Interchange System (SDI).
Before you start
- Your company's own data (VAT number, tax regime, registered office) must be complete in Settings: if something is missing the invoice still saves, but stays a Draft until you fill it in.
- You don't need an active subscription to create and save drafts: the subscription is only required to send invoices to SDI, a later step.
- You need a role with write permissions — Manager or Administrative. A Viewer can see invoices but cannot create or edit them, and the same goes for Logistics, whose write access is limited to warehouse operations.
Step by step
1. Open the form
Open Sales invoices in the left-hand menu — that is the “Outbound invoices” list (/invoices). Click “New invoice” in the top-right corner: the form opens with a note right below the title, reminding you that required fields are marked with an asterisk.
2. Fill in the header
“Document type” is a select grouped by family (invoices, advances and fees, credit/debit notes, special cases): it starts on Invoice, and for an immediate sale you simply leave it there. “Document date” is required. “Series” lets you pick a numbering series if you have more than one; leave it untouched and the default series applies. Next to it, “Number on issue” only shows a preview — a dash if nothing can be computed yet — with its own note that the sequential number is assigned definitively only on issue, not on the draft. The reason is explained further down.
3. Choose the customer
In “Search existing customer” you type a company name or VAT number and pick it from your address book. If the customer doesn't exist yet, you don't have to leave the form: at the bottom of the results list there's “Create customer”, which opens a quick-creation form and, as soon as you save it, immediately selects the new customer on the invoice. Once chosen, a box appears below with the data pulled from the address book — name, VAT number or tax code, address, certified email (PEC), SDI recipient code, subject type, split payment. Edit it here and the record itself is updated, so the correction carries over to every future document.
4. Add the line items
In the “Lines” section, every line starts from “Add line”. The “Code” field is optional: search a product or service in the catalog and the line fills itself in (description, unit of measure, VAT rate, price), or leave it blank and type straight into “Description” — a free-form line, just as valid, with no catalog link at all. Then you fill in “Quantity” and “Unit price” (both required) and pick the “VAT code”: a select with the most common categories — Taxable, Excluded/out of scope, Non-taxable, Exempt, Special schemes, Reverse charge — or “Advanced” to set the rate and the nature code by hand. One rule to remember: with a rate above zero you don't set a nature code; with a 0% rate the nature code is mandatory, because it is what states why there is no VAT — without it, SDI would reject the document. Below each line you'll find three cascading discounts, “Disc1 %”, “Disc2 %” and “Disc3 %” — applied one after another, each on the amount already reduced by the previous one — plus a “Line type” menu to flag a free gift (with or without VAT charge) or a free goods discount. The collapsible “Accrual period” section, closed by default, only matters when a line refers to a period different from the document date. On the right you always see the line's taxable amount, recalculated live as you type. One warning about descriptions: the file sent to SDI only accepts a restricted character set, and SamBooks adapts your text without telling you — the € sign becomes “EUR”, em dashes and curly quotes become plain ones (accented letters are left untouched). On those characters the PDF and the electronic file don't match.
5. Closing discount and shipping charges
Both optional, in the “Discount and shipping” box. “Closing discount (%)” is always and only a percentage that reduces the taxable amount of the whole document — there's no fixed-amount discount here. “Shipping charges (taxable €)” carries its own “Shipping VAT %”: leave it at 0 and “Shipping VAT nature” becomes mandatory, otherwise saving is blocked with a specific warning.
6. The optional sections
Below the line items sit three collapsible sections, closed until you need them: “Withholding tax” (type, rate and payment reason, typical of professional fee invoices), “Social security fund”, and “Linked documents”, where you record the order, contract or delivery note the invoice refers to. On withholding and the fund you pick the type and the rates: the amounts, like the virtual stamp duty, are computed by SamBooks on save. The “Payments and due dates” section lets you set up one or more instalments (method, amount, due date, bank account); if you add nothing, the system still creates a single due date on the document date.
7. Notes and saving
The “Notes” field is free text, for internal remarks. At the bottom of the page, an always-visible summary shows “Total taxable amount”, “VAT” and “Estimated total” — plus “Withholding (est.)” and “Estimated net” if you've turned on withholding tax. It's an estimate because the virtual stamp duty and the fund contribution are computed by SamBooks on save: you'll see the final total on the detail page as soon as the invoice is created. Click “Create draft invoice”: the button switches to “Creating...” and, once done, “Invoice created.” takes you straight to the new document's detail page.
Why the invoice doesn't have a number yet
In SamBooks the sequential number is assigned only when the invoice is transmitted to SDI, never before: in Draft and in Ready alike the Number column stays a dash, and neither status consumes a number from the series. The reason is to avoid gaps — if the number were assigned at creation, every deleted draft would leave a hole in the sequence. The sequential number, the final series and every related effect (the journal entry, fulfilling linked orders, closing linked delivery notes) all happen together, in the same instant as transmission.
How an invoice becomes “Ready”
There is no “Mark as ready” button on this screen: the Draft/Ready status isn't something you choose — SamBooks computes it by checking the invoice against the mandatory e-invoicing data: the customer's name and tax identifier, a complete address, at least one described line, a bank account with an IBAN if payment is by bank transfer, and your own company's data. The check runs on every save. If everything checks out, the invoice becomes — or goes back to being — Ready on its own; if something's missing, it stays, or reverts to, Draft, and the detail page shows “Required fields missing for electronic invoicing” with the exact list and the shortcuts “Go to Company settings” and “Go to Banking”.
In practice, the path to make an invoice ready is: open “Edit”, fill in the missing field, save again — SamBooks recalculates on its own. You can also ask Sam “try marking invoice number 12 as ready”: it runs the same completeness check and, if something is still missing, lists exactly what.
One thing worth knowing: the “Ready” badge means the mandatory data is all there, not that sending will succeed. At transmission time SamBooks runs a finer check on the electronic file itself, and an issue the badge didn't catch can still surface — typically a bank account inherited from the customer with no IBAN on file. The message names the missing field, and “Go to Banking” takes you where it's fixed.
Editing an invoice
As long as the invoice hasn't been assigned a number yet — so, Draft or Ready — it stays editable. You open it with the pencil icon on the list row or the “Edit” button on the detail page: both lead to the same form used for creation, in edit mode. The subtitle spells it out: “Edit the invoice while it has not been sent to SDI. Changes replace the current data.” You save with “Save changes”; “Changes saved.” confirms it.
Two real limitations worth knowing. First: in edit mode, the numbering series and the number preview disappear from the form, because at that point they're still irrelevant — they're only assigned on issue. Second: the existing payment schedule and linked documents aren't reloaded into the form, and a note says so: instalments or references you add now replace the entire existing plan rather than sitting alongside it; leave those sections untouched and what's already there stays intact.
If you try to open the editor on an invoice that's already been transmitted, you'll land on “Invoice not editable”: from that point on, corrections go through a credit note. One exception: an invoice rejected by SDI cannot be edited, cannot be deleted, and cannot be reversed with a credit note either. If the rejection is about your own company's data you fix it in Settings and resend the same document; if the error is inside the invoice, there is no remedy inside the platform today — contact support before issuing any other document. Self-invoices generated from the purchase cycle (TD16-TD21) never go through this editor: they're regenerated from their source document.
Deleting a draft or a ready invoice
Deletion, too, is only possible as long as the invoice hasn't been sent — Draft or Ready — and you can do it from two places. The trash icon on the list row asks “Delete the draft?” and warns that the action can't be undone; the “Delete” button on the detail page asks “Delete the invoice?”, names the customer, and reminds you it is only possible while the invoice has not been sent to SDI, because a transmitted invoice is corrected with a credit note, not deleted. Once the invoice reaches a sent status, both commands disappear on their own.
Browsing the invoice list
“Outbound invoices” lists every issued invoice, credit and debit notes included. There are four filters: “Status”, “Document type”, “Period” (a date range) and “Customer” (by company name). The columns — Number, Date, Customer, Total, Status — sort when you click them; the Number column shows a dash until the invoice has been transmitted. If nothing matches your filters, the list says so explicitly (“No invoices for these filters”) and suggests widening the date range or asking Sam to create your first invoice. From the same page you can also reach “Invoice from DDT” — for goods already delivered with a delivery note, which are invoiced from there rather than here (see Invoice a month of delivery notes with the TD24 deferred invoice) — and “Import from order”, which starts from an existing sales order instead of a blank form.
Ask Sam
Creating, editing and deleting a sales invoice can also be requested in chat, with the same outcome as the form: “create an invoice for customer Rossi for 1,000 euros plus 22% VAT” produces a draft identical to the one you'd get from the page, ready for you to review. None of these actions asks for a separate confirmation, because creating or editing an untransmitted document is not the same as sending it: transmission to SDI remains a separate step, with its own explicit confirmation.
If something goes wrong
- The invoice stays a Draft after saving: a required field is missing, listed in the “Required fields missing for electronic invoicing” panel on the detail page.
- “With transport VAT at 0 the VAT nature is mandatory”: you left the shipping charge at a 0% VAT rate without a nature code; pick one, or set a non-zero rate.
- “Complete the method and amount of each instalment, or remove it.”: you started filling in an instalment without finishing it; complete it or remove it before saving.
- Can't find the customer in your address book: use “Create customer” at the bottom of the search results, without leaving the form.
- Need to correct an invoice that's already been sent: it's corrected with a credit note, issued from the original invoice's detail page. If the invoice was rejected by SDI, not even a credit note is allowed — see “Editing an invoice”.
- The invoice was Ready but sending still flags a problem: the finer check run at transmission time caught something the badge didn't — typically a bank account with no IBAN. The message names the missing field.
Frequently asked questions
How do I create an invoice in SamBooks? From “Outbound invoices” click “New invoice”, pick the customer, add at least one line with a description, quantity, price and VAT rate, then click “Create draft invoice”.
Can I edit an invoice I've already created? Yes, as long as it hasn't been sent to SDI: the pencil icon in the list, or the “Edit” button on the detail page. After sending, it's corrected with a credit note.
How do I delete an invoice I got wrong? Use the trash icon in the list or the “Delete” button on the detail page, but only while it's Draft or Ready. An already-transmitted invoice can't be deleted.
How do I add a discount to an invoice? Per line, you have three cascading discounts (“Disc1/2/3 %”); for the whole document, there's “Closing discount (%)” in the box below the line items.
How do I add shipping charges to an invoice? In the same “Discount and shipping” box: taxable amount, VAT rate, and — if the rate is 0 — the mandatory nature code.
Why does the invoice total say “estimated”? Because the virtual stamp duty and the fund contribution are computed by SamBooks on save: before that you only see the taxable amount and VAT.
How do I find an old invoice? From the “Outbound invoices” list, using the Status/Document type/Period/Customer filters, or by sorting the columns.
Can I create an invoice without the customer being in my address book? Yes — create it on the fly from the form itself with “Create customer” at the bottom of the search results; no need to leave the page.
How do I add two lines with different VAT rates on the same invoice? Pick a different VAT code on each line: the totals summary groups amounts by rate on its own whenever there's more than one.
Why doesn't my invoice have a number yet? Because the number is only assigned when the invoice is sent to SDI — never at creation or save time. It's a deliberate choice to make sure the numbering never has gaps.
What does it mean for an invoice to be “Ready”? That all the mandatory e-invoicing data is in place. It's not something you click: SamBooks works it out on its own every time you save.