Verifying the invoice schedule

What is this page about: Before a contract's first invoice goes out, check the invoices it will raise and how their revenue is recognized. This page covers how Light creates a contract's draft invoices, how to review the scheduled periods, how to generate the next invoice early, and how to check the deferred revenue on both the contract and the invoice.

# On this page

• How contract invoices are created
• Review the scheduled invoices
• Generate the next invoice early
• Confirm the revenue treatment
• Best practices
• Related articles

# How contract invoices are created

Most periods invoice themselves:

• When you publish, Light creates a draft invoice for every period up to today.
• After that, a daily job creates the rest. Each invoice is dated the billing date minus the contract's Invoice lead days, and Light creates its draft 7 days before that invoice date.

Each draft is due on its invoice date plus the contract's Net terms, and stays in Draft until someone posts it, like any other sales invoice.

# Review the scheduled invoices

1. Open an active contract.
2. Go to the Invoices tab.
3. Leave the status filter on All to see every period, or pick Draft, Open, Void, Partially paid, Paid, Scheduled or Cancelled. Scheduled shows the periods still to come.
4. Check each row's invoice date and amount against what was agreed.

Rows are named Invoice 1, Invoice 2 and so on in billing order, so you can confirm the cadence and amounts before anything is raised. Invoices linked to the contract by hand show their own title with a Linked badge.

# Generate the next invoice early

If you don't want to wait for the daily job, create the next draft yourself:

1. On the first row with the Scheduled badge, click Create draft.
2. Wait for Generating... to finish.
3. Click the row to open the invoice.

The invoice opens pre-filled from the contract, including the customer, entity, currency, net terms, invoice template and lines. It's also listed in Revenue & Invoicing > Sales invoices with status Draft, so check it here, before it's posted or sent.

# Confirm the revenue treatment

If a contract line has a revenue release schedule, check the deferred revenue as well as the invoice amount.

1. On the contract, open the Deferred revenue tab in the right-hand panel.
2. Review the release postings, each with a Total amount and a running Balance.
3. Open the draft invoice and open its own Deferred revenue tab.
4. Check that the invoice lines show the same release template in the Releases column as the contract lines they came from.

The Deferred revenue tab is always there on both the contract and the invoice. When no line has a release template it shows "No deferred schedule selected", and revenue is recognized directly from the invoice. See Revenue Schedules and Deferred Revenue for how release templates work.

# Best practices

• Check the Invoices tab right after publishing. A wrong period or amount is far easier to fix on a Scheduled row than once invoices exist.
• Creating a draft doesn't post or send anything, so it's a safe way to preview an invoice.
• If release schedules are involved, check the Deferred revenue tab on both the contract and the invoice. They should agree.
• If a period that's already invoiced turns out to be wrong, correct the invoice, not the contract. See Amending and renewing a contract.

# Related articles

• Contracts
• Creating and publishing a contract
• Amending and renewing a contract
• Revenue Schedules and Deferred Revenue
• Invoice Generation

Also searched as: check contract invoice schedule, generate a draft invoice from a contract, contract invoice lead days, deferred revenue on a contract, release schedule contract line.