01Where an invoice comes from
From a signed contract, never from a sent or refused one. A seasonal contract invoices itself, through its instalments: each is due on the 1st of the month, starting with the month the season opens; those whose date has already passed are invoiced the second the customer signs, the others when their day comes. A per-visit or hourly contract is invoiced with the “Invoice visits” button: one invoice per contract, for its closed visits not yet invoiced. A visit done under a seasonal contract is never invoiced on its own: that is what seasonal means. An archived customer is no longer invoiced — no instalment, no visit — until restored; their invoices already issued remain due.
02An issued invoice no longer changes
Rates, tax names and your registration numbers are frozen on the invoice when it is issued. To correct it, issue a credit note: a separately numbered document, at the original invoice’s taxes.
03Collect
“Send” emails the invoice to the main contact, never by text; an invoice already sent shows “Send again”, which asks for confirmation, naming the date. A reply from the customer lands in your mailbox, not at Poudra. Every payment is a numbered receipt. If you turn on online payments, your customer pays without leaving their invoice page, by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay — nothing else, no consumer credit; the form is Stripe’s, and the card never goes through Poudra; the money goes straight to your account, with no Poudra commission.
04Void a payment recorded by mistake
A bounced cheque, an amount typed on the wrong invoice: on an invoice that received a payment, “Payments” lists each receipt, and “Void” asks for a reason. The invoice balance goes back up, “paid” becomes “issued” or “overdue” again, and the line stays, struck through, with its date and reason: the receipt can be reprinted, and says in red that it is voided. The dashboard, the tax report and the accounting export no longer count it; the customer no longer sees it on their invoice page. A payment made online is not voided here: the money is at Stripe, refund it from your Stripe dashboard. Only the owner voids.
05Reminders
An overdue invoice is reminded at three, ten and twenty-one days, at nine o’clock in your time zone, then Poudra goes quiet.
06Your data is yours
The subscription page lets you download all your data as CSV files, at any time — even if your access is closed. The button appears as soon as there is something to take with you: a brand-new account does not show it yet.
07The tax report
In Reports, the Taxes tab (owner only) prepares your GST/HST and QST return. It reads on the accrual basis: an invoice counts in the period of its issue date, paid or not. The default period is the current calendar quarter; you can also pick a month, a year or two dates. The table shows one line per tax and per rate — GST and QST stay separate, never merged — with the registration number frozen on the documents, sales before tax, tax collected, credit notes and the net. A credit note counts in the period of the note, as a negative: a quarter already filed does not move. “Of which collected” is indicative: the share of payments received in the period, for your cash flow, not for the return. The report downloads as CSV and as PDF. It is a filing aid report: have it checked by your accountant.
08The accounting export
Below the tax report, two import files for your accounting software, over the same period: a CSV for QuickBooks Online and most Canadian software, an IIF for QuickBooks Desktop. They contain your invoices and their lines, one line per tax, your credit notes and your payments. The sum of each document’s lines equals its total, to the cent; if the breakdown created a gap, an explicit “Rounding adjustment” line carries it rather than hiding it. The account names written in the file — sales, GST/HST, QST, accounts receivable, deposit — are set in Settings › Accounting, as your software knows them. Have your accountant import a first file before relying on it. There is no automatic connection to QuickBooks: these are files, which you import whenever you want.