Financial Documents: Quotes, Invoices & Delivery Notes

Financial documents let you create quotes, invoices, delivery notes, and credit notes directly from within an event and send them by email. All documents share the same editor; type-specific fields and status actions adjust automatically based on the document type.

Exception for delivery notes: A delivery note is not sent by email. You print it as a PDF or have it signed on site, then mark it as signed. That is why the "Save and send" button does not appear on delivery notes at all. In its place you get the Delivery driver field: pick the team member who drives the tour. It stays editable after the document is finalised or signed — if someone drops out, you simply enter somebody else.

Where are documents found?

Financial documents are grouped under the Documents tab inside an event. Quotes, invoices, delivery notes, and credit notes all appear together in a card view. A workspace-wide overview of all open documents is available in the main menu under Financial Documents.

Below the document number and date, each card names the document's recipient — plus their company for a contact person. If it says "No recipient selected", the customer is still missing and the document cannot be sent.

The recipient belongs to the document, not to the event

This is the key point about the billing address: every document stores its own recipient. The event's customer only pre-fills newly created documents. That means:

• When you copy an event, the copied documents keep the template's recipient — even if the copy is meant for a different customer. (While copying you can switch the Billing recipient toggle off; the copy's documents then have no recipient.)
• When you change the event's customer later, documents that already exist do not follow automatically — otherwise changing a customer would silently rewrite the address on documents you had already agreed on. Univents asks you about it instead, see the next section.

Changed the event's customer: bring the documents along

When you assign a different customer while editing an event, the Apply changes? prompt appears after saving, now with a Customer changed section. It lists every draft still addressed to the previous customer — with document type, document number and current recipient. Tick the ones that should move to the new customer, either individually or via select all.

Three things worth knowing:

• Nothing happens on its own. All boxes start empty. Confirm the prompt quickly and every document keeps its recipient.
• Only drafts are offered. Documents you have sent, finalised or issued are legally frozen and never appear in the list — changing their recipient means cancelling them and creating a new document. Drafts that already go to the new customer are left out too.
• The default discount comes along. If the new customer has a default discount stored and the document does not yet carry a header discount of its own, it is applied — exactly as when you switch the recipient inside the document.

If the event has no customer at all there is no recipient to switch to, so the section stays hidden.

So if a document shows the wrong billing address, you change it on the document itself: open the document, expand the Client field in the header and pick the right contact. For each person the dropdown shows their company and their email address — helpful when two contacts share a name but belong to different companies. Note that editing the contact itself (a new email address, for example) does not change the printed address: for a contact person linked to a company, the address comes from that company.

To create a new document inside an event:

1. Open the event and switch to the Documents tab.
2. Click the New dropdown button.
3. Select the desired type: New Quote, New Invoice, New Delivery Note, or New Credit Note.
4. The editor opens immediately.

Filling in the header

The header section is identical for all document types. Fields are saved automatically when you leave them.

For invoices, an additional Invoice Fields section appears with Cash Discount Days, Cash Discount Percent, Reverse Charge, and Due Date. For delivery notes, a Delivery section appears with the Delivery Date field.

Delivery notes also have their own Additional Items Provided section below the regular line items — for things delivered but not charged (e.g. loaned dishware). You add items there via the section's own Add Item or Add from Template buttons; they don't count toward the invoice total but still appear as their own list on the PDF.

Editing line items

Below the header you will find the line-item editor. Each item contains:

• Title (required)
• Description (optional, collapsible)
• Internal note (optional) — for your team only; it never appears on the PDF or in the customer portal
• Category (required)
• Unit 1, 2, 3 for multi-level quantity entries
• Cost net (€) for contribution margin calculation
• Price net (€), Discount (%), VAT (%)

The cost price is always a net price. The sales price follows the document's price basis (see Enter prices gross or net); VAT is set per line via the VAT (%) column.

The last column carries its side in the heading and shows exactly that:

• Total net (€) on a document that calculates in net — the line amount excluding VAT, i.e. unit price times quantity minus discount. This is the default.
• Total gross (€) on a document that calculates in gross — the line amount including VAT.

That way unit price and line total match within the same row: a net document shows “Price net” on the left and “Total net” on the right, so you can check the line in your head. The subtotal above each section still states net and gross separately, and the totals panel at the end of the editor still shows both sides.

The internal note belongs to the position, not to a single document: write it in one document and it automatically shows up on the same position in the event's other open documents and in the bookings overview. Documents that are already issued or sent are left untouched.

Clicking Add from Template opens the Select Template dialog. There you can search saved line-item templates and add them with a single click on Add. Use Manage Templates to edit existing templates, or Create Template to create new ones.

Below the line items you'll find the collapsible Adopt Items section. It groups everything you can pull into this document: Bookings without a document and Shifts without a document — open bookings or planned shifts on the event that aren't on any document yet — plus From other documents: one expandable section per other document on the same event (e.g. an existing delivery note or quote), each showing that document's net total. Use Add to adopt a single line, or Add all to adopt every item in a group or document at once. If your document already has sections, you can also pick a target section at the top of the area — it applies to both Add and Add all; without a selection, items land under "No section". Adopted items keep their title, quantity, price, and discount exactly as in the source, and disappear from every other section afterwards so nothing gets added twice.

A shift is no longer offered under Shifts without a document once it sits on a document of the event itself — or when its service is already there from a booking or as a manually typed line. In the latter case it now appears in the Shifts already billed through a booking group, marked Billed via booking: adopting it a second time is not possible, the service would then be on the document twice. If you change the shift's times or head count afterwards, the position does not follow by itself — that line comes from the booking. When the two differ, the group says so and Adopt quantities sets the position to the shift's current state: count and hours move, price, discount and text stay untouched, and the document total changes accordingly. Before anything is written you see every affected position with its before and after. When several shifts are billed through one position the button is deliberately absent — which share belongs to which shift is yours to enter on the position itself. Several shifts sharing the same item — two service-staff shifts at different times, say, or two grill stations — are several sold services: each one stays selectable and all of them can be adopted.

If a booking on offer already sits in the document as a line item — same product, same quantity, same price — it is flagged already in document. Those bookings are skipped by Add all (you get a message afterwards saying how many), and adding one individually asks for confirmation first. That way an item can't end up in the document twice by accident. If you really do want to charge it twice, confirm with Add anyway.

Totals and PDF settings

At the bottom of the editor the totals panel shows:

• Subtotal (Net), Discount, VAT, Total
• Cost (Net) and Contribution Margin (Net) as internal figures

Contribution Margin (Net) now shows the ratio in percent next to the amount, for example 1,234.00 € (32.1%). It tells you what share of your net revenue is left after the recorded cost prices — 1,234 € on 3,000 € of revenue is a different message from the same 1,234 € on 60,000 €. If the contribution margin is negative, the minus sign precedes both the amount and the percentage. If the document has no net revenue yet, Univents shows the amount only and no ratio: a percentage without a reference value would be guesswork.

If the stored total differs from the sum of the line items, a note below shows both amounts. This can happen on older, already-issued documents whose line items were changed afterwards: the stored total is no longer recalculated once a document is issued, whereas the PDF always recalculates from the line items. The amount on the PDF is the authoritative one — it's what your customer received.

The Internal Notes field lets you record notes for your team. These do not appear on the PDF.

Under PDF Settings you control the behaviour of the generated PDF:

• "Total" column shows net instead of gross prices — otherwise the PDF prints the gross amount per line in the Total column. To change it permanently for new documents, go to Settings → Documents → Finance document display
• Combine items and show total price only
• Show VAT column
• Allow page break within a table row
• Repeat table header on each new page
• Show product images
• Sort tables by delivery notes
• Sort positions by sections and your own order (instead of by category)
• Break each section subtotal down by VAT rate: the section then ends with Subtotal … (net), one line per VAT rate that occurs in it — plus VAT 7%, plus VAT 19% — and Subtotal … (gross). The switch turns section sorting on as well, because without sections the PDF prints no subtotals at all. Sections without any VAT keep their single line

E-invoice (XRechnung)

For every issued invoice and credit note (including deposit/partial invoices), Univents automatically creates an e-invoice in the XRechnung format alongside the PDF — downloadable from the document and the customer portal, and optionally attached to emails automatically too. For details, including what the “E-invoice incomplete” note means, see E-invoice (XRechnung) for invoices and credit notes.

What's missing to send: send validation

Before you can send a document, Univents automatically checks whether all required fields are complete. If something is missing, the send area shows a "Still required to send:" notice with the specific list of open items. Each item is named exactly like the field it belongs to:

• Document name (the topmost field in the header area — not the Title of a position)
• Customer
• Issue date
• Service period (start) and Service period (end)
• Validity / payment term
• At least one position — with Description, Quantity, and Category on every position
• Company name, Company address, and Tax number or VAT ID (all three from your settings)
• Recipient name and Recipient address — for invoices up to €250 gross, the address is not required (small-amount invoice under § 33 UStDV); the name is always required
• If a customer imported from your previous software only has a single-line address (for example "Leopoldstraße 25, München"), the notice reads Complete recipient address (street, postal code and city as separate fields). That line does get printed on the PDF, but an invoice needs street, postal code and city separately. Click Edit contact in the notice — the old line is already split into the individual fields, so you only add what is missing and save

Only once this list is empty can the document be sent.

Sending a document and managing status

Once the document is ready, three buttons are available at the bottom:

• Cancel exits the editor.
• Save as Draft saves the document with the status "Draft" and exits the editor.
• Save and Send renders the PDF, sends it to the client by email, and changes the status to "Sent".

After sending, the Status Actions section appears. Which actions are available depends on the document type and its current status:

Destructive actions such as Cancel, Full credit note, or Correct invoice require confirmation.

Cancelling an invoice

An issued invoice cannot be deleted — cancelling always runs through a credit note, in three steps:

1. On the invoice, click Full credit note (storno). Univents creates a credit note as a draft and opens it.
2. In the credit note, click Issue credit note. The credit note gets its final number, and the original invoice counts as cancelled from that moment on. No email goes out yet.
3. Optional: send the credit note as well so the customer receives the document.

While the credit note is still a draft, nothing happens to the invoice — it stays open. If an invoice already has a credit note, clicking Full credit note again opens that existing draft instead of creating a second one.

The full credit note already brings the positions along. Univents copies every position of the invoice into it with a negative amount, so the credit note matches the invoice from the start. That is why a credit note does not offer the Adopt positions from other documents section: a position adopted there would arrive positive and cancel out exactly that much of the storno. To refund only part of an invoice, use Partial cancellation… on the invoice and pick the positions. You can also delete individual rows or change their quantity directly in the credit note draft.

Correcting an invoice

Instead of just cancelling a faulty invoice, Correct invoice replaces it with a revised version in one step: Univents cancels the invoice in the background (a silent credit note, with no email to the customer) and immediately creates an editable draft with the same line items. When that draft is sent, it gets a new invoice number and today's issue date.

Refunding an invoice (Stripe)

If an invoice was paid via Stripe, the Refund action additionally appears once the invoice is Paid. In the dialog you choose between Full refund and Partial refund; for a partial refund you enter the Amount (€) and can record an internal Reason. The refund is returned to the original payment method — the invoice itself stays marked as paid.

Marking a credit note as settled

For a sent credit note, use Mark as settled to record that the amount has been settled with the customer, e.g. offset against a new invoice.

Stale-chain warning: follow-up documents from an older quote version

If an accepted quote is edited again afterwards, invoices or delivery notes already created from it may be based on an outdated quote version. In that case Univents shows a warning that the follow-up documents were not automatically updated, along with a Recreate from this version button — the old draft documents are then marked as replaced.

The "Expired" and "Obsolete" statuses

• Expired — Univents automatically sets a sent quote to "Expired" once its configured validity (days) has passed.
• Obsolete — a document carries this status once it has been replaced by a newer version, for example when follow-up documents were recreated from a more recent quote version via the stale-chain warning.

Issuing an invoice without sending it right away

Invoices and credit notes that are still in draft have an extra action alongside the buttons above: Issue Invoice. It separates the final numbering from the email send — you lock the document in legally without having to send it to the client at that moment.

1. Open the draft invoice and click Issue Invoice.
2. In the Assign invoice number for good? dialog you'll see the exact next number. Confirm with Issue.
3. Univents assigns the number, locks the document under §14 UStG, and renders the PDF right away. The status changes to Issued.

An issued invoice can no longer be edited or deleted — only corrected via a credit note. Sending it by email is a separate decision: the usual send option stays available anytime from the Documents tab.

Default discount for repeat customers

If you enter a value under Default discount (%) on a contact (contact form, next to the debtor number), that discount is automatically pre-filled as the document-level discount on every new document you create for that customer — whether you create the document manually, it comes from an accepted inquiry, or it's created automatically from a booking-page order. If a document already has its own document discount, it's left untouched; the customer default only applies while it's still at 0%. Changing the recipient in the document editor applies the new customer's default discount under the same condition.

Deducting an advance payment from the final invoice

If the customer already paid an invoice for the same event, you deduct that amount in the draft of the final invoice. Above the positions list you will find the Advance payment card with the Deduct advance payment button: it opens the list of paid invoices for this event (for a document without an event: the ones for this customer) with number, amount and date. Clicking Deduct inserts the advance as a negative position — titled "./. Anzahlung <number> vom <date>", and with a separate line per tax rate when rates are mixed, so VAT and the final amount add up.

Worth knowing:

• Drafts only. Once the invoice is issued its positions are locked (GoBD) — the card no longer appears there.
• Once per invoice. An invoice that has already been deducted is marked Already deducted in the list. Once every paid invoice is settled, the card tells you so.
• Nothing there? Then there is no paid invoice for this event. The deduction only becomes available once the deposit invoice is marked Paid.
• Deposit invoices created from an accepted quote are still deducted automatically when you send the final invoice — nothing to do there. This card is the path for every other case, for example when you wrote the advance as a regular invoice.
• Do not deduct via "Adopt positions". Adopting copies a line exactly as it stands in the source document — an advance copied that way is added, not deducted.
• If the advances exceed the final invoice, it cannot be sent. Issue a credit note for the difference instead.

Making an invoice payable online

If a payment provider (Stripe) is connected, a customer can pay a sent invoice directly by card in the customer portal. In the document editor, you control this per invoice with the Allow online payment toggle. How new invoices start is set once under Integrations → Payments with New invoices offer online payment (default: on). Without a connected payment provider neither toggle is shown and every invoice stays off — there would be nothing to allow. Use Copy payment link to copy the matching portal URL directly to your clipboard, for example to share it by phone or chat. If the invoice isn't (yet) payable — for instance because it hasn't been sent, is already paid, or the outstanding amount is under €10 — the button is greyed out and shows the reason in a tooltip.

Following up on a quote

A sent quote has a Follow up button right in the status bar: a dialog shows the recipient and a checkbox to Attach quote PDF; confirming sends a friendly reminder email to the customer without changing anything on the quote itself. How often, and when you last followed up, is shown below the button afterward.

This can also run automatically: for quotes, the Send reminders field in the header counts days after the document was sent (unlike invoices, where the same chips control reminder stages after the due date). Enter, say, 14 and 30 there, and Univents sends the same follow-up email automatically at those points — leave it empty and nothing happens.

Translating documents into another language

Every document draft has a Language field in the header. Switching it offers to switch the matching PDF layout along with it. Right next to it, the Generate missing translations button translates line-item titles, descriptions, and the document title via AI into the selected language — a review dialog shows every suggestion individually so you can tick which ones to apply; unticked suggestions are left untouched. Applied translations replace the existing text directly in the document — no second version is created. The feature is available from the Growth plan, consumes AI credits, and only works on drafts — issued documents are frozen in their language.

Frequently asked questions

Where can I see all open invoices across the workspace? Under Financial Documents in the main menu you will find a list of all documents across all events, including KPI tiles for outstanding amounts, overdue invoices, and invoices paid in the current month.

How do I find an older document? The list shows 50 documents per page, sorted by most recently created. Use Back/Next below the table to page through the rest; the line next to it tells you how many documents the current filter matches in total. The search box above the table is faster: it searches document number, customer name and event name across all pages and combines with the type, status and date filters. Documents migrated from the old Univents are found the same way — they all carry the migration date, which is why they sit far down in the default sort order.

Why don't I see old versions of a quote in the list anymore? When you revise a quote via New version, Univents hides the replaced old version by default — both in the finance document overview and in the event's document list. That keeps it clear which quote is the current one. Use the Show replaced quotes toggle (overview) or Show replaced toggle (event document list) to bring them back; each one then carries an Old version label with a link to the current version. Invoices and delivery notes are never hidden.

What is the difference between a layout and a template? A layout determines the visual design of the PDF (colours, margins, DOCX template file). A line-item template contains reusable rows that you insert into a document with a single click. Both are configured independently of each other.

How does the reminder function work? In the Send Reminders field you activate chips for predefined intervals (1, 3, 7, 14, or 30 days) or enter a custom value — for quotes counted from when it was sent, for invoices counted from the due date. Univents automatically sends a reminder email to the stored client contact.

What happens when I issue an invoice? It gets its final number and is locked under §14 UStG — it can no longer be edited or deleted afterwards, only corrected via a credit note. Sending it by email is independent of that: issuing and sending are two separate steps, and you decide when (or whether) the invoice goes out.