Custom invoice numbers for each customer

Appologies if this has already been asked, I have looked at a few forum questions and unsure if they answer my question…

I was wondering if it was possible to set company specific invoice numbers

For example if I had 3 customers - Alpha Bravo, Charlie Delta & Echo Foxtrot,

Could I set invoice number for each company in the form

AB-XXXX
CD-XXXX
EF-XXXX

Which will automatically increment with each new invoice without having to input manually each time?

eg.
AB-0001 -> AB-0002 -> AB-0003…

I am a small company who is still building and with the current invoice structure it allows my customers to determine how many invoices I am sending out each month. I would rather that they could only determine how many invoices that I have sent to them using the invoice numbers and not how many invoices I have sent in total in between their latest and their last invoice.

If that makes sence?

There’s this existing feature request and this related one that you could add your vote to.

@Lurch thanks, I have looked at the posts but they are a couple of years old with very little progress and appears that I was the first to vote on Custom invoice number rules

I also found out after voting that I have 3 votes left, I wasnt aware that we were limited to number of votes.

I feel that if I am the only person to vote on that feature that it was probably a wasted vote?

Unfortunately the way voting works is, if there’s a need from the majority then it gets considered. So if only you vote for it, then sadly that’s democracy in action.

It’s worth noting that we do take other factors into account aside from the votes, although that is a great way to show your support for a feature request.

@QFMathew The fact that the topic says 1 vote, does that mean that my vote is the only vote? or that I have made 1 vote towards it?

I think that it would be a great addition, particularly for small companies like myself.
It is hard for small companies to appear larger when there is a tiny increment between invoices to one customer, but if all the can see is the number of invoices sent to them then they dont know how many invoices I have sent between their last invoice and their current

If that makes sense lol

it’s the total number of votes. But it’s worth noting that the vote feature was only added around a year ago (which is why it’s not based purely on votes alone).

The reason votes are limited is to stop people abusing it and voting for everything - that would defeat the purpose of it. But, you can view what you’ve voted for by going to your profile (top right corner).

Just so you know. That if you are vat registered. Invoice numbers should follow on from the last one. Given your example of invoice numbers relating to individual customers, this goes against the principle.

Where is this stated? I know HMRC give some guidance regarding invoice numbering, I’ve not seen it specifically related to VAT registration and fully sequential non deviating.

VAT registered businesses must use unique and sequential numbers for their invoices.

However,

  • You can use unique codes for each customer if you wish, as long as the series remains unique and sequential. *

  • You can also run more than one invoice sequence at the same time, for example if you want to have a separate sequence for each customer you have. *