Shipping, service dates and SKUs on your sales forms

Out of the box, invoices ask only for what most businesses need. Turn on more in Sales form content, and it shows on your invoices, estimates and sales receipts, on the copy your customer opens online, and on the PDF.

Turn them on

1. 1Go to Settings › Sales (owners and admins).
2. 2Under Sales form content, tick what you want: Service date, SKU and Shipping. With shipping on, tick Charge sales tax on shipping too if you have to.
3. 3Press Save changes. New forms show the extra fields straight away; documents you've already made keep what's on them.

Service date

Each item gets a Service date column: the day the work was done or the goods were delivered. Leave it empty on lines that don't need one. It shows on invoices, estimates, sales receipts and credit memos, and goes across when you turn an estimate into an invoice.

SKU

Each line shows the SKU of its product, from Products & services (give a product its SKU there). Lines that aren't a saved product, or products with no SKU, leave it empty. Change a product's SKU and every document shows the new one.

Shipping

1. 1Pick the customer: Ship to fills in with their shipping address (from their customer page). Change it for this order if you need to.
2. 2Fill in Ship via (like UPS or your own van), the Shipping date and the Tracking no. as you know them. All of them are optional.
3. 3Type the Shipping fee under the subtotal. It's added after any discount.
4. 4Save. On a sent invoice or a sales receipt the fee goes to an income account called Shipping income, made for you the first time.

Your customer sees the ship-to address beside the bill-to, the ship via, shipping date and tracking number under the dates, and Shipping in the totals.

Sales tax on shipping

Some states tax delivery charges; most don't when they're stated separately. With Charge sales tax on shipping ticked, the fee is taxed at the form's standard rate and shows as taxable on the sales tax report; unticked, it's never taxed. Ask your tax adviser which applies to you. See Charge sales tax.

Good to know

• Estimates: shipping and service dates are copied to the invoice you make from one. In parts, the shipping fee goes on the first invoice only.
• Turned shipping off later? Documents that already have shipping keep it, and you can still change it on them.
• Refund receipts can refund a shipping fee too: it comes off Shipping income.
• Your Profit and loss shows shipping fees under Shipping income.