Create and send your first invoice

If you do any work on the side, you need a way to bill for it that doesn’t look like it came out of a word processor in 1998. GlidePath’s invoice creator lives in Business → Invoices. You fill in a client and a few line items, and you get a tidy PDF to send. It’s part of the app you already bought — no separate account, no uploading your client list to someone’s cloud; it all stays on your computer.

We’ll build one example the whole way through: a fictional studio, Acme Web Studio, billing a client called Beta Corp for a month of design work.

One-time setup: your business details

Open Business → Invoices and scroll to Your business details. This is what appears at the top of every invoice, so you only fill it in once:

• Business name and your details (address, email, phone) — whatever you want a client to see.
• Logo — upload a PNG or JPG. It shows up at the top of every invoice and in the PDF. Keep it under 2 MB.
• Brand color — pick the color used for the “INVOICE” heading. Match it to your logo and the whole thing suddenly looks like yours.
• Payment instructions — e.g. “Payment due within 14 days. Zelle to [email protected].” This prints at the bottom of every invoice.
• Invoice # prefix (optional) — type INV- and your invoices number as INV-1001, INV-1002, and so on.
• Page size — Letter for the US, A4 most other places.

Hit Save details. You won’t have to touch this again unless something changes.

Create the invoice

Now scroll up to Create an invoice:

1. Client name and bill-to details — who’s paying. For our example: Beta Corp, with their address and email.
2. Issue date is set to today; add a due date if you want one (it also drives the “Overdue” flag later).
3. Line items — one row per thing you’re charging for. Type a description, a quantity, and a rate, and the amount fills in automatically. For Acme: “Website design — May,” qty 10, rate $125 → $1,250.00. Click + Add line for more.
4. Tax — if you charge it, give it a label (“Sales Tax”, “GST/HST”, whatever fits) and a percentage. Acme adds 8.25%.

As you type, the running total updates live at the bottom:

Subtotal $1,250.00 · Sales Tax (8.25%) $103.13 · Total $1,353.13

Click Create invoice.

Preview, then download the PDF

You land on a preview of the finished invoice — the exact “sheet” your client will get: your logo and details up top, the bill-to, the line items, the totals, and your payment note at the bottom. The on-screen preview matches the PDF, so there are no surprises.

When it looks right, click ⬇ Download PDF. You get a clean file named something like Invoice-1001.pdf — no browser headers, no “localhost” in the margin, just a professional invoice you can email straight to the client.

Track it: Sent → Paid

Back on the invoices list, each invoice has a status:

• Draft — still working on it.
• Sent — you’ve emailed it. Click Mark sent.
• Paid — money’s in. Click Mark paid and it moves out of your outstanding total.
• Overdue — shows automatically if it’s past the due date and still unpaid, so nothing slips.

The summary at the top always shows what you’re owed (Outstanding) versus what’s come in (Paid). Need a similar invoice next month? Open one and click Duplicate — it copies everything into a fresh draft so you only change what’s different.

After they pay: record it as business income

Marking an invoice Paid unlocks one more thing: you can file that payment on your Schedule C — the IRS form a sole proprietor uses to report business income. Open the paid invoice (View) and you’ll find a short panel under the invoice sheet.

The first time, click Set up income tracking. GlidePath adds a “Business Income” category and points it at Schedule C line 1 — gross receipts, the line for money you earned. That’s a one-time, one-click step; you won’t see it again after that.

From then on, GlidePath looks for the bank deposit that paid this invoice — a credit on one of your business accounts that matches the invoice total, around the time it was paid — and shows it to you. Pick the right deposit and click Record as business income. The deposit is filed under gross receipts, and it shows up on your Schedule C report at tax time.

A few things worth knowing:

• It’s always your call. GlidePath surfaces the matching deposit; nothing is recorded until you confirm. If more than one deposit matches, you choose which.
• It follows the real money. Income is tied to the actual deposit in your account, not to the invoice itself — so what lands on your Schedule C is what actually hit the bank.
• No deposit yet? If the payment hasn’t landed (or hasn’t been imported), the panel just tells you so. It’ll appear here to record once the deposit shows up — and it counts anyway if you categorize that deposit as business income yourself.
• Recorded once stays once. After you record it, the invoice shows a ✓ and the same deposit is never counted twice.

Where it lives

Every invoice is saved as a plain file on your own computer, right alongside the rest of your GlidePath data. Nothing is uploaded, and your client list never leaves your machine. Back it up like any other file and you’re covered.

That’s the whole loop: set your details once, then it’s about a minute per invoice from “I did the work” to “here’s a clean PDF.” When tax season comes, the same business numbers feed into your Schedule C.