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Generate & Customize an Invoice

Generate an invoice from an approved itinerary's booking items, customize it with per-item price breakups, and download, share, or save it to the trip's Documents.

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Written by Shane

When a trip is ready to bill, TripLoft generates an invoice automatically from the trip's booking line items. Every item in the approved itinerary becomes a line on the invoice, with its own payment schedule shown beneath it. You can generate the invoice as-is, or enrich it with per-item price breakups for a more transparent, itemized bill.

An invoice can only be generated once an itinerary is approved, and it pulls from each item's pricing and payment setup. Set those up first on each item's Pricing & Booking tab. See Configure Pricing for Proposal Components and Payment Schedule & Authorization Requests.


Approve an itinerary first

Generation lives on the trip's Payments tab (under Finances), but it's gated: a proposal has to be approved as the itinerary before anything invoice-related appears. Until then, the Payments tab shows a selector titled "Which itinerary do you want to use for client credit card authorization?" listing each proposal (each marked Proposing), with a note that all other options will be rejected and archived.

Pick the itinerary the client is going with and click Submit. That proposal becomes the Itinerary, the others are archived, and the Payments tab switches to its financial view with the Generate Invoice button available. This applies even when there's only one proposal: it still has to be approved first.

[SCREENSHOT: Payments tab itinerary selector with options marked Proposing and the Submit button]


Generate the invoice

On the Payments tab, the Expected Payments section has a Generate Invoice button (next to + New Item). Click it to open the Generate Invoice popup.

The popup summarizes what's coming ("N items will be included. Total cost: $X. Remaining balance: $Y.") and gives you:

  • Invoice Number: pre-filled with an auto-generated number, editable

  • Issue Date: defaults to today, editable

  • Description: a short intro note shown near the top of the invoice, below Remaining due (for example, a disclaimer, a brief of next steps, a prompt to authorize payment). 200-character limit.

  • Memo (Optional): a note shown at the bottom of the invoice (payment instructions, a thank-you, or other details). Also a 200-character limit.

A note in the popup reminds you that generating an invoice also publishes the latest trip updates. Click Create Invoice to build it.

[SCREENSHOT: Generate Invoice popup showing Invoice Number, Issue Date, the Description box, and the Memo rich-text editor]


What the generated invoice contains

The invoice opens in its own view, with Edit details, Download PDF, and Share Invoice at the top right. The invoice shows:

  • A header with the invoice number, issue date, your host agency logo, your agency and agent name and email, and a link to your agency's Terms & Conditions

  • Trip details (name and dates), the primary traveler, and any additional travelers

  • Remaining due, with an Authorize Payment link

  • Your intro description note

  • One line per booked item, each showing the item name, its included taxes and fees, and its amount

  • Beneath each item sits a Payments table showing that item's schedule, with each payment's due date, status, and amount. Below the table you'll also see a "Booking via [supplier]" line and, when they've been added, links to the Terms & Conditions and the Cancellation Policy. Note that this table only appears once a payment schedule has been set on the item; without one, there's nothing to show.

  • What the table contains follows the schedule you chose:

    • In Full: a single Final balance row.

    • Deposit + Final Balance: a Deposit row and a Final balance row.

    • Set Installments: one row per installment (Installment 1, Installment 2, and so on), followed by a Final balance row.

[SCREENSHOT: Generated invoice showing the header, trip details, intro note, and a line item with its Payments table]


Customize the invoice (optional)

Beyond the plain invoice, you can itemize any line into a price breakup, for example splitting a flight into base fare, taxes, seat, and meal, so the client sees exactly what they're paying for. This is optional and done per item wherever you want the extra detail. There are two ways in, and they stay in sync.

Method 1: the item's Invoice tab

Open any trip item's edit drawer. Past General Info, Media, Attachments, and Pricing & Booking, there's a fifth tab: Invoice. Make sure the item already has a price on its Pricing & Booking tab first: a $0 item will read as overpaid the moment you add a breakup line, because there's no total to allocate against. Add your breakup lines here (see "How a breakup works" below).

[SCREENSHOT: An item's edit drawer open on the Invoice tab with a price breakup]

Method 2: Edit details on the generated invoice

Adding breakups item by item gets tedious across many items, and once you see the whole invoice you often want to fix a small thing in place. So on the generated invoice, click Edit details to enter editing mode. A banner explains that line items and their costs are locked (they come from the trip's bookings); what you can do is add a description per line, break a line into sub-items (the sub-items must total the line). You can also edit the intro note here. Click Save changes when done.

Edits sync both ways: a breakup you build on the invoice shows up on that item's Invoice tab, and one you build on the item's tab shows up on the invoice.

[SCREENSHOT: Invoice in editing mode showing the locked-items banner and the + Add sub-line control]

How a breakup works (both methods)

Each breakup is a small table:

  • Description / Price breakup: what the line is (for example, Base Fare, Taxes, Meal, Window Seat, or Guest 1, Guest 2)

  • Qty: the quantity (for example, 2 for two travelers)

  • Unit price: the per-unit amount

  • Amount: Qty times Unit price, calculated for you

A tracker shows how the breakup adds up against the item's total: how much is allocated, how much is still unallocated, and a green "Matches total" once the breakup equals the item price. The breakup total must equal the line total to save. An Allocate remaining to last row shortcut drops the leftover into the final line. Once saved, the breakup rows appear under that item on the invoice, above its Payments table.

[SCREENSHOT: A breakup table mid-edit showing the allocation tracker, and the same item on the finished invoice with its breakup rows]


Download, share, and save to Documents

From the generated invoice, the top-right buttons handle output:

  • Download PDF: opens a print preview where you can pick which pages to include, set margins, and choose Save as PDF, then Save. It isn't an instant download; you confirm in the preview first.

  • Share Invoice: opens an email composer popup. Add your message and send it to the client.

How the invoice gets saved to the trip's Documents depends on what you do:

  • If you share it by email and the email is sent: the invoice is saved to the trip's Documents automatically. (Just opening the composer and abandoning it does not count; the email has to actually be sent.)

  • If you don't send it: when you click the back button to leave the invoice, TripLoft asks "Save invoice to documents? Do you want to save this invoice in the documents tab of this trip?" with No and Yes. Choose Yes to save it.

See Manage Documents & Media in a Trip for the trip's Documents tab.

[SCREENSHOT: Download PDF print preview with the Pages, Margins, and Save as PDF options]

[SCREENSHOT: "Save invoice to documents?" prompt with No and Yes when leaving an unsent invoice]


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