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Orders, invoices and payments

Move an order from created to delivered, handle returns and exchanges, recover abandoned carts, build an invoice with Stripe Tax, and collect payment by link or by record.

10 min read · Reviewed 2026-07-13

This is the money side of Clyentra: an order comes in, an invoice goes out, a payment lands, and sometimes a return comes back. Five screens under Finance cover the whole loop, and they all key off the same products and leads you already have.

The order lifecycle

An order moves forward one step at a time, and Clyentra always knows which step is next:

Created → Processed → Confirmed → Shipped → Out for Delivery → Delivered.

Three statuses sit off that main line. Cancelled ends the order. Refund Initiated → Refunded handles money going back. Failed is where an order lands when payment did not go through.

Cash-on-delivery orders skip the front of the queue: An order paid by card is Created when it arrives, because the payment still has to settle. A Cash on Delivery order starts at Confirmed — there is nothing to settle until the courier hands it over.

Returns: refund or exchange

A return is raised against an existing order and is one of two types: Refund ("Money back") or Exchange ("Replace items"). You pick the lines and the quantities to return, add a Reason, and Clyentra shows you the estimated refund or the returned value before you commit.

The status path is the same for both types up to the point where they diverge:

Only orders that have actually moved — Processed, Confirmed, Shipped, Out for Delivery or Delivered — can be returned. You cannot return something that has not left Created.

Abandoned carts, and getting them back

A cart that a lead filled and left behind shows up on /finance/abandoned-carts with the lead's name and email, the item count, the cart value, and how many coupons you have already sent them.

Clyentra classifies each one by freshness: Hot, Warm or Cold. Those are filter chips at the top of the screen, and they tell you where to spend your attention — a hot cart is still warm enough to save.

1. Open the cart. Click the row. The sidebar shows what they were about to buy and a Coupon History block listing every code you have already thrown at them.
2. Send a coupon. Press Send Recovery Coupon and pick an existing active code, or create a new one targeted at that lead without leaving the sidebar.
3. Watch the Coupons Sent column. It counts and dates every send. If it is already at three, a fourth is not a strategy — see workflow-automation for a follow-up that is not another discount.

Before you can invoice: the configuration check

Open the invoice composer and Clyentra checks your setup first — "Checking configuration...". If something is missing it stops you with a Configuration Required panel that names what is wrong and ends with: *"Please complete these in settings before creating invoices."*

Press Configure Now and it takes you where you need to go. If your organization address is incomplete, that is Settings. If the tax setup is incomplete on a Stripe organization, that is Settings → Integrations → Stripe. There is also a Maybe later button, but the invoice cannot be built until the gap is closed.

Do this once, on day one: The configuration check is the single most common thing that stops a first invoice. Complete your organization address and connect Stripe during setup — see organization-settings and integrations — and you will never see the panel again.

Build an invoice

The composer is a two-panel screen: the form on one side, a live Preview of the document on the other. The subtitle under the title reads Step-by-step builder, and it means it — there are two stages.

1. Stage one — Details. Pick the customer and set Invoice Date *. The date cannot be in the future: "Invoice date cannot be in the future". If the customer has no address on file, Clyentra says so — "The selected customer is missing required address details." — and gives you a Fill Details button to fix it inline.
2. Press Add Items. That is the submit button on stage one. It saves the invoice header and moves you to the line items. You can go back with Edit Invoice Details.
3. Stage two — add line items. Press Add Item and pick a Product. If it is a variable product, a Variant picker appears and you must choose one. Set Qty, Rate and Discount. Clyentra shows In stock: {n} under the quantity so you cannot oversell.
4. Save each item. An unsaved row is tagged Draft and outlined in amber. Press Save on the row, or Save All at the bottom to commit every draft at once.
5. Finish. When every row is saved and no errors remain, the button reads Done.

Line items validate individually, and the messages are blunt: "Product is required", "Qty must be greater than 0", "Rate must be greater than 0", "Discount cannot be negative", "Discount exceeds line total". While any of them stand, the button reads Fix item errors and will not submit. Each row also has an Item Remarks (Optional) field for line-level detail.

How tax lands on the invoice

On a Stripe organization, you do not enter tax on the invoice at all. Stripe Tax computes sales tax or VAT from your tax registrations and from each product's Tax code — the one you set in products-and-coupons.

You can see this in the composer. The Net Amount on each line shows the amount followed by a small +tax marker, and the per-line Breakdown popover shows Subtotal, Discount and Net without a tax line. That is not an omission — it is Stripe's job, done after the fact.

The preview will tell you it doesn't know yet: On an unsaved invoice the preview states: "Tax details will be available after the invoice is saved." That is expected. Save the invoice, and the computed tax appears.

Getting paid

The Payments screen — "Manage and track all payments" — does two different jobs, and it matters which one you want.

Option one: record a payment you already received

Use this for a bank transfer, a cheque, or cash in hand. Open Create Payment, pick the Customer *, optionally attach an invoice, and enter the amount. The payment type is Credit or Debit.

One rule is enforced hard: "Paid amount cannot exceed pending balance". You cannot record more money against an invoice than that invoice is still owed.

Option two: share a payment link

Use this when the customer has not paid yet. Turn on Share a payment link — "Generate a payment link the customer can pay online" — and Clyentra creates a link the customer can pay through their browser.

• Send it by Email
• Send it by WhatsApp
• Or copy it and put it wherever you like

Payment methods at checkout

What a customer can actually pay *with* on a hosted storefront is configured per store, on the Payments tab of /settings/stores. Two methods matter for the US, Canada and Europe:

The Display Label is the wording the customer reads at checkout, so make it sound like your brand rather than like a database column. Full storefront setup is covered in hosted-storefronts.

The whole loop, on one lead: Open any lead and maximize the sidebar: the Pipeline panel lists that person's Deals, Orders, Invoices and Payments in one column. Every artifact from this article shows up there, attached to the human it belongs to. See leads-and-customers.