"Can I get an invoice for that?" is a question most service businesses hear eventually, and it's worth knowing the answer before the first time someone asks -- because a receipt and an invoice aren't interchangeable, even though they often get used as if they were.
A receipt proves payment happened. An invoice is a request or record of a charge.
A receipt is backward-looking: it confirms a specific payment was made, for how much, and when. An invoice is a bit broader -- it's a formal record of what was charged for, often used by a client's own business to log an expense properly (reclaiming VAT, filing it under the right expense category, or simply satisfying their own bookkeeping requirements). Most individual clients only ever want a receipt; clients booking on behalf of a business, or paying for something they'll expense, usually want an invoice specifically, because "I paid you" and "here's a properly formatted record of what I bought" serve different purposes for them.
In ScheduloApp, both are generated automatically per appointment and available from the appointment itself -- there's no manual document-creation step, and no separate request process to fulfil on your end beyond pointing a client to the right button.
Why your tax number field matters even if you're not VAT-registered
The business tax rate and tax number fields (Settings > Business) exist specifically so an invoice is actually usable by a client who needs one for their own records -- an invoice without a tax number on it is often not accepted by another business's accounts department, even if everything else about it is correct. If you're not VAT-registered or don't have a tax number yet, that's completely fine and common for smaller businesses -- the field is simply left blank, and invoices generate without it, which is the correct and expected state until you do register.
The mistake worth avoiding is having a real tax number and not entering it -- every invoice generated in that gap is missing information a client-side business might specifically need, and it's a five-minute fix once noticed.
Who actually needs to see these, and when
In practice, this mostly comes up for two kinds of clients, and recognizing which one you're dealing with saves a back-and-forth:
- A consultant, contractor, or anyone expensing the booking through their own business will often ask for an invoice specifically, sometimes before they've even paid, since they may need it for an approval process on their end.
- Everyone else is usually satisfied with a receipt, or doesn't ask for any document at all unless something about the payment needs confirming later (a dispute, a lost card statement entry, etc.).
If a client asks for "an invoice" but what they actually need is just proof of payment, the receipt covers that too -- it's worth asking what they specifically need it for if you're unsure which document actually answers their question, rather than assuming.
The one-time setup that avoids repeat requests
Getting your business's tax rate and tax number entered correctly once (if you have one) means every invoice generated from that point on is already complete -- nobody has to come back and ask you to regenerate or manually add missing details to a document that should have had them from the start. It's a small thing to get right early, and a slightly awkward thing to fix retroactively once a client has already flagged it as incomplete.