An invoice in Lightspeed eCom (E-Series) is a summary of order details that confirms a successful online order placement. You can keep invoices for your records or use them as packing slips to ensure that all ordered products are inside a box before it's shipped out. You can also include printed invoices in shipments or save them as PDF and resend to your customers if needed. 

Both you and your customers can print out an invoice for each order. 

You can add a logo, a tax ID, a footer message, or extra business information to your invoice or set a custom invoice file name. You can also additionally customize the invoice template so that it meets your specific business needs.

Introducing the default eCom invoice template

The default invoice template used in eCom is designed to be universal and fit any business. It contains the following information: your company name and address (taken from your store profile), the buyer’s name and ship-to address, the payment method and shipping method they’ve chosen for their order, information about the ordered products, and an itemized order total.

The default invoice can differ slightly for merchants from different countries. To preview an invoice that is generated in your store, go to Settings > Invoice (or Settings > Printable Order in some regions) in your eCom Admin Panel.

You can use the built-in options to add a store logo, include your company’s tax registration ID, provide additional business details, or add a footer message to your default invoice. If you need to make more changes, you can customize the invoice template so that it fits your specific business needs.

Printing invoices

Your customers can view and print invoices for their orders from several places:

• They can generate an invoice by clicking the Print order link in the “Thank you for your order!” page that they see after placing an order.
• They can print an invoice for any order from their order history after they log into their customer account in your online store.
• Customers can also receive invoices as attachments to the Order confirmation emails. To send invoices with your order confirmations, go to the Online tab > Webstore > Notifications in Retail POS (X-Series) and enable the Attach invoices to Order confirmation email setting.

You can view invoices for any order in the My Sales > Orders section in your eCom Admin Panel. You can save them as PDF files or print the invoices for your records or to include in your shipments.

You can quickly find an order by scanning its barcode on a printed invoice with the help of the Lightspeed eCom (E-Series) mobile app. Mobile barcode scanner is available both on Android and on iOS.

If you want to print multiple invoices at once:

1. Navigate to your eCom Admin Panel.
2. From the side menu, go to My Sales > Orders.
3. Select orders by placing a check mark next to them.

4. Choose Print Selected from the Mass update dropdown:

   

Adding a logo to the invoice

You can add your company's logo to the invoices. Adding a logo helps personalize your invoices and can be a part of your brand-building. The recommended size of a logo image is 240 x 100 px.

To add a logo to the invoice template:

1. Navigate to your eCom Admin Panel.
2. From the side menu, go to Settings > Invoice (or Settings > Printable Order in some regions).
3. Click Upload Invoice Logo and choose the image file from your device.

The changes will be autosaved.

The logo will be displayed in the top left corner of your invoice. You can check the result on the preview.

If you do not have a logo added to your mail notifications, it will automatically appear there, too, once you have added the logo to the invoice.

If you want to upload a different image, click Change Invoice Logo and choose another image from your device. To delete the image from your invoice template, click on the basket icon in the Logo section.

Adding your tax registration number to the invoice

In some countries, merchants who charge taxes need to show their tax identification number on the invoices. For example, the UK requires VAT Reg No, Italy requires P.IVA, and Australia requires ABN.

To add the taxpayer identification number to the invoice template:

1. Navigate to your eCom Admin Panel.
2. From the side menu, go to Settings > Invoice (or Settings > Printable Order in some regions).

3. Enter the taxpayer identification number into the field:

   

4. Save the changes.

If you add a tax ID to your invoice, it will also be automatically added to your eCom tax invoice (if tax invoices are available in your country).

Lightspeed automatically detects your country and will set the appropriate tax ID name (VAT Reg No, ABN, etc.). If you need another name for your tax ID, click on the Edit name link and enter another display name.

Once added, your tax registration number will appear on all invoices in the header:

The taxpayer registration number will also be included in the footer of all email notifications sent to your customers. If you wish to adjust the placement of the taxpayer identification number in an email notification, you can edit the template for that notification.

Providing additional business details

You can add extra information about your company to the invoice header. This can be the information that is required in your country by law or any other details (e.g., bank account details or additional contacts).

To add information to the invoice header:

1. Navigate to your eCom Admin Panel.
2. From the side menu, go to Settings > Invoice (or Settings > Printable Order in some regions).
3. Enter the information into the Business details field.
4. Save the changes.

You can check the result on the preview.

Adding a footer message

You can also add a message to the invoice footer. This can be notes for customers or a special “Thank you” message.

To add information to the invoice footer:

1. Navigate to your eCom Admin Panel.
2. From the side menu, go to Settings > Invoice (or Settings > Printable Order in some regions).
3. Enter the information into the Footer message field.
4. Save the changes.

The text will appear under the barcode in your invoice. You can check the result on the preview.

Setting a custom invoice file name

You can set a custom name format for invoice PDFs generated in your store. For example, if the default file name does not fit your workflow or you want to add details like a store name to it.

To set a custom invoice file name:

1. Navigate to your eCom Admin Panel.
2. From the side menu, go to Settings > Invoice (or Settings > Printable Order in some regions).
3. Scroll down to Custom invoice file name and click Customize File Name.
4. Make changes in the File name‍ field. You can use Ecwid eCom (Ecwid) variables here.
5. Click Save.

That’s it. All the new invoice PDF files generated in your online store will be named according to the format you set.

Editing the invoice template

Advanced users can edit the template of the invoice used in their online store.

The invoice template in eCom contains:

• eCom (Ecwid) variables to refer to the store or buyer information (invoice templates use the same collection of variables as email notifications).
• Freemarker tags to replace variables with actual values and for their conditional rendering.
• CSS and HTML to define the structure and look of the invoice.

You can add standard HTML tags and special regular expressions to transfer order details to the invoice. You can include or remove the variables in these expressions, change their positions, or make a custom invoice that will precisely suit your needs.

To customize the invoice:

1. Navigate to your eCom Admin Panel.
2. From the side menu, go to Settings > Invoice (or Settings > Printable Order in some regions).
3. Click Edit template.
4. Make the desired changes in the template.
5. Before saving any changes, click the Preview link at the top to see how the invoice will look like.

6. If you don’t like the result, click the Revert to default link at the bottom of the template to restore the default invoice template.

   If you are making changes to a template that you previously customized and saved, the “Revert to default” option won’t work for you as it will revert to the original default template. To back up your template, copy the invoice template and save it as a text file on your computer. If something goes wrong, you can paste the code from the file back to the template.

7. When you are satisfied with the result, click Save.

Here are a few examples of small invoice customizations:

Example 1. Adding text to the invoice footer

If you want to add some message to the invoice, you can append it to the “Thank you for your order!” text. For example:

For this, open the invoice template for editing, scroll to its bottom, and add your message as plain text after the variable ${textLabels.footerMessage} in the Invoice footer block:

You can also change the default footer message from "Thank you for your order!" to your own text by replacing the variable ${textLabels.footerMessage} with the desired wording in the template.

Example 2. Removing barcode from invoice

To remove the order barcode from your invoices, delete these lines from the bottom of your invoice template:

Translating invoices into other languages

A number of special variables are used to display general text labels in the invoice, like Order, Buyer, Thank you for your order!, etc. Here is the list of variables from the invoice template and the actual text that appears in place of these variables in invoices (English version):

Variable — Text label

${textLabels.order} — Order
${textLabels.orderComments} — Order comments
${textLabels.sku} — SKU
${textLabels.footerMessage} — Thank you for your order!
${textLabels.customerService} — Customer service
${textLabels.phone} — Phone
${textLabels.shippingMethod} — Shipping method
${textLabels.paymentMethod} — Payment method
${textLabels.discountCoupon} — Discount coupon
${textLabels.items} — Items
${textLabels.shipping} — Shipping
${textLabels.total} — Total
${textLabels.shipTo} — Ship to
${textLabels.buyer} — Buyer
${textLabels.pickupMethod} — Pickup Method
${textLabels.taxId} — Tax ID
${textLabels.taxFreeBusiness} — Tax-Exempt Customer

These variables are automatically translated into your customer's language if you offer your store in that language and if a translation of a text label exists in eCom. Otherwise, the label appears in English.

If eCom doesn’t yet have a translation of invoice labels into the language you need, you can replace the corresponding variables in the invoice template with your preferred text as a temporary solution. This text will appear on invoices for all customers regardless of their browser language.

For example, to add a translation of the “Thank you for your order!” message in the invoice, you can find the ${textLabels.footerMessage} variable in the HTML template of the invoice and replace it with your translation:

The remaining content of your invoice is retrieved from the order details. You can translate your catalog into the desired languages, so that information about products appears in that language in the invoice, too.

Using third-party tools to create invoices in eCom

If you want to use a third-party system to create invoices, you can do it via apps from the Lightspeed eCom App Market. It offers several tools to help you customize invoices:

• PrintFantastic: Print Great Looking Invoices provides pre-made templates and customization options for invoices, packing slips, and shipping labels. You can batch print invoices, email them, or download as a PDF.
• Printout Designer: Create Invoices, Packing Slips and Labels helps create great-looking invoices, sales receipts, gift receipts, and packing lists. While the layout of each print is static, you can edit captions and messages with different language defaults and remove unnecessary items from the templates.