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Invoices

Video walkthrough: Watch on Loom (link coming soon)
Invoices is where you create and track all payments for your program — deposits, puppy purchase prices, co-own fees, and anything else you bill a buyer for. You can accept payments online through the Buyer Portal or record manual payments you’ve collected another way.

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What You Can Do Here

  • Create invoices for buyers with line items, amounts, and tax
  • Email invoices to buyers with a link to pay online
  • Take a card payment in person from the invoice page
  • Record manual payments (cash, check, Venmo, etc.) on any invoice
  • Track payment status across all invoices — paid, unpaid, partially paid, or processing
  • Download any invoice as a PDF, and log refunds once an invoice is paid
  • Link invoices to specific dogs and contacts
  • Search and filter invoices by status, buyer, or date

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How It Works

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Creating an Invoice

  1. In the left menu, open Finances and click Invoices.
  2. Click Create New Invoice at the top right.
  3. Under Invoice Recipients, choose the buyer in Contact. Optionally pick the dog this invoice is for.
  4. Under Invoice Details, enter an Invoice Title, an optional Due Date, and the Invoice Type (General, Deposit, Training, or Other). Leave Online payments on if you want the buyer to be able to pay online.
  5. Under Line Items, add each charge. Pick a saved product or type a one-off item with its amount. Check Taxable on any line that should have sales tax.
  6. Check the Summary at the bottom, then click Save.
  7. BreederBuddy asks Send invoice to customer? Click Send email to email the buyer the invoice with a payment link now, or Not now to send it later with Resend Email.
If you linked a dog, BreederBuddy may also ask two quick questions:
  • Set Owner? If the buyer isn’t the dog’s owner yet, click Yes, Update Owner to make them the owner, or No to leave it.
  • Update puppy market status? It offers to set the dog’s Market Status to Reserved (and its sale price) to match the sale. Click Update & continue, or Skip for now.
Say No and Skip for now when the invoice isn’t a sale of that dog, like a stud fee invoice to a female’s owner: your stud stays yours and keeps his status.

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Payment Statuses

On the Invoices list you can filter by:
  • Unpaid — no payment received yet
  • Partially paid — the buyer has paid some but not the full amount
  • Processing — an online payment (for example an ACH bank transfer) has been submitted and is still clearing
  • Paid — payment has been received and confirmed
On an open invoice, an invoice that isn’t paid yet shows as Pending. Next to the status you’ll also see whether the invoice email was delivered.

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Editing an Invoice (Changing Amounts, Line Items, Due Date)

Need to change a deposit from $300 to $500, fix a typo, or adjust the due date? Open the invoice from the Invoices list — the detail page is the editor:
  1. Go to Finances → Invoices in the left menu and click the invoice’s title.
  2. Under Line Items, click the pencil icon on a line to change its name, amount, or quantity — or delete it with the trash icon and use Add another item for a replacement.
  3. You can also change the Invoice Title, Due Date, and Invoice Type (switching a General invoice to Deposit is how you reclassify it after the fact).
  4. Hit Save.
Two things are locked: the contact can’t be changed once an invoice is created (make a new invoice instead), and a paid invoice’s line items can’t be edited anymore. For a waitlist deposit, the default amount comes from the waitlist’s Deposit Amount setting — but the generated invoice itself is edited here like any other.

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Taking a Deposit, Then Billing the Balance

Most breeders invoice a deposit first and the rest of the price later. BreederBuddy subtracts the paid deposit from the final invoice for you:
  1. Send the deposit as its own invoice with Invoice Type set to Deposit (waitlist deposits are already set up this way).
  2. When it’s time for the balance, click Create New Invoice and choose the same buyer under Contact.
  3. Add the full puppy price under Line Items.
  4. Below the line items, look for the yellow Deposit credit available box. It shows how much this buyer has paid on deposit invoices. Click Apply deposit.
  5. BreederBuddy ticks Apply discount, fills in Discount amount, and sets the reason to “Deposit credit applied”. Check the Summary: the total now shows only what’s still owed.
  6. Click Save.
The suggestion adds up every paid deposit invoice for that buyer. If they’ve bought more than one puppy from you, change the Discount amount to the deposit for this puppy only. You can also use Apply discount on its own for any other credit, like a returning-family discount.

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Seeing One Buyer’s Full Payment History

Open the buyer under Contacts and go to their Invoices tab (under Financial & Contracts). Every invoice for that contact is there with its status, amounts paid, manual payments, and balance remaining — that’s their complete payment history in one view.

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Taking a Card Payment in Person

If a buyer is standing in front of you at pickup and wants to pay by card:
  1. Open the invoice.
  2. Click Take card payment (top right, in the actions bar).
  3. A secure card checkout opens in a new tab. Hand over your phone or type in the buyer’s card.
You need Stripe connected for this, and the contact needs an email address. The button is greyed out while another payment on that invoice is still processing.

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Recording a Manual Payment

If a buyer pays you outside of BreederBuddy (cash, check, Zelle, Venmo), you can log the payment manually:
  1. Open the invoice.
  2. Click Log Manual Payment and enter the Amount Paid, Payment Method, and Payment Date.
  3. Leave Email a receipt to the customer checked to send them a receipt right away.
  4. Hit Save. The balance updates, and once the full amount is covered the invoice shows as Paid.

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Emailing a Receipt

Online payments send a receipt on their own. For a payment you logged yourself, or any time a buyer asks for another copy, send one from the invoice:
  1. Go to Finances → Invoices in the left menu and open the invoice.
  2. Click Email Receipt in the actions bar at the top. The button appears as soon as any money has been received.
  3. The buyer gets your branded receipt showing the amount received, the date, how they paid, and any balance still owed.
To send a receipt for one specific payment instead of the whole invoice, find it under Manual Payments & Receipts and click the receipt icon on that row. You can send a receipt as many times as a buyer needs one.

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Recording a Refund

Once an invoice is paid, open it, click Log Manual Payment, and use Manage refunds to log a refund you gave back (by check, cash, etc.) with the amount, method, and date. The invoice then shows a Refunded badge, and the refund counts in your income reporting.

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Key Terms

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Tips & Common Questions

Yes — once Stripe is connected, buyers can pay online using a credit or debit card, and you can also accept ACH bank transfers, Cash App Pay, and buy-now-pay-later options like Klarna, Affirm, and Afterpay. Payments are deposited to your bank account. Choose which methods you accept in Settings → Stripe under Accepted Payment Methods. See Payments Setup.
Yes. First save your Sales Tax Rate in Settings → Stripe. Then check Taxable on each line item that should be taxed. To remove tax from a whole invoice, turn off Charge sales tax in the Summary section.
BreederBuddy doesn’t number invoices. Each one is identified by its Invoice Title, buyer, and date, so if you need a number for your records, put it in the title (for example “INV-1042 Puppy balance”). Invoices are never emailed on their own: BreederBuddy asks Send invoice to customer? when you save, and you choose Send email or Not now. Waitlist deposits work the same way, with the Send Deposit Request? question.
Yes. Save the invoice and click Not now when BreederBuddy asks Send invoice to customer? It’s saved on the buyer’s record and in your Invoices list. Send it later with Resend Email on the invoice. You can also log payments on it without ever emailing it.
Open the invoice, click Log Manual Payment, and set Payment Date to the day you actually got the money. Untick Email a receipt to the customer so the buyer doesn’t get an email about an old payment. Your income reports count the payment on the date you entered, not the day you typed it in.
Open the invoice and scroll to Manual Payments & Receipts. Click the trash icon (Remove manual payment) on the extra one. The balance and status update right away. A duplicate online payment can’t be removed this way; refund it from your Stripe dashboard (see Payments & Payouts).
If the buyer is getting money back, open the paid invoice, click Log Manual Payment, and use Manage refunds to record the amount, method, and date. Tick Unlink dog from this invoice if the puppy is coming back to you so it no longer counts as sold. Refund card payments in Stripe too. If instead they’re putting the money toward another puppy, create the new invoice and use Apply discount for the amount you’re crediting.
No. A fully paid invoice is locked and can’t be edited, including the puppy. You can change the puppy on an invoice that isn’t paid yet: open it, edit the dog box under Invoice Recipients, and click Save. To show who owns which puppy, set the buyer as the Owner on the new puppy’s profile. If a paid invoice really needs correcting, message us in the chat.
Card readers aren’t connected to BreederBuddy. Open the invoice, click Log Manual Payment, choose Other as the Payment Method, and add a note like “Card reader”. If you’d rather take the card inside BreederBuddy so the invoice updates on its own, use Take card payment on the invoice instead.
Use Other Income under Finances in the left menu for money that isn’t a buyer invoice, like a stud fee you were paid in cash. If a buyer paid you for a puppy, it’s still best to create an invoice and click Not now when asked to send it, then log the payment on it, so it shows on their record.
Products are items you sell often, like a puppy package or a training add-on. Save them once on the Products page and pick them as invoice line items instead of typing the name and price each time.
Your kennel name and profile picture appear on every invoice, and the button colors in invoice emails come from Settings → Branding & Colors. To add your own note to the invoice email, edit General Payment Invoice under Communications → Templates. The currency for new invoices and deposits is set under Preferred Currency in Settings → Preferences.
BreederBuddy tracks partial payments. You can record each payment as it comes in and the invoice status will reflect the balance remaining.
Open the invoice and look next to Invoice Status: it shows whether the email was delivered, bounced, or marked as spam. Check the email address on the contact (a bounce usually means a typo), fix it if needed, then click Resend Email. Ask the buyer to check their spam folder too. You can see every email BreederBuddy has sent under Communications → Activity.
After you send an invoice email, the button stays greyed out until you refresh the page, so a buyer doesn’t get duplicates. A fully paid invoice can’t be resent at all, because there’s nothing left to pay. Use Email Receipt instead. If the buyer’s address is rejecting mail, BreederBuddy tells you so: correct the email on their contact, then send again.
Open the invoice and click Email Receipt at the top. It shows up as soon as any payment has been received, whether they paid online or you logged the payment yourself. The receipt lists the amount received, the date, the payment method, and any balance still owed. You can also send a receipt for one specific payment from the receipt icon next to it under Manual Payments & Receipts. If you’d rather attach something to your own email, Print / Export downloads the invoice as a PDF.

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Still Have Questions?

We’re here to help. If something isn’t working the way you expect, or you’d like to have a discussion around a certain topic, please reach out to us anytime through the chat in the bottom right corner of your screen. Thank you.