Importing sales invoices

Users with the Import data permission can import invoices to Scoro to:

• Update existing invoices: Use invoice import to update existing invoices on your site in bulk. To do this, you'll need to export invoices from the invoice list, modify the invoice details in the export file, and import it into Scoro.
• Import historical invoice data: While you can start using Scoro without importing any historical data, importing already issued invoices to Scoro allows you to compare your financial results to previous period(s).

This article walks you through preparing and importing the file.

1. Preparing your sales invoices import file

1.1. Downloading the invoice import example file

Before you can prepare the invoice import file, we highly recommend downloading an example import file from Scoro. There are two ways you can do it:

• From the Import data module: Go to the Import data module, then open the Invoices tab. Click the Example file (CSV) or Example file (XLS) button based on which file format you prefer.
  
• By creating a new invoice: We recommend this option, as the example import file may include several columns that aren't relevant to your business. First, create a new invoice in Scoro to understand exactly what columns need to be filled out to cover your business needs. Then, export the invoice from the invoice list.

1.2. What to know about filling out the invoice import file

Here are the key things to remember when preparing the invoice import file:

• If you want to import an invoice with all its line items, add each product/service line to a separate row on your import file.
  • Make sure that all line items are added right after each other. If another invoice row appears between line items, Scoro won't import the non-consecutive items. For example, if you add two items on rows 2 and 3 and the third item on row 5, Scoro won't add the third item to the invoice during the data import.
  • On each line, keep the general invoice information (document number, date, etc.) as–is, and change only the product/service-specific details. For example, invoice 123 contains 2 line items (2 hours of Analysis and 3 hours of Consultancy). The total sum is €100 (50*2) for Analysis and €120 (40*3) for Consultancy. 
    
• If you are interested only in the total invoice amount and the specific services sold are not important, add one row per invoice to the import file, specifying the invoice number, price, and other mandatory fields. In this case, you don't need to provide the product name, code, or group. The invoice can also be imported as shown below, where the quantity equals 1, and the unit price equals the total sum (€220) of the invoice before tax and discount:
  
• Provide only the overall invoice total in the import file without specifying the services/products sold wherever possible. Add detailed information about the individual products/services sold only if it’s really necessary to get granular reporting at the service level.
• Provide only the necessary details. Although there are many invoice fields to fill out, we recommend keeping it simple. You can always modify the imported invoices in Scoro afterward.
• Clean up your roles import file before importing it into Scoro – delete any empty rows and columns and rows you don’t need.

1.3. Filling out the import file details

Once you've downloaded the example import file, you can proceed with filling out the details on your invoice import file.

Mandatory fields on the invoice import file:

• Document number doc_no – the invoice number.
  • This field can contain only numbers. If your invoice numbers include letters or other symbols (and you need to store this information), you should add this information to the doc_description field or create a separate text-type custom field in Scoro. Then add a new column to the .xls file (for the historic invoice number), and fill out the document number column (add new numbering for invoices).  
• Date of issue doc_date and Due date doc_deadline – supported date formats are:
  • yyyy-mm-dd (recommended)
  • dd.mm.yyyy
  • dd-mm-yyyy
  • yyyy/mm/dd
  • mm/dd/yyyy
• Client payer – the company or person who pays for the invoice. If the contact already exists in Scoro, the document is automatically linked to the relevant contact. If the contact does not exist in Scoro, a new company is created during the import.
• Currency – make sure to use the correct three-letter combination (e.g. EUR, USD, GBP) when adding a currency. The list of currencies is available in Settings > Sales and finance > Currencies. Activate all in-use currencies in Scoro before importing invoices.  
• Quantity amount – the number of units sold.
• Unit price price – price per one unit without tax (and before discount).
• Tax rate code vat_code or tax rate percentage* line_vat_percent of the invoice (or individual service/product). Only one of them is needed. We advise using tax codes (you may use multiple codes for the same percentage, e.g. 0% for Tax Except, 0% for Sales Tax on Import). Make sure you have entered your tax rates to Scoro (and the tax codes in Scoro match the ones in the import file) before importing invoices. If there are several tax rates on one invoice (e.g. one product is sold with a 20% tax rate and another one with 0%), make sure to first enable line-based tax rates in Scoro. 

Other generic fields on the invoice import file that might be useful: 

• Project name – if the invoice should be linked to a project, make sure you first create/import the relevant project to Scoro. The project name in Scoro and in the invoice import file must match in order for the invoice to be linked with the correct project.
• Contact person – if you wish to define the client-side contact person for the invoice, fill out this field (add the first and last name of the contact). If this contact already exists in Scoro, the invoice is automatically linked to that person. If the contact does not exist in Scoro, a new contact is created during the import.
• Owner name – an employee at your company who is the author of the invoice. This employee must already have a user account in Scoro. Add the first and last name of the employee to the owner_name column (exactly like written on their Scoro user profile). If it's not important to specify the author, you can just ignore that column. In that case, the person doing the import is added as the author.
• Discount – the overall document discount in percentages. E.g. add the number 10 if you want to indicate that the customer got a 10% discount. Note! The discount sum is subtracted from the unit price (the calculation is made during the import in Scoro; there is no need to define the discount sum in the import file, just the percentage).
• Payment type – indicates how (the payment method) the customer paid for the invoice. Payment types are predefined in Scoro (Bank transfer, Cash, Card payment, Barter, Check, Credit), use one from the list.  
• is_sent – indicates if the invoice has been sent to the customer or not. Fill out the field with 1 if the invoice has been sent and a 0 if not. 

Detailed fields on the invoice import file to add only for invoices where you're importing all line items:

• Product group, product code, product name – if you have predefined products in Scoro and they all have unique names, you can fill out the product name field only (and delete the other two). Scoro automatically adds the product group and code to the invoice. If the products in different product groups happen to have the same name, make sure to specify the product group for all products in the file. If you haven’t predefined products in Scoro, you might want to do that first (or add products during the invoice import. See the section above for more information).
• Line comment (product or service description) –  is used to add details about a specific service.
• Unit – the unit name in the import file must match the unit name in Scoro. You can check the list of predefined units or add new units to Scoro under Settings > Sales and finance > Units.
• Accounting object – to import accounting objects, first enable them in Scoro. You can, but don’t have to predefine accounting objects in Scoro. If the accounting object does not exist in Scoro, it is automatically created during the import.
• Line discount percent – if you wish to use line-based discounts, first enable them in Scoro under Settings > Sales and finance > Discounts. If you want to indicate that the customer got a 10% discount on a particular service, add the number 10 to the line_discount_percent field. Note! The discount sum is subtracted from the unit price (the calculation is made during the import in Scoro; there is no need to define the discount sum in the import file, just the percentage).
• Line cost – use it to add the cost of the service (e.g., the buying price or internal labor cost).
• Supplier name – if the service was outsourced, you can define the supplier. If the supplier already exists in Scoro, the invoice is automatically linked to the supplier; if not, a new contact is added to Scoro during the import.
• doer_name – if the service was provided in-house, you can define the name of the employee who delivered the job. This employee must already have a Scoro user account. Add the employee's first and last name to this column exactly as written on their Scoro user profile.
• is_internal – add 1 to indicate the service was provided in-house, or 0 if it was outsourced.

2. Importing sales invoices to Scoro

Once you've prepared the import file, you can proceed with importing your sales invoices into Scoro:

1. Open the Import data module, then open the Invoices tab.
2. Click the Choose file button, select your import file, and click Proceed.
   
3. Next, map the columns in your file to fields in Scoro. If you used our example import file to prepare the data, most or all of the fields should already match.
4. Customize the additional import settings:
   • Update already existing items – enable this checkbox if your import file contains existing invoice details you want to update in Scoro. Additionally, choose whether you want to match invoices by Scoro Invoice ID or Invoice No.
   • Save matched column headers as default – enable this checkbox if you want the import file columns to be saved in the system. This will make the system automatically match the values when you import a similar file in the future.
   • Add new products – enable this checkbox if your import file contains new products or services you want to add to your Scoro product database.
     • We recommend importing/adding products and services to Scoro first, and then importing invoices. That way, you can add much more product/service information in Scoro than with the invoice import. In that case, deselect the option to add new products. Also, make sure that the product names in Scoro match the ones used in the invoice import file.
     • When enabled, if a product described in the import file is not found in Scoro, it is automatically created during the import (product name, product group, product code, and description will be added to your product database).
     • Disable this checkbox if you're importing only total invoice amounts and no line items.
       
5. When you're ready, click Import to start the invoice import.

Scoro will notify you once the invoice import is complete. Lines with errors are not imported, and you will receive an error report showing the issues, which you can download, correct in the downloaded file, and import the corrected invoices again.