Following the money

The five states

• Draft — not sent, not visible to the customer, still editable.
• Issued — sent, and owed.
• Paid — settled. Nothing further to do.
• Overdue — still owed, and late enough that somebody marked it so.
• Void — written off. Nobody is going to pay this, and nothing is owed.

Draft, issued and paid are a sequence. Overdue and void are two different things that happen to an invoice sitting at the issued step — one still needs chasing, the other is over. That distinction is why they are not the same badge in a different colour.

"Late" is not the same as "Overdue"

Overdue is a button somebody presses. Nothing moves an invoice there on its own. So an invoice that was issued, fell due three weeks ago and has been sitting quietly while everyone was busy still reads as Issued — and it is exactly the invoice you need to see.

Which is why everything in Shipina that asks "is this late" asks the calendar, not the status column. The due date on a list, the aging report, the dashboard's outstanding figures: all of them count days past the due date, so an invoice cannot hide from them by never having been marked.

The aging report

Outstanding invoices — issued and overdue, the two states that still carry a balance — are bucketed by how far past due they are:

Current · 1–30 days · 31–60 · 61–90 · 90+

— open the full-size screenshot

Read it right to left, so to speak: the 90+ bucket is the one that costs you money, and it is the shortest conversation to have while it is still in 31–60.

Marking one paid

When payment lands, mark the invoice paid. Shipina does not connect to your bank and does not take payments — it records what you tell it, the same as the milestones on a shipment.

What the customer sees

Your customers read their own invoices in their portal, with the same stepper you see, worded from their side: where you read "waiting on payment" they read "payment is due". Shipina does not email them when an invoice is issued or when it goes overdue — it puts a notification in their portal instead, and that is the whole of it. Chasing a customer is a conversation, and it belongs to you rather than to an automated reminder from software they did not choose.