Raising an invoice
An invoice is built from the booking's sell prices, plus whatever came up along the way.
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Start from the booking
An invoice is raised against a booking, and it prices itself: every container line comes across at its sell price, which is the price the customer agreed to on the quote. You do not retype it and you cannot edit it on the invoice, because an invoice that disagrees with the booking is the beginning of an argument.
If you need to change what is charged for the containers, change it on the booking. The invoice follows, even once it has been issued or paid: a new sell price, count or container type re-prices every invoice on the booking and regenerates its PDF. You are asked to confirm first when a sent invoice would change.
Extra costs
Almost nothing ships for exactly the quoted price. Demurrage, storage, a customs inspection, an amendment fee — these go on as extra costs, each a description and an amount:
Write the description the way you would explain it on the phone. It is what the customer reads, it goes onto the PDF, and "Detention 4 days, Bandar Abbas" settles a question that "Extra charge" starts.
An extra cost can be in a different currency from the booking. Shipina will not quietly convert it — there is no exchange rate it could use that you would trust — so a cost in another currency is totalled separately and shown on its own line:
Letting the customer pay in AED
A customer who settles in dirhams needs the amount they transfer, in dirhams. On a booking priced in USD, tick Customer pays in AED — the last step of the form — and the invoice states an amount due in AED: the USD total, containers and extra costs alike, converted at your rate. It appears in the app, in the customer's portal, and on the generated PDF, with the USD total beside it — the customer can still pay that instead.
The rate opens at USD 1 = AED 3.685 and you can change it to whatever you have agreed. There is one thing worth knowing about it: the rate you use is saved onto that invoice. Changing it next month changes the next invoice and none of the ones already sent, which is the only way a figure a customer has already been given can stay true.
This is the single exception to the rule above, and it is deliberately narrow. Only dollars are converted — an extra cost in euros or any other currency is still totalled on its own line — and it is not offered on a booking priced in euros or rials, because 3.685 is a dollar rate and Shipina has no others.
Invoices issued before AED became the amount due state only their containers in AED, and keep doing so. A draft moves to the new amount when you next save it.
Draft first
A new invoice is a Draft. Nothing has been sent, the customer cannot see it, and you can change anything on it. This is the moment to check the extra costs against what actually happened on the shipment.
Issuing it
Issuing sets the invoice number and the due date, and makes the invoice visible to the customer in their portal — with a notification there telling them it is ready and when it is due. From then on the charges are fixed.
Invoice numbers run in their own sequence, separate from your booking references.
Invoicing is a plan feature. On a plan without it, the Invoices section is not available; quoting, booking and shipment tracking all still work.
Your own payment terms
Whatever you put in your invoice terms under Settings is appended to every generated invoice PDF — bank details, payment window, the sentence your accountant insists on. Write it in Persian if that is the language your invoices are read in; it is set as its own paragraph and will run right to left properly.