Invoicing each other

Draft, issue, get paid off-platform, mark paid — the VAT treatment the issuing side has to declare first, and what happens to an invoice after a buyer is refunded.

Commission and fulfilment fee both settle the same way — the only difference is which side is owed, and so which side issues the invoice. A school bills a teacher for commission; a teacher bills a school for a fulfilment fee. In either direction, the steps are the same:

  1. Draw a draft. Pick a period, and the draft totals whatever accrued in it. A draft is private to the side that drew it — the other party cannot see it, and it can still be edited or thrown away. The first time, this is also where you find out whether you have declared a VAT treatment yet: without one, it refuses.
  2. Issue it. This is the point of no return: an issued invoice gets a permanent number and can no longer be edited or deleted. Only then does the other side see it.
  3. Get paid, off-platform, exactly as agreed between you — bank transfer is typical. Once the money has arrived, whoever issued the invoice marks it paid. The platform is recording that this happened, not making it happen.

Before you can draw the first one

Drawing an invoice refuses outright until the side that issues it has declared how VAT applies to the documents it issues. The refusal says so: "Declare how VAT applies to the documents you issue before drawing an invoice."

Nothing is wrong with the money when this happens — what accrued is still recorded and still owed. What is missing is a decision only you can make. Every invoice prints a tax position whether or not anyone thought about it, and a document asserting a position nobody chose would be worse than no document at all, so the platform refuses rather than guess.

Whoever issues is who must have declared — and the two arrangements point in opposite directions:

  • Under commission, the school issues, because it is billing the teacher. So the school is the side that must have declared.
  • Under a fulfilment fee, the teacher issues, because the teacher is billing the school for delivered work. So the teacher is the side that must have declared.

The other party's declaration covers the other party's own documents and says nothing about this one. A school can therefore have declared everything correctly and still see nothing arrive, because the teacher who has to raise the fulfilment invoice has not declared — and that is fixed on the teacher's side, not the school's.

To set it, open the workspace's Edit page and find Invoices to your buyers. Pick a value under How VAT applies to your sales and save; the date you declared it is then shown beside the field. That section is worded around sales to buyers because that is the other thing it governs — it is one declaration, and it covers the school-and-teacher invoices in this article too.

The four treatments, and what each one states

Each option is a statement printed on the document, not a formatting preference:

  • VAT charged on the amount — the document charges VAT.
  • Reverse charge — the buyer accounts for VAT — the document charges no VAT, and states that the recipient accounts for it instead.
  • Exempt, or I am not registered for VAT — the document states that whoever issued it does not charge VAT on this.
  • No VAT applies to these sales — the document states that VAT does not apply at all.

That last one is a positive claim, not a blank and not a safe default. The option that means "I have not answered" is the separate one labelled Not declared, and for as long as it is selected, nothing is issued.

The platform never calculates tax and never picks a treatment for you. It prints what you declared, as you declared it. Which one is correct depends on how you are registered and on what you are billing for, and it can easily differ between the two of you. Ask your accountant which applies to you specifically, before you draw the first invoice rather than after — the same advice as the fiscal-receipt question, for the same reason.

If a buyer is refunded afterwards

If a buyer is refunded after an invoice covering their sale was already issued, that invoice does not get silently corrected — a credit note against it is drawn and issued the same way, so both parties keep a record that actually matches what happened, in order, rather than a total that quietly changed underneath them.