Know the Moment Someone Opens Your Invoice
Send an invoice by email and it usually disappears into a void. Did it arrive? Did they open it? Are they ignoring it, or just busy? Most people end up sending an awkward “just checking you got this” message a week later. Billify’s invoicing is built to close that gap — here’s exactly what happens from the moment you hit send.
Quick take
- Every invoice moves through Draft → Sent → Viewed → Confirm payment → Paid on its own — none of it is a status you set by hand.
- A read receipt tells you the second your client opens the invoice. No guessing.
- Clients can say “I’ve paid this” from a public page with no login — you still get the final say before it’s marked Paid.
- After 7 days with no response, the button quietly switches from Send to Send reminder.
The problem most invoicing tools ignore
The invoice itself is rarely the hard part. It’s everything after: not knowing if it landed, not knowing if it was opened, and not wanting to sound pushy by asking. That uncertainty is what makes chasing payment feel worse than it needs to.
Billify’s answer is to make the invoice report on itself, so you’re reacting to real events — opened, paid, ignored for a week — instead of guessing.
Send it, and the tracking starts itself
Build the invoice — line items, tax, a theme and logo if you want it branded — and send it straight from Billify by email. That single action stamps a sent time and generates a private, no-login link your client can open from that email.
There’s no separate “mark as sent” step, and no manual status to toggle. The moment the email goes out, the invoice already knows it’s been sent.
The read receipt: Viewed means viewed
The first time your client opens that link, Billify stamps the exact moment and the status flips to Viewed — automatically, on your side, without them doing anything but opening an email. You’re not inferring anything from silence; you know.
It’s a small thing, but it changes how chasing feels. “They haven’t even opened it” and “they’ve had it open for four days” are very different situations, and now you can tell which one you’re in.
How “Paid” actually gets marked
On the public invoice page, your client can flag “I’ve paid this” — no account needed. That doesn’t mark the invoice paid by itself; it flips the status to Confirm payment and puts a prompt in front of you the next time you open it, so you can check your bank and confirm.
You can also mark an invoice paid yourself at any point — for instance if payment arrived by bank transfer and the client never used the page at all. Either route runs through the same final step, and once it’s confirmed, the invoice can be added straight to your income with one tap.
This is a deliberate design choice: nothing is ever marked Paid without you saying so. A client claiming payment is a prompt, not an override.
The reminder that shows up when it’s actually needed
Right after you send an invoice, the send button simply disappears for 7 days — there’s nothing to re-send, because it’s already out. Once that week passes without it being paid, the same button reappears as Send reminder, and sending one resets the 7-day clock again.
It’s a gentle nudge email, not a re-send of the whole invoice, and it references how long it’s actually been outstanding. If the due date passes before any of that, an Overdue badge sits alongside whatever status the invoice is already in.
Built for a small business, not an accounts department
Invoicing lives on Pro Business, alongside up to five separate business ledgers, so what you’re owed never gets mixed into personal bills. The client never needs an account, a login, or an app of their own — just the link in their inbox.
If you want the fuller checklist for getting invoices paid on time in general — due dates, payment terms, numbering — that’s covered in a companion guide. This one’s specifically about what happens automatically once you hit send.
See it working in your own numbers.
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