Quote, Invoice, Get Paid and Stay VAT-Ready

Not Every Sale Starts with an Invoice

For quote-led businesses, create and send the quote in Big Red Cloud and turn it into an invoice when the customer gives the go-ahead. The information already captured carries forward instead of being entered again.

Where the sale happens at the till, point-of-sale systems can bring retail sales into the accounting workflow. Businesses that invoice directly can start there instead, while recurring invoices automate regular billing without recreating the same transaction every month.

Different businesses sell differently. The useful automation is simple: if Big Red Cloud already knows something about the sale, you should not have to tell it again.

RED, our smart assistant, provides another route into the same workflow. You can use Claude, ChatGPT or Mistral to find customers and sales information and carry out your tasks in Big Red Cloud with your control.

Getting Paid Starts with How You Set Up the Customer

The best credit-control task may be the one you never have to do.

Payment terms and due dates can be agreed and recorded from the beginning of the customer relationship. And where appropriate, the way the customer will pay can be established before the first invoice ever becomes overdue.

• With GoCardless, eligible customers can provide a Direct Debit mandate so invoices can be collected without waiting for someone to remember to make a payment.
• With Square, customers can pay an emailed invoice from a payment link or scan a QR code on a printed invoice.
• For recurring customers, combine scheduled invoicing with an agreed collection method and much of the traditional invoice → wait → chase routine can disappear.
• For everyone else, Big Red Cloud keeps outstanding invoices, aged debtors and customer statements visible so attention can be focused on the customers who actually need it.

RED can help here too: ask about customers, invoices and outstanding sales rather than working through reports simply to find the information you need.

VAT Starts Long Before the Return Is Due

VAT can feel like a separate job that appears every couple of months. On the sales side, much of the work should already have happened by then.

Each correctly recorded sale captures information that matters later: what was sold, when, for how much and with what VAT treatment. Whether the transaction began with a quote, at the till or as a recurring invoice, that information can flow into the accounting records as part of the normal sales process.

So the sales side of the journey becomes:

Quote, POS or recurring sale → Invoice or sales transaction → Get paid → Record the receipt → Accounts → VAT

By the time the return is being prepared, you should not be rebuilding your sales history from bank statements and spreadsheets.

Irish VAT gets more complicated than the basic sales journey, of course. Our VAT and Irish accounting workflow goes deeper into the treatments, exceptions and Revenue requirements that arise when preparing the return.

Automate the Routine. Keep Control of the Exceptions.

The aim is not automation for its own sake.

A quote can become an invoice because the information already exists. Regular invoices can recur automatically. Direct Debit can remove the need to chase suitable customers. POS can bring sales information into the accounts without re-keying it. Correct VAT treatment at the point of sale means less work when the return is due.

Those are predictable parts of the workflow.

When something is less predictable: an overdue customer, a transaction you need to find, a mistake that needs investigating or a supported task that needs carrying out; RED gives you another way to work with the live information in Big Red Cloud.

The routine work should become easier. You should still remain in control.

And You Don’t Have to Do It by Yourself

Big Red Cloud customers can join our live Sales, Cash Book & Bank Reconciliation onboarding session with the Customer Success team to see how the whole sales journey fits together.

When you need a specific answer afterwards, the Knowledge Base provides step-by-step guidance. Your accountant can work from the same live books. And RED gives you another way to understand and work with the information already in your accounts.

From making the sale to getting paid and keeping the books right, help is there when you need it.