Invoices in PRO-dela: Issuing, Line Items, and Payment Statuses by Project

When an agency or contractor finishes a stage of work, sooner or later the same question arises: how to issue an invoice to the client without switching to a separate accounting program and without manually assembling line items in a spreadsheet. In PRO-dela, there is an invoice module for this: a document with a number, line items, and payment status that can be linked to a project, assembled from already completed tasks or from a ready-made act — and not lose it among correspondence.

This article explains how an invoice works in PRO-dela: what it consists of, the three ways to build it, what the statuses “Draft”, “Issued”, “Paid”, and “Cancelled” mean, who has the right to change them, and also — separately and in detail — what an invoice in PRO-dela can and cannot do. It is important to say right away: an invoice to the client and payment of the platform tariff are two different money flows, and this article only covers the former.

An invoice is a document for your client, not a payment for the PRO-dela tariff

PRO-dela already has a separate money flow — payment of the company tariff: a one-time payment, payment by bank details, or a subscription with auto-debit through the TBank provider, detailed in the article “Company in PRO-dela: tariff and billing”. Invoices have nothing to do with this flow.

An invoice in PRO-dela is a document that your company or you personally issue to your client for the work done on a project: with a number, line items, amount, and payment status. The platform is not embedded between you and your client as a payment intermediary — it stores the document itself, calculates the amount by line items, and allows you to manually change the status as money actually arrives in your account outside PRO-dela. This is detailed below, but the short version is: tariff payment is what you pay PRO-dela for using the platform; an invoice is what your client must pay you, and these are two independent stories between which the platform does not transfer any money.

What an invoice consists of: recipient, payer, client, and details

Each invoice has an automatically assigned number in the format “INV-2026-000001” and several roles around it. The payment recipient by default is the one who created the invoice, but it can be specified separately. Another PRO-dela user can be assigned as the payer — for example, the project manager on the client's side, if they also work in the system.

Separately, you can insert a client card into the invoice — saved details of the company or person to whom you are issuing the invoice, even if they have no account in PRO-dela at all: full name, INN and KPP, OGRN, legal and actual address, bank, BIK, settlement and correspondent accounts, contact person. The card supports four types of counterparty — individual, self-employed, sole proprietor, and company — and is created once in the profile so you don't have to enter the same details into every new invoice. The same is provided for your own recipient details — that is, your bank details to which the client should transfer payment.

An important detail: at the moment of issuing the invoice, the client data and details are saved as a snapshot in that invoice. If you later change or delete the client card, the already issued invoice will not change retroactively — it will show the data that was relevant at the time of issue. The invoice currency is currently only rubles; settlements in other currencies are not yet supported.

Invoice line items: how the amount is calculated

An invoice consists of line items — line-by-line names of works or goods with quantity, unit price, unit of measurement, and VAT rate. The amount for each line item and the invoice total are recalculated automatically by the platform with any change: you add a line item, adjust the price or quantity — the invoice amount updates itself; it is never set manually separately from the line items.

Rounding of money and quantities here is not left to the browser: PRO-dela calculates amounts through a separate internal mechanism that works with kopecks as integers rather than floating-point numbers — this protects against the typical problem where the sum of line items “drifts” by a kopeck due to floating-point arithmetic quirks. VAT can be specified for each line item separately, from 0 to 100%, but this is a displayed rate in the document, not a full tax calculation — more on this limitation below.

Three ways to build an invoice: manually, from a project, and from an act

The first way is to build an invoice from scratch: specify a name, optionally link a project, select a client, and add line items manually. This is convenient when you are invoicing for something that is not in the platform as a separate task.

The second way is to generate an invoice from a project: select tasks for which the cost is already known, and PRO-dela will automatically fill in their names as line items, and take the default price from the budget or task estimate in rubles. Before saving, you can view a preliminary calculation and manually adjust any price — a draft is not created until you confirm the line items. If your company has several projects, tasks for one invoice can be taken from several projects at once — provided they all belong to the same company. The tasks from which line items are assembled are detailed in the article “Tasks in PRO-dela”; creating and splitting tasks can optionally be accelerated with the platform's AI features described in the article “AI functions in PRO-dela” — but the invoice line items themselves are not automatically assembled from this; you still have to confirm them.

The third way is to build an invoice from an already completed work acceptance act: on the act document page there is a link to create an invoice that automatically fills in line items, amounts, and details from that act, including fractional hours if the act was generated from time tracking. The resulting invoice remains linked to its source act. In all three cases, the invoice is created immediately in the “Draft” status — nothing is considered issued to the client until you do that as a separate action.

Invoice statuses: draft, issued, paid, cancelled

An invoice in PRO-dela has four statuses, and transitions between them are one-way: “Draft” can be moved to “Issued”, “Issued” to “Paid” or “Cancelled”. You cannot return an invoice to draft — if an error is found in an issued invoice, you need to cancel it and create a new one.

While an invoice is in the “Draft” status, it can be edited — changing line items, details, amounts — by the invoice author or the project manager of the project to which the invoice is linked. As soon as you click “Issue”, the line items and details are fixed: you can no longer directly edit an issued invoice; you can only change its status. This is a deliberate limitation: it protects a document that you may have already sent to the client from accidental retroactive changes.

Here it is worth stating the main point: the “Paid” status in PRO-dela is a mark that a person sets manually, not a confirmation from a bank or payment system. The payer or recipient specified in the invoice can mark it as paid while it is in the “Issued” status. The platform does not and cannot verify that money actually arrived — it simply saves your own decision that payment has occurred. The invoice author can cancel an issued invoice.

Overdue invoices and notifications

You can set a payment due date for an invoice. If this date passes and the invoice is still in the “Issued” status, the platform marks it as overdue and notifies the author, payer, and recipient once — the notification is not duplicated for the same invoice. On any status change — issued, paid, cancelled — the other parties to the invoice also receive a notification through the channels enabled in their PRO-dela settings. How notifications work in the platform in general is a separate topic, detailed in the article “Notifications in PRO-dela”.

Invoice PDF and related documents

A finished invoice can be downloaded as a PDF with one click — the document includes line items, recipient and payer or client details, as well as the logo, seal scan, and signature scan of the company if they are uploaded in its settings. This makes the document visually complete for sending to the client, but it is important to understand the boundary: this is not electronic document management with a legally significant electronic signature, but a printed form — like a regular invoice that you would print and sign by hand.

You can attach existing documents to an invoice — for example, the same work acceptance act or another project file — and detach them back, without restrictions on the invoice status. How documents and reports work in PRO-dela in general is covered in the article “Documents and reports in PRO-dela”: this is the most closely related topic because invoices are often attached to each other as documents.

Invoice list, filters, and company summary

The “Invoices” section shows a summary for the active company: how many are issued, how many are paid, how many are awaiting payment, and how many are overdue — as separate amounts at the top of the list. The list can be filtered by invoice name or number, by status, and by project, and when you switch the active company in the sidebar, the invoice list and summary update accordingly — invoices from one company are not mixed with another company's list.

The invoice payment due date is a date on a specific document, not your personal schedule or project work plan: a separate module in PRO-dela handles that, covered in the article “Plans and schedule in PRO-dela”.

Who can issue, edit, and cancel invoices

Any authorized PRO-dela user can create an invoice. The author, payer, recipient, and, if the invoice is linked to a project, also the project author and its participants can view it. The invoice content can be edited only while it is in the “Draft” status, and only by the invoice author or the project author to which it belongs. The invoice author or project author can change the status — issue and cancel; the payer and recipient specified in the invoice can also mark it as paid while it is issued.

What invoices in PRO-dela do not replace

An invoice in PRO-dela is a document and a status, not a payment acceptance. The invoice module has no online card payment, no payment gateway, and no automatic confirmation of money arrival: the client pays the invoice outside the platform — in the way you agreed with them — and you or your client set the “Paid” status yourself. This is fundamentally different from paying the company tariff in PRO-dela, where online payments and subscriptions do go through the TBank provider with webhook confirmation — there the platform acts as the payment recipient for its own subscription, but not for client invoices.

An invoice also does not maintain tax or accounting records and does not replace legally significant document flow: the VAT rate in a line item is what is printed in the document, not a calculation synchronized with accounting. The currency is limited to the ruble. If you have a question while working with invoices that is not covered in this article, the support service inside PRO-dela is described in the article “Support inside PRO-dela”.

How to start issuing invoices

1. If you don't have a project in PRO-dela yet, start with one — the basic steps are described in the article “Onboarding and first project in PRO-dela”.
2. Fill in the client card in your profile once and, if needed, your recipient details — then you can simply select them when issuing new invoices.
3. Choose the appropriate way to build an invoice: manually, from tasks of one or several company projects, or from a ready-made work acceptance act.
4. Check the line items, the VAT rate for each, and the payment due date before clicking “Issue” — after that, the invoice content is fixed.
5. Track the invoice status in the list and company summary, and mark it as paid when payment actually arrives to you outside the platform.

Frequently asked questions

Can I pay an invoice by card directly in PRO-dela?

No. An invoice in PRO-dela is a document and payment status, but not a payment form: there is no online payment acceptance for client invoices in the platform. The client transfers money in the way you agreed outside PRO-dela, and the “Paid” status is set manually in the system.

How is an invoice different from paying the company tariff?

Tariff payment is what your company pays to PRO-dela itself for using the platform, and there is indeed online payment through the TBank provider. An invoice is what your client must pay you for the project. These are two different, unrelated money flows.

Can I issue an invoice without linking it to a project?

Yes, linking an invoice to a project is optional. It is convenient to specify a project when you need to assemble line items from tasks or see invoices for a specific project separately, but an invoice can also be created as a standalone document.

Can I build one invoice from tasks from several projects at once?

Yes, if those projects belong to the same company. The platform checks this condition when generating the invoice and will not allow combining tasks from projects of different companies in one invoice.

What should I do if an error is found in an issued invoice?

You cannot directly edit the line items or details of an issued invoice — this is a deliberate limitation that protects an already sent document. The correct path is to cancel the invoice and create a new draft with corrected data.

Start issuing invoices in PRO-dela

Register in PRO-dela and try building your first invoice from your project's tasks — you can safely review and adjust the draft before issuing it to your client.

If you want to first compare the platform's terms of use, check the current tariffs — this is a separate story from client invoices, but both start with the same registration.