When creating or editing an invoice, you may encounter some errors when trying to save your changes. You'll typically see a message that looks like this at the top of the page:

If you scroll down on the invoice, you'll find the cause of the problem, and in this article, we'll walk you through some of common errors you might see, and how to fix them! For quick reference, here are the errors we'll be covering:

The problem: You've edited your invoice, and when you try to save it, you get a message stating that the total is less than allocated payments, and you need to reduce allocations first:

The reason: Because this invoice is already paid, you can't edit the invoice to be less than what it was paid for. For example, let's say an invoice is for $100, and it was paid for this amount. Cliniko has recorded this invoice as paid. Everything is done and dusted. But then you need to change the invoice for some reason—maybe you didn't mean to bill for $100, even though it was all recorded under this amount.

The solution: Edit the related payment. You'll need to find the payment first; this can be found at the bottom of the invoice:

You can access the payment by clicking on the date, and it'll bring you to the payment itself. From there, you can edit the payment (as long as you're an administrator or power receptionist). The payment will need to be edited to the same value or lower that you're trying to reduce the invoice to—for example, if you're trying to reduce your invoice to $50 but the allocated payment was $100, you will need to edit the allocated payment down to $50 (note that the remainder will be allocated to account credit). Once you save the payment, you can then go back and edit/reduce your invoice!

The problem: You get a message stating that the quantity and/or unit price is not a number:

The reason: These fields are empty or there is a non-numerical value present in your quantity or unit price.

The solution: Either remove this item (if it was added accidentally), or select the appropriate item and ensure that the quantity and price are set accordingly.

The problem: You get a message that tells you that the current quantity "must be an integer", like this:

The reason: The quantity field has to be a whole number. There's no way around this. You can't enter 0.5, or 1.5, or 3.14159265359! It's just not possible.

The solution: It depends on what you need. More often than not, folks encounter this error if they're trying to bill for a "partial" item—such as an hourly service that only took 45 minutes, or took 1.5 hours. So, a partial number is entered, but this isn't a "valid value", as we see above. 

If you're charging for partial items, our recommendation is to create a new billable item specifically for this purpose, and then adjusting either the quantity or the unit price when adding it to the invoice. We have an article here that talks about this!

The problem: You get a message that tells you the "discount percentage must be greater than or equal to 0" or "discounted amount must be a positive value", like this:

The reason: A discount cannot be a negative percentage or dollar amount.
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The solution: Ensure the discount is 0 or above!

If you have any questions on these, or encounter an error that wasn't listed here, please let our support team know! You can always reach us by clicking the little chat bubble in the lower-right. 😊 💬