Receipts, quotes, and the bottom-line label

Three documents come out of this site, and above the bottom line they are the same document: the same parties, the same column of lines, the same subtotal, discount, tax and shipping, computed by the same code. The invoice vs. receipt vs. quote guide explains what each one is for — an invoice requests payment, a receipt confirms it arrived, a quote prices work not yet agreed. This page is about the narrower, mechanical question underneath: what the engine actually changes when you pick one kind over another, and why the line it changes most carefully is the last one.

Two labels the engine sets for you

Every document carries two words you do not type. The first is the heading: INVOICE, RECEIPT or QUOTE, set from the document kind. The second is the name of the bottom-line figure, and it is the one that matters. On an invoice the figure is called “Balance due”. On a receipt it is called “Amount paid”. On a quote it is called “Quote total”.

The engine's own source explains why this is not cosmetic: a receipt that says “Balance due” invites a second payment, and a quote that says “Balance due” reads as a demand for money that is not owed yet. These documents are often copies of each other, and the invoice's label is wrong on both of the others. So there is no field for the bottom-line label. It is looked up from the kind at the moment the document is assembled, and the only way to change it is to change the document.

One job, three documents

Take a fictional upholstery job: Sedge Upholstery re-covers 4 dining chairs for T. Varga at $85.00 each, supplies 7.5 metres of fabric at $24.80 a metre, and charges $35.00 for collection and return, with a sales tax of 6.5% added on top. Built as an invoice, a receipt and a quote, the three carry identical lines, an identical tax line and an identical total of $597.47 — the engine ran one set of arithmetic three times, and the build of this page fails if the three totals ever differ. The invoice vs. receipt vs. quote guide tabulates a trio line by line; this page stays below the arithmetic, where the engine does three different things with the same figure.

• The invoice, with a $250.00 deposit entered as already paid, ends with “Balance due” and the figure $347.47.
• The receipt ends with “Amount paid” and the figure $597.47, and carries the payment method, “Bank transfer, ref 4471”, from its Paid by field.
• The quote ends with “Quote total” and the figure $597.47.

Each has its own number when the number field is left blank — INV-20260914, RCT-20260914 and QTE-20260914: a prefix for the kind and the digits of the document date, so a document is never numberless. A number you type is kept as typed, with surrounding spaces trimmed; how to number invoices covers choosing a scheme. The second date changes its name with the kind too: the invoice's is a due date, here 14 October 2026; the receipt's is the date it was paid, here 14 September 2026; the quote's is the date the price stops being on offer.

The invoice: amount paid and balance due

An invoice is the only one of the three with an “Already paid” field, because it is the only one on which part of the money can have arrived while part is still owed. The engine computes the balance due as the total minus the amount paid, floored at zero, and it is the last step in the order of operations — after subtotal, discount, tax and shipping, as the methodology page sets out. Where a deposit has been received, the document prints the total, the payment and the balance due, so the reader sees what was credited and what the subtraction was.

Three invoices for the upholstery job show the range. With nothing paid, the balance due is the whole total, $597.47. With the $250.00 deposit, it is $347.47. With a payment of exactly the total, the balance due is $0.00 — and with $700.00 entered against a total of $597.47, the balance due is still $0.00, never a negative number. The engine does not model a refund or a credit; the overpayment simply reads as a settled invoice.

A settled invoice is not a receipt

The settled invoice and the receipt agree on every figure and disagree on what they are saying. The invoice paid in full reads “Balance due” $0.00, and above that line it prints the total of $597.47 and the payment of $597.47: the subtraction is shown, because the document is still an invoice and an invoice's bottom line is what remains of a request. The receipt for the same job prints no subtraction, because it has nothing to subtract from. Its bottom line is “Amount paid” $597.47, and with it the payment method, “Bank transfer, ref 4471”, from its Paid by field, and a second date that is the date paid, 14 September 2026, rather than a due date.

So a zero balance is a true statement — nothing is owed — but it is the statement an invoice makes, not the one a receipt makes. The invoice with a zero balance says the request has been met. The receipt says the money arrived, and names the route it took. The settled invoice carries no paid-by line even if one is typed, because the engine drops a payment method on an invoice; the receipt carries no due date, because nothing is due on it. If the document you want to hand over is the confirmation that money moved, it is the receipt, built fresh in the receipt generator, not the invoice with its balance at zero.

The receipt: the figure is what was paid

A receipt has no “Already paid” field, and if an amount paid reaches the engine on a receipt it is dropped before the totals are computed. The receipt above was built with the same $250.00 that the invoice carried; its recorded amount paid is $0.00 and its bottom line is the full $597.47. That is deliberate. On a receipt there is nothing to subtract from: the figure under “Amount paid” is the total of the document, because the document's claim is that the whole of it was paid.

What a receipt has instead is a payment method. The “Paid by” field is kept only on receipts — the same text passed with an invoice or a quote is discarded, because an invoice is not paid yet and a quote may never be. On the upholstery receipt the Paid by field prints as “Bank transfer, ref 4471”. On a cash job, as the existing guide notes, the receipt is often the only record either side will hold, which is why the method is worth stating rather than assuming.

A deposit is two documents

A job that is partly paid and partly owed is, in this engine's vocabulary, an invoice with an amount paid — not a document the receipt generator can produce. What the receipt generator can produce is the receipt for the deposit itself: a receipt whose one line is the deposit. Built for the upholstery job with a single line, “Deposit against invoice INV-20260914”, at $250.00, and the payment method filled in, it ends with “Amount paid” $250.00, with its Paid by field reading “Bank transfer, ref 4471”. That figure is the invoice's amount paid, $250.00, to the cent, because both were computed in whole cents from the same typed figure.

One deposit, then, produces two documents, each making one claim. The invoice says $347.47 is still owed; the deposit receipt says $250.00 arrived. Neither says both, and the two figures add back to the invoice total of $597.47 — the build of this page checks that they do. Nothing travelled between them: the invoice number on the deposit line was typed, because the tool stores nothing between sessions. The deposit receipt here was built with its tax mode set to none; which mode a deposit should carry is not something the engine decides, and this site does not advise on it.

The quote: a price, not a demand

The quote carries the fewest fields of the three. There is no amount paid, because nothing has been paid; there is no payment method, because nothing has been paid by any method. The engine drops both if they arrive. The upholstery quote above was built with the deposit and the payment method both supplied; its recorded amount paid is $0.00 and its bottom line is “Quote total” $597.47. The second date is “Valid until” — the day the price stops being on offer — and the quote generator labels it that way.

Whether an accepted quote binds you, and what a deposit on a quote commits either side to, is not something the engine decides and not something this site advises on; the invoice vs. receipt vs. quote guide sets out what varies, and the payment terms guide covers deposits as a term — state the deposit on the quote, then record it in the invoice's amount-paid field once it arrives.

What the kind does not change

Everything above the bottom line: each line rounded once to a cent, the subtotal as the sum of the rounded lines, the discount before tax, tax added or extracted according to the mode, shipping after tax. Each step is worked through with figures in how invoice totals are computed, and the mode choice — including the error of subtracting a percentage from a tax-inclusive price, which the engine never does on any of the three documents — is covered in inclusive vs. exclusive tax arithmetic.

Validation is shared as well, and a document that fails any of its checks gets a message instead of a figure, with the same messages on every kind. Every document needs a date that exists on the calendar: a document date typed as the thirtieth of February is refused with “Choose a valid document date.” and a second date in a thirteenth month with “Choose a valid second date.” A second date earlier than the document date is refused with “The second date cannot be before the document date.” Both parties need a name — a blank sender is refused with “Enter who the document is from.” and a blank recipient with “Enter who the document is for.” — though a name is all the engine asks for, and a receipt made out to “Cash” with no address block is accepted. At least one line is needed, and none at all is refused with “Add at least one line item.” Every line needs a description, so a line whose description is only spaces is refused with “Every line needs a description.” Notes of exactly 600 characters are accepted; one character more is refused with “Notes are limited to 600 characters.” None of these rules looks at the kind.

Two things the kind does not touch are set by you. The currency symbol — one of 10 — is a prefix printed before every figure, with no conversion behind it. And the tax label is the one text label on the totals block you can set: left blank, it prints “VAT (included)” when tax is already included and “Tax” otherwise; type your own and that is what prints, as the upholstery documents show with “Sales tax”.

Common misreadings

• Reading an invoice's paid line as the receipt. On an invoice with a deposit, the amount paid is a deduction on the way to the balance; the document is still asking for the rest. The receipt's “Amount paid” is the whole figure, with nothing left over.
• Expecting a receipt to show what remains owed. It cannot: it has no amount-paid field and no balance. The document that shows a remainder is an invoice with the amount paid entered.
• Reading a deposit receipt's figure as the job total. A receipt confirms the sum that arrived. The deposit receipt above says “Amount paid” $250.00, not $597.47; the remainder is on the invoice, as its balance due.
• Entering a deposit on a quote. The field does not exist, and the engine discards the value if it arrives, so the quote total is unchanged. A deposit on a quote is a term, and terms go in the notes.
• Reading a receipt's second date as a deadline. On a receipt the second date is the date the money was paid, and nothing is due on a receipt. The date that sets a deadline is the invoice's due date; the date that sets an expiry is the quote's valid-until date.
• Relabelling by hand. As the existing guide puts it, a receipt built from last month's invoice keeps the invoice's total label unless someone changes it. Here the label follows the kind, so pick the kind rather than editing the word.
• Treating a zero balance as a receipt. An invoice paid in full reads “Balance due” $0.00; it is accurate and it is still an invoice. The receipt is a separate document that names the payment and how it was made.

Where this stops

The engine decides what the bottom line is called and what figure sits beside it. It does not decide which document to issue, what a receipt or an invoice must contain where you trade, whether a quote binds you, or how a payment is recorded in your books. Those depend on the rules where you trade, and this site is not advice on any of them. The three generators — invoice, receipt and quote — apply the labels above and nothing else; the rest of the guides cover the fields, numbering and terms.

Questions

A document generator, not accounting, legal or tax advice. Every figure and label on this page was computed when the page was built by the same engine that builds your PDF, as the methodology page describes; nothing you enter leaves your browser, and nothing is stored — download the PDF before closing the tab.