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Corrected 2026-08-18: this page previously said invoice creation and finalizing happen “automatically, in the same action,” with no draft state to interact with. That’s wrong — live-tested against a real order: creating an invoice leaves it as a draft (order stays Placed, unlocked), and finalizing is a distinct action (Send Invoice) you take afterward, on the invoice’s own page. See View and manage an invoice for that second step.
Invoice creation is two steps: creating the draft, then sending (finalizing) it. Neither happens automatically for you — except for auto-accept customers, where both steps run back-to-back without your input.

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The trigger

Selecting Create Invoice on a Placed order (see Approve or reject an order):
  1. Creates a draft invoice for that order. The order itself is unaffected — it stays Placed and unlocked.
  2. Does not finalize it. The draft sits there until someone opens it and selects Send Invoice.
Only sending the invoice moves the order to Accepted, locks it, and queues payment collection. See Invoice statuses for what “finalized” (Sent) changes, and View and manage an invoice for where the Send Invoice action lives. For auto-accept customers, both steps (create, then send) happen automatically as part of the order being placed — you won’t see a draft to review in that case. For every other customer, the draft is a real, interactable state: you can leave it as a draft, and the order can still be edited or rejected while it sits there (a draft alone doesn’t lock the order or block Reject).

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Whether it uses Xero

FikaTrade decides automatically, per order, whether to create the invoice in Xero as well: if your business currently has a working Xero connection, the invoice is created in Xero too; if not, it’s created in FikaTrade only. This isn’t something you choose per order — it follows directly from whether Xero is connected at the time. See Connect FikaTrade to Xero.

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What’s required

The order needs at least one line with a quantity and price for FikaTrade to calculate an invoice amount. In practice, any order that’s reached Placed status already has this.

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If creation fails

If FikaTrade can’t create the invoice — for example, the Xero connection has a problem — approving the order fails and you’ll see an error at that point, rather than the order silently staying unapproved. There’s no automatic retry in the background and no separate “retry” button for a failed invoice; if this happens, resolve the underlying issue (see Invoice and Xero troubleshooting) and approve the order again.