Invoices and packing slips that carry your name, not ours
How Depotely generates a PDF invoice for every order with your company details, why it refuses to generate one when those details are missing, and what the packing slip is for.
· 3 min read
An invoice is a legal document. It has to name the seller, the seller's Chamber of Commerce number and VAT number, and it has to be right the first time. Depotely generates one for every order, automatically, and it would rather generate nothing than generate a wrong one.
Generated as orders come in
Every order fetched from a channel gets an invoice: a numbered PDF with the buyer's details, the lines, the VAT and your company identity. It is produced in the background shortly after the order appears, is attached to the order in Depotely, and is sent to the buyer by email. There is nothing to click.
Your identity, resolved every time
The company name, address, Chamber of Commerce number and VAT number on the invoice come from your account settings, resolved at the moment the invoice is generated. Depotely never falls back to a default. An earlier version of the app printed a placeholder company with a made-up registration number when the settings were empty; that is treated as a bug, not a feature, and those placeholder values are now recognised as "missing".
A blocked invoice beats a wrong one
If your identity is incomplete, no invoice is generated. Instead the invoices page shows a banner that names the fields that are missing, usually the company name, the VAT number or the billing address, and links to the settings page where you fill them in. An empty invoice list with orders present is that banner's case, not a sign that something broke. Once the fields are complete, new orders get their invoices again.
The packing slip
Alongside the invoice there is a werkbon, the packing slip for the warehouse: the lines to pick, the quantities and the delivery address, laid out to be read next to a shelf. It is generated from the same order data and printed from the order.
The email
Invoice emails go to the buyer from your sender name, with the PDF attached. Every plan sends as many as the orders require; there is no monthly cap on invoice or review emails. The wording of the review email is yours to edit; the invoice email keeps a fixed, neutral wording so the attachment is never in doubt.
Documents date in UTC
Invoice and packing slip dates are rendered from the time the order was processed, in coordinated universal time. For a Dutch seller that is one or two hours behind the clock on the wall; it is also the same clock the servers and the marketplaces use, so an order and its invoice never disagree about the day.
What is not on the invoice
Depotely's own invoice to you for your subscription is a separate document, numbered in its own sequence and shown on the billing page. The two never mix: a customer invoice carries your identity and goes to your buyer; a Depotely invoice carries ours and goes to you.
Checklist before your first order
1. Fill in the company name, address, Chamber of Commerce number and VAT number under account settings.
2. Set the billing address if you have more than one address.
3. Watch the invoices page after the first order arrives. If the banner is gone and the PDF is there, every later order will follow.