Invoices that hold up under scrutiny

Frequently asked questions

Can I invoice a business customer in another EU country?

Yes. On the customer record you set the VAT regime to intra-EU supply of goods or intra-EU supply of services, and the invoice applies 0% with the required wording and both VAT numbers on it. The rates that would apply without the scheme stay visible, because the Dutch tax authority requires that. Goods and services are tracked separately, because the EC sales list asks for them separately.

What happens if my customer's VAT number is wrong?

Then the invoice doesn't go out. The number is checked against VIES, the system all EU member states are connected to. If it doesn't exist or has been withdrawn, sending is blocked with a message — because with a wrongly applied zero rate, the Dutch tax authority can recover the VAT from you. If VIES happens to be down, the invoice still goes through: an outage in Brussels shouldn't bring your invoicing to a halt.

Can I pull my EC sales list filing from this?

Yes. Under EC sales list you choose a quarter and see the total per VAT number, with the underlying invoices alongside so you can trace every amount. Credit notes count negatively and drafts don't count at all, so the total matches box 3b of your Dutch VAT return. Submitting it to the tax authority is up to you — that's an action with liability attached, and it should come after your own check.

Does the payment QR on my invoice work with every bank?

That depends on the type of QR, and it's shown in the settings screen too. The bank QR follows the European SEPA standard: you scan it from your banking app, and not every Dutch bank supports it — Rabobank and ABN AMRO, among others, don't. The payment-link QR works with every bank and an ordinary camera, but costs a transaction fee per payment. You choose which of the two — or both — appears on the invoice.

Can I invoice in instalments, say 30/60/10?

Yes. You attach a payment schedule to the order: a set of instalments, each with a percentage, a moment — on order confirmation, start of production, before or on delivery, or on completion — and its own payment term. The percentages have to add up to exactly 100%, so nothing is ever left unbilled. Once the order reaches a stage, the matching instalment invoice is ready, strictly in order: a later instalment can never go out before an earlier one. The 30/60/10 (with installation) and 50/50 (without installation) schedules come built in by default, and you can add your own templates alongside them.

I invoiced €9,000 while €7,000 was agreed — do I have to credit the whole invoice?

No, you only credit the difference. The credit dialogue shows the invoice lines with the amount you're booking back alongside, pre-filled for the whole invoice: crediting the entire invoice is still two clicks, and crediting only part just means adjusting one figure. Above the lines is a switch for including or excluding VAT, so you can type the amount the way you discussed it with your customer. You can't book back more than is still outstanding, and credit notes still in draft count towards that. If you work with a payment schedule, the credit note counts in the calculation — otherwise the next instalment would be reduced to correct a difference that's already been corrected, and you'd end up invoicing the order for too little overall.

There's a mistake on an invoice I've already sent. What now?

Then you create a replacement invoice. The lines and customer details carry over to a new draft that you adjust; once that's finalised, the original invoice gets the status Replaced. It doesn't disappear and stays available on request, and both invoices refer to each other. The PDF of the new invoice automatically states which invoice it replaces and that this means the old one is void. This is possible as long as the invoice hasn't been paid, credited or cancelled, and not for an instalment invoice. Note: this isn't a bookkeeping reversal — if the VAT has already been declared or the invoice is already in your bookkeeping, a credit note is the right route. It does disappear from your day-to-day invoice overview, since the replacement sits next to it; the Include replaced switch brings it back, and search always finds it.

Can the system make sure I only start production after the deposit?

Yes. With a payment schedule on the order, Start production stays locked until the deposit instalment has been issued and paid in full, and sending can't happen until the second instalment invoice has gone to the customer. You still invoice yourself — nothing goes out automatically — but the sequence can no longer be skipped by accident. The buttons stay visible along with the reason, including the amount still outstanding, and the safeguard can be switched off per company.

My customer lives in the Netherlands but the house is in Germany — which subsidy appears on the quote?

The German one. Both the Dutch ISDE scheme and the German BAFA scheme are tied to the building being renovated, not to who pays the bill, so the address of the work determines what's shown. The screen states which address the country was based on — delivery address, customer address or invoice address — so the wrong country never happens silently. If no address is known, it falls back to the country of your own branch, and that's shown too.

Why does it say I have to apply before signing for the German subsidy?

Because that's a hard condition under BAFA, the German federal office for the scheme: the application has to be in before the order is placed, otherwise the right to the subsidy lapses. That's why the warning sits at the top of the block, alongside the schemes it applies to. The amounts shown are indicative and derived from the published German schemes; the actual award is up to the awarding body itself, and it says so in plain words underneath.

Can I lock in an agreed final amount, say exactly €15,000?

Yes, with a total-price agreement on the quote or order. You fill in the agreed final amount including VAT and the document calculates itself exactly towards that — the PDF shows a Price agreement correction line so the breakdown matches the total. On the invoice that correction becomes an ordinary line, so an e-invoice stays valid too. Instalment invoices automatically calculate against the agreed amount.

Can I automatically invoice a customer every month?

Yes. From an existing invoice you create a recurring arrangement with one click — monthly, quarterly or yearly. The platform creates the new invoice itself each period with the same lines and, if you want, a payment link included. The arrangement keeps running until you pause it or set an end date; you change the amount by updating the arrangement. If something's wrong with your invoice details, the arrangement stays in place and you hear about it, instead of nothing happening silently.

Can I collect the invoice amount from my customer's account automatically?

Yes, with a direct debit. Your customer signs a SEPA mandate once, through a link you send them; after that every recurring invoice is collected from their account automatically. It runs through your own linked payment account, so the money lands directly with you and the platform doesn't touch the flow of money. Direct debit works within the SEPA area and in euros; for customers outside it, the ordinary payment link remains available.

What happens if a direct debit gets reversed?

Your customer is allowed to reverse a SEPA direct debit for a while. If that happens, the system automatically reverses the payment, sets the invoice back to outstanding and warns you about it — with an entry on the invoice and customer timeline. The reminder process then picks the invoice up again as if it hadn't been paid, so you never think something's settled when the money has in fact been clawed back.

Can I use my own letterhead or invoice design?

Yes, in three variants. A blank white sheet on which the invoice draws its own name, address and logo; your scanned letterhead as a background behind the digital invoice, with a separate print version without the background for anyone with pre-printed paper in the printer; or a pre-printed form where you drag and drop where each item of data lands, with invoice lines that continue onto a following sheet.

My customer is asking for a contractor's declaration for the Warmtefonds. Can I create that here?

Yes. Under Financing, choose the fund — Nationaal Warmtefonds or SVn, two Dutch lending schemes — and click the button for the declaration. The official form is filled in with your customer's details, the measures ticked off (derived from the windows on the order, and adjustable), the signatory, place and date. That's available from the quote, the order and a standalone invoice. On an invoice without an order, the measures are left unticked, because invoice lines don't say what kind of work it was; you tick those yourself.

Can I put the ISDE subsidy on my quote and invoice?

Yes. For private customers, the system calculates the expected subsidy amount based on the actual glass or window surface area and the Dutch RVO rates, and puts it as a separate block on the quote — with the split between HR++ and triple glazing. The KA number is added to the invoice, and only on the last instalment and only once that's been paid in full. For business customers, the quote instead shows a text block about subsidy and financing schemes that you fill in yourself. ISDE is a Dutch government scheme run by RVO, the Netherlands Enterprise Agency.

What happens if RVO changes its measure code list?

We notice. The measure code lists are held centrally in the platform and compared weekly against the file on rvo.nl, the Dutch government agency's own website — by content, because RVO reuses file names and sometimes changes lists silently. As soon as something changes, the administrator gets a notification to load the new list. The subsidy amounts also come from that list: alongside your own rate per m² you see what RVO states for one measure and for several, and you can adopt it with one click. What's in the list remains the applicant's own responsibility, though: no rights can be derived from the RVO list, we only make a proposal.

Do my invoices go out from my own email address?

Yes. There are two ways. The fastest: you enter your own address, click the link in the confirmation email you receive, and set it as default — from then on LSQapps sends on behalf of your address. The cleanest: you link your own mailbox (Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or an Exchange server in your own office). Then every quote, invoice and notification really goes out through your own mail server, with your own SPF and DKIM, and a copy stays in your own Sent Items. If you do neither, mail goes out through our mail server — that works straight away, but your customer then sees a sender address from us.

What if I don't set anything up — will my invoice still arrive?

Yes. Every organisation gets a working sender address on our mail domain when it's created, and that domain is already set up at the mail provider with SPF, DKIM and DMARC. So you can send quotes and invoices right away without touching your DNS first. The screen shows up front which address mail is sent from and what's needed to use your own address, so you don't discover afterwards that your customer's replies are landing somewhere else.

Can I see exactly what my customer receives?

Yes, both beforehand and afterwards. Every send dialogue has a preview button that shows the email as it will be sent: the same text, the same language, the same sender address and the same closing, with the attachments listed by name below it. That preview sends nothing and logs nothing. Afterwards, every quote, order and invoice email that went out sits in the Sent emails archive, where you read it back exactly as it went out, along with the delivery status and the list of attachments that went with it. Handy when a customer claims months later to have read something different.

My customer picks a different colour after the invoice — do I have to redo everything?

No. The order has a Change design in bulk block above the lines. Tick the windows (or nothing, for all of them), set only the field that changes — colour outside and inside, say — and click apply. The design is updated, so the drawing, window schedule, order form and glass schedule immediately show the new colour. The existing lines and the invoice stay untouched; the price difference between the old and new design lands as a single extra- or reduced-work line on the order, with a description of what changed. If the order has already been invoiced in full, the system immediately creates a separate correction invoice for it; if an instalment is still running, the final instalment settles it automatically.

Can I link a photo to one quote line instead of to the whole quote?

Yes. When uploading or editing a photo, you can optionally choose the quote line it belongs to; on the PDF the photo then appears directly under that line, at half width. Leave the link empty and the photo lands in the overview block at the end, as before. Useful on a quote with several similar products — four roller shutters, say — where one photo strip at the end doesn't show which photo belongs to which shutter.

Can I see what an order actually costs my own staff?

Yes, with the Hours and materials block on the order. Your own staff log hours and material use against it at a rate per line, and the order shows, alongside the revenue and the budgeted cost price, what actually went into it in your own labour. Invoices from subcontractors are deliberately left out of this: that's work done by a third party, already on their own invoice, and doesn't count — otherwise a partly outsourced order would wrongly look extremely profitable. If no hourly rate is set up, the screen tells you that up front instead of silently counting €0.00.

Can I include separate files with a quote, order or invoice?

Yes. The send dialogue for the quote, the order confirmation and the invoice has an Extra attachments block: choose files (PDF, photos, Office documents, drawings), see the list with size, and remove anything you no longer want. There's a 15 MB limit per email including the document itself — larger emails get rejected by mail servers — and the screen calculates live and blocks you up front instead of failing only once you try to send.

Can I set up standard texts for my emails?

Yes. You save templates for the covering text on a quote, order or invoice and pick one in the send dialogue; placeholders like the customer's name, quote number and invoice number are filled in with that document's details. For each template you can save an English, German or French variant — if the customer speaks one of those languages, that variant is chosen automatically. You manage templates in CRM; without the CRM app, the send dialogue simply works without the dropdown.

Can I include my own brochure or terms with a quote?

Yes. Upload your own PDFs in the quote settings — a company brochure, warranty terms, an installation explainer — and they're attached behind every quote PDF, in the order you decide, after the content and before the general terms. You can also set a fixed closing text with your contact details that appears on the quote itself, including on quotes that come from the window and façade designers.

Can I set my own numbering?

Yes. You set up a series per document type with your own prefix, structure and starting number — for example LSQ2026-00001 — and decide whether the counter starts over each year. You can have several series side by side and mark which one is the default.