- Short answer
- Yes, as an action you take — from a draft or a payment-pending order, never by default; the free invoice generator never sees your orders.
- What the generator can't do
- Needs no Shopify account, so there is no store behind it and no order for it to read
- Plan boundary
- Net terms, payment reminders and draft order to invoice: Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus. Deposit requirements stay Plus-only
- Automation has a condition
- Payment reminders need payment terms on the order; the Flow action Send order invoice needs them for the customer
- Contact comes first
- Add the customer's email or phone before you complete a draft order, or no order confirmation goes out
What's New Since Publication: Updated since publication · 1 change
- Shopify's early-access document templates can print invoices without an appShopify's Help Center now documents order document templates: an early-access feature, rolling out gradually, that lets a store create an Invoice template under Settings > Shipping and delivery > Documents and print it from its orders without installing an app. Stores without it can still print invoices with Shopify Order Printer.
Where is the Send invoice button?
It exists — but only where payment is still owed. On a draft order you click Send invoice — in the Payments section on desktop, under Invoice on mobile. On an order sitting in Payment pending status you reach the same action through Collect payment. In both cases the customer receives an email with a link to the checkout page, and uses it to enter billing information, select a shipping method and submit payment.
- Orders
- Drafts
A paid order can open the same door later: Shopify's order-editing page states that after you save an edit, if additional payment is required, you can send the customer an updated invoice.
What each invoice tool actually does
Merchants use one word for two different documents: the one you send in order to get paid, and the one you produce as the paperwork for an order that already exists. Shopify built a separate tool for each, plus a third that has nothing to do with your store at all.
Which invoice tool does what
| Mechanism | What it actually does | When it is the right choice |
|---|---|---|
| Draft order | Builds an order in your admin and emails the customer a link to the checkout page, where they pay. | Before payment — quotes, phone orders and wholesale deals you want paid online. |
| Shopify Order Printer | Prints or saves invoices, packing slips and pick lists for orders that already exist. | After the order exists — someone asks for a document, not for a payment link. |
| Invoice generator on shopify.com | Gives you a blank invoice form to fill in, then emails you the finished invoice as a PDF. | One-off invoices, and work that never went through your store at all. |
| Third-party apps | Add invoicing behavior Shopify's own tools do not cover. | When none of the three above matches what you have to send. |
Draft orders — how Shopify sends an invoice before payment
One step comes earlier than merchants expect. Add the customer's email address or phone number before you complete the draft order: Shopify's page states that without contact information the order confirmation is not sent, and that it cannot be sent afterwards. An unpaid draft does not wait forever either — our draft orders guide covers how long it survives and what resets the clock.
Order Printer — a document for an order you already have
Shopify Order Printer is Shopify's own free app, and its job is one line long: customize and print pick lists, packing slips, invoices, and custom documents for your orders. It changes nothing about payment. The order already exists; the app gives you the paperwork for it, and in Australia the invoice may need to be a tax invoice. For a draft that isn't an order yet, see what you can print from a draft.
You may not need the app at all. Packing slips already print from your admin, and a store with order document templates — an early-access feature that is rolling out gradually — can create an invoice template in the Documents section of Settings > Shipping and delivery and print it from its orders; what prints without an app covers both.
If you do install an Order Printer app, the legacy one is deprecated, so check which Order Printer app is the current one. If you are moving invoice templates from the legacy app, some Liquid variable names changed.
What a legally valid invoice must contain is set by your jurisdiction, not by Shopify; for numbering, see how to get sequential invoice numbers.
The free invoice generator — and what it cannot see
Shopify also publishes a free invoice generator on shopify.com, and it is the piece that sends most people down the wrong path. It is a standalone form rather than a feature of your store, and Shopify says so on the page itself:
The invoice generator can be used by everyone and anyone. We created it to give businesses a simple tool to generate invoice from, without having to sign up for anything.
The tool needs no Shopify account at all, so there is no store behind it and no order for it to read: you type the customer, the line items and the total in yourself. That suits a one-off bill, and not the request that brings most merchants here — invoicing an order the store already has.
The bills Shopify sends you. Shopify's billing pages call your own subscription charges bills, not invoices: Shopify emails each bill to the store owner and to staff who have the View billing and receive billing emails permission. Those are covered in our guide to Shopify billing and plans.
The bills your suppliers send you. Shopify Bill Pay handles money moving the other way — paying vendors, freelancers or any service that invoices your business — and it is available only to merchants in the United States. It sits among the wider features built into Shopify.
What changes for B2B and net terms
Some invoices are not meant to be paid today, and Shopify has a name for that: payment terms. It is not a B2B-only idea — an order in Payment pending status can be invoiced the same way. What B2B adds is structure around it: terms attached to a company location, and net periods of net 7, net 15, net 30, net 45, net 60 and net 90.
The plan boundary is newer than most write-ups admit. Shopify's B2B plan-features page lists net terms, payment reminders and draft order to invoice on Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus. What stays restricted to Plus is narrower than the reputation: on the payments side it is deposit requirements, partial payments and payment requests per fulfillment. If you were told that invoicing business customers means Shopify Plus, that stopped being true in April 2026.
One thing B2B does not add is a customer-facing invoice archive. Shopify describes the self-serve portal as a place where buyers view order history and account information, not a stack of invoices. Our guide to B2B on Shopify Plus works through companies, catalogs and terms in full.
Can any of this be automatic?
Partly — and both routes carry the same condition. Payment reminders send a scheduled reminder email automatically, but only for an order that has payment terms assigned. The Shopify Flow action Send order invoice emails an invoice for the order that triggers the workflow, and Shopify states that to send invoices you must be using payment terms for the customer. Automation is therefore open to orders you have already set up to be paid later — it is not a switch that turns an ordinary checkout into an invoiced one.
For a normal order paid at checkout, Shopify emails no invoice by itself. Separately, VAT invoices, once activated, are shown on the order status page for orders shipped to the EU or UK; Shopify says they aren't automatically emailed. The absence of an automatic invoice email is a reading rather than a Shopify statement: the official pages we read on 24 October 2026 — draft orders, sending a draft order invoice, deferred payments, editing orders and the Flow action reference — describe only a merchant clicking Send invoice or a workflow that needs payment terms. If you want invoices to go out on their own, the condition to set is payment terms, because that is what both features are built on.
The invoice is one of three routes a draft order can take to payment, and choosing between them is a separate decision, as is whether a payment link fits better.
What Shopify takes from the payment is a separate question too: what fee Shopify charges when a customer pays an invoice.
This page was written by AI. Separate AI agents that did not write it check its figures and claims against official sources and test its links and interactive tools. A human editor sets the site's editorial direction, topics and rules and checks that pages are complete and display correctly, but does not check their facts or edit their text. Details may change — always confirm critical data at shopify.com.
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