How to Onboard a Client to a Shared Invoice Link

Your client's AP team just bounced an invoice because the billing entity read "Acme Inc" instead of "Acme Holdings LLC." You retype it, re-export the PDF, re-email it, and wait again. That round trip is the thing to kill. The fix is to hand the client a link where they correct their own details, and you get notified when they do.

Here is how to set that up for a new client the first time, so the next ten invoices run without the back and forth. Everything below works on the free plan.

Step 1: Build the invoice so only the right fields are open

Start a draft at the create-an-invoice screen. Fill in your line items, pricing, currency, payment terms, and due date. Those are sender-only. The client can ask about them in the comment thread, but they cannot change the amount you are owed, which is exactly what you want.

Four fields are open to the client to edit directly: the PO number, their billing entity, their billing address, and their AP contact. These are the fields that normally cause rejections, and they are the fields the client knows better than you do. When the client edits one, you get notified and can revert it in a click if something looks off. If you want the full map of what is locked, open, or request-only before you send, the breakdown of every invoice field lays it out.

Three fields never move once the invoice is issued: the invoice number, the issue date, and your bank details. That immutability is what makes the link safe to hand over.

Step 2: Share the link, not a PDF

Generate the private link and send it to your client contact. They open it in a browser. No account, no signup, no password to reset three weeks later. This matters more than it sounds: the reason a client sits on an invoice is often friction, not refusal. A link they can open on a phone removes the friction.

If you have been emailing attachments, the shift is worth understanding. A link beats a static PDF because the client can act on it in place instead of replying with corrections you then have to apply by hand. You can still see where the invoice stands, and the status moves from Sent to Viewed the moment they open it, so you know whether a chase is even warranted.

Step 3: Tell the client what to do on the link

Do not assume the client knows a link is editable. One short message does it. Something like:

Here is your invoice. If you need a PO number on it, or the billing entity or address is off, you can fix those directly on the page. If anything about the amount or terms looks wrong, leave a comment and I'll sort it.

That sentence sets the whole workflow. The client adds their purchase order number themselves instead of emailing it to you to retype. They correct their own legal entity. They set their AP contact and forward it to accounts payable without you ever asking who that is.

Step 4: Let the client route it to accounts payable

On many B2B jobs the person you deal with is not the person who pays. The client can forward the invoice to their AP contact straight from the link. That is the handoff that usually goes dark in an email chain. If you want to understand where invoices stall in that stage, the AP handoff workflow walks through it.

When the client adds a PO or AP contact after the invoice is already sent, that does not spin up a new version. PO and billing edits are tracked as amendments to the current version. Content changes (a line item, a price) create a new version, V1 to V2 and so on, so your records stay clean and you can see exactly what changed and when.

Step 5: Collect payment and close it out

If you have connected your own Stripe account, the client can pay by card on the same link. JupiterInvoice does not hold or move the money; it presents your details and tracks the invoice through to Paid. If you take bank transfer instead, your bank details sit on the invoice and the client can report the payment they made. Once the invoice is marked Paid, recipient edits stop. The record is frozen.

Making it a repeatable client setup

The first invoice is where you teach the client the pattern. After that, the same contact knows to open the link, fix their own fields, and forward it onward. For practices running the same clients every month, pair this with invoices that send themselves so the only manual step is the occasional correction, which the client now handles.

This is the core of why JupiterInvoice suits bookkeepers: your client does the data entry on the fields they own, you keep control of the numbers, and nobody has to log into a vendor portal to make it happen. It is free with unlimited invoices. Pro is 10 dollars a month or 100 a year, which removes the "Powered by JupiterInvoice" footer and halves the card fee, but you do not need it to run the workflow above.

Start a draft for your next client and send the link with the one-line instruction. The first one takes a few minutes. Every one after that runs itself.