The Six Invoice Statuses and What Each One Means

You send an invoice on the 3rd. On the 20th your client says they never saw it. Now you are guessing: did it land in spam, is it sitting with someone in accounts payable, or did they open it and quietly ignore it? A status tells you exactly where the invoice is, so you stop guessing and follow up on the right thing.

In JupiterInvoice an invoice moves through six statuses: Draft, Sent, Viewed, Change Requested, Approved, and Locked. Each one is triggered by a specific action, either yours or your client's. Here is what each means and what pushes the invoice forward.

Draft: yours to edit, nobody else can see it

A Draft exists only for you. You are still adding line items, setting the currency, choosing payment terms, and checking the bank details. The recipient has no link yet and cannot open anything. This is the one status where you can change everything without leaving a trail.

Before you leave Draft, run through the invoice before sending checklist. Once you send, some fields lock for good, so a missing tax line or the wrong invoice number is easier to fix now than later.

Sent: the link is live, the clock starts

You create the invoice, generate a private link, and share it. The status flips to Sent. The recipient does not need an account and does not sign up for anything; they open the link and work with the invoice directly.

Sent means delivered on your side. It does not mean read. If an invoice sits on Sent for days, that is your cue to check whether the email reached them at all rather than assuming they are stalling. A follow-up plan for an unopened invoice is different from chasing one they have clearly seen.

Viewed: the recipient opened the link

The moment your client opens the link, the status moves to Viewed. Now you know the invoice reached a human. If it is a 30-day invoice that opened on day one and there is still no movement by day 25, the problem is not delivery. It is a decision sitting on someone's desk.

This is where the difference between Sent and Viewed saves you a pointless email. See whether the customer actually opened it before you write the follow-up, and you can match your message to reality.

Change Requested: the client wants something different

Your recipient can edit some fields themselves and must request others. The split matters.

Recipient-editable fields are the PO number, billing entity, billing address, and AP contact. The client changes these directly, you get notified, and you can revert if something looks wrong. These are tracked as amendments to the current version, not new versions.

Requestable changes are line items, pricing, discounts, currency, payment terms, and due date. The client cannot change these on their own. They submit a request and the status becomes Change Requested. You approve or decline. If you approve a content change, a new version is created (V1, V2, and so on), so the history stays clean. The difference between versions and amendments is worth knowing before you start approving edits.

Say your client adds their PO number and then asks you to split one line into two. The PO addition is an amendment to the existing version. The line split, once you approve it, becomes V2. Both are recorded. Neither requires you to reissue anything by hand. This whole exchange is what letting customers edit their own invoice is built to handle without the email loop.

Approved: the recipient has signed off for payment

When the recipient is satisfied, they approve the invoice for payment. The status becomes Approved. In practice this means the person on the other side has confirmed the billing entity is right, the PO is attached, the amounts match, and their AP team has what it needs to pay.

Approval is the status you actually want to reach, because an approved invoice is one AP has agreed to. If your invoices keep bouncing before this point, the fixes usually live earlier, in the fields, and the field-by-field breakdown of what AP teams want covers the common ones.

Locked: the version is final and immutable

Once a version is approved, it locks permanently. Locked means no more edits to that version, by anyone. The record is fixed for your books and for the client's.

Some fields are locked from the moment you issue the invoice, not just at the end: invoice number, issue date, sender details, and bank details. Those never change once the invoice leaves Draft, which is why getting your purchase order handling and numbering right early matters. If the client needs a different amount after a version locks, you issue a new invoice or a credit note rather than reopening a closed record.

How the statuses fit together

Quotes follow a similar shape, with a valid-until date and an accept step where the recipient types their name to sign. You can see the full picture of how the collaborative invoicing features connect these statuses, or read how recipients approve without an account to see the client's side of the flow.