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With a handful of invoices, keeping track in your head works fine. Past that, a simple status for each one — even in a basic spreadsheet — turns "did I get paid for that one?" from a memory exercise into a quick lookup.
A status set that covers most businesses
- Draft — created but not yet sent. Numbers and details can still change freely.
- Sent — delivered to the client, payment clock running, nothing overdue yet.
- Paid — payment received and confirmed. Closed.
- Overdue — past the due date with no payment received. This is the status that needs active attention.
- Void — cancelled after being sent, typically replaced by a corrected invoice or a credit note rather than being deleted outright.
Some businesses add Partially Paid for invoices with a deposit or installment already received, and Disputed for invoices under active discussion with the client — both useful if they come up often enough to be worth tracking separately rather than lumping into "Overdue."
Why "Void" matters more than it seems
Never delete a sent invoice, even a mistaken one — its number has already been issued and may already be reflected in your own accounting. Marking it Void (and, if money already changed hands, issuing a credit note against it) keeps your numbering sequence intact and leaves a clear record of what happened, rather than a gap that looks like a missing invoice later.
Keep the categories few
The value of a status system comes from being able to scan it in seconds. Five or six statuses cover nearly every real situation; a longer list starts costing more in upkeep than it saves in clarity. If you find yourself needing a seventh or eighth category, it's usually a sign two of your existing ones should be merged.
Review overdue status weekly, at minimum
The entire point of tracking status is to make the "needs action" invoices visible without having to re-check every invoice individually. A quick weekly filter for anything sitting in Overdue turns invoice follow-up from a task you have to remember into one your own system surfaces for you.