Receipts and invoices are the same document
When a client checks out, Bella creates a sale and emails the client a receipt (also shown in your dashboard as the Checkout summary). That receipt is the client’s invoice — it is the same document whether someone calls it a receipt, an invoice, a tax invoice, a checkout summary, or proof of purchase. Bella does not have a separate “invoice” screen; the sale receipt covers all of these. Each receipt shows the itemised services and products, any discounts, memberships or package coverage, the amount paid and how it was paid, the receipt number, your business name and branding, any one-off note you added at checkout, and your custom footer.Giving a client their receipt or invoice
There are a few ways to get a receipt to a client — see Sales → Giving a client their receipt or invoice for the full steps:- Automatically at checkout — the receipt is emailed to the client as soon as you take payment. This applies to both an appointment checkout and a walk-in or retail sale with no appointment (you can mute an appointment receipt for a single checkout from the Notifications control on the checkout panel).
- Send on demand — open the sale from Sales and click Send receipt (or use Send receipt in the Sales list row menu) to send it to the client at any time. This works for any sale, including a walk-in with no appointment. It’s always emailed, and also texted when you’ve switched on SMS receipts.
- Print or save as PDF — from the sale, choose Print / save as PDF to hand it over or attach it to your own email.
- Re-send — for a sale that came from an appointment, you can also re-send the receipt from the appointment’s Notifications tab. On the sale itself, the Send receipt button shows when a receipt was last sent and becomes Resend receipt.
- Clients help themselves — a logged-in client can open My receipts in their online-booking account to see all their purchases. They can open any one to view the full itemised receipt, print it or save it as a PDF, or email it to themselves again.
Three kinds of text you can put on a receipt
Bella gives you three separate places to add your own wording. They look similar but apply at different levels, so pick by how often the wording should appear:Adding a note to a single receipt
Sometimes you need to say something about one appointment or one purchase — an aftercare reminder, what a patch test showed, or that an item was gift wrapped. That’s the Receipt note. At an appointment checkout: open the appointment, click Checkout, and type into the Receipt note box in the Booking controls section (just under the Notifications control that decides whether the receipt is emailed). For a walk-in or retail sale: go to Sales > Add sale and type into the Receipt note box below the private note. That’s it — the note is saved onto the sale and appears on the receipt the client gets, on the printed or PDF copy, and in their My receipts page online. It’s shown above your standing receipt footer.Receipt note or private note? The Receipt note is written for the client and prints on their receipt. The private note on the same screen is for your team only and never appears on a receipt or in anything the client sees. If in doubt, the helper text under each box tells you which is which.
Good to know about the receipt note
- It’s one-off by design. Each sale starts with an empty box. If you find yourself typing the same thing every time, put it in the receipt footer instead so it appears automatically.
- Plain text, up to 500 characters. Multiple lines are fine. Formatting, links, and images aren’t supported, and anything you type is shown exactly as written.
- You can fix a typo. Open the sale, click Edit sale, change the Receipt note and give a reason. The change is recorded in the sale’s edit history with your name, and re-sending the receipt sends the corrected wording. Clearing the box removes the note. Correcting a completed sale needs the same permission as issuing a refund.
- It isn’t texted. SMS receipts stay short — the total plus a link. The client sees the note when they open the full receipt.
Setting the receipt footer
The Receipts settings page lets you add a custom footer that appears at the bottom of every receipt your clients receive. Use it for a thank-you message or a cancellation or returns policy.Where does my tax registration number go? If you’re registered for tax, it has its own field under Taxes and prints in the heading of every tax invoice — so you don’t need it in the footer for those sales. If you’re not registered for tax (common for tax-free services), that field isn’t available to you, and a sale with no tax on it isn’t a tax invoice — so the footer is where to show a business or registration number.
- Go to Settings > Receipts
- Type your footer in the Receipt footer box — you can use multiple lines
- Review the change summary, then click Apply
Where the footer appears
Once set, the footer appears on:- The receipt emailed to the client after checkout, below the totals
- The in-app sale summary for each sale, and its printed / Save-as-PDF version
Claiming a rebate (health funds, insurance)
Clients of allied-health and wellness businesses (remedial massage, physiotherapy, chiropractic, and similar) often need an itemised receipt to self-claim a rebate from their private health fund or insurer. Bella’s receipt serves as that proof of purchase:- It shows the itemised services, the date, the amount paid, your business name and footer, and — on any sale that carries tax — your tax registration number in the tax-invoice heading. A sale with no tax on it isn’t a tax invoice, so for tax-free services the footer is what carries your number.
- The practitioner’s registration or provider number can be shown against each service line — set it on the team member’s profile as the team member’s receipt note, and it prints beneath their name on the receipt. See Team members. (That’s the per-person standing note — not the one-off receipt note you type at checkout.)
Good to know
- It’s captured per sale. The footer is saved onto each sale at checkout, so a receipt always shows the footer that was in place when the sale happened. Changing the footer updates receipts for new sales — receipts already issued keep the footer they were created with.
- Anything you type is shown exactly as written. Special characters are shown as plain text, never run as code.
- Empty means empty — clearing the footer removes it from every surface, with no blank line left behind.