You raised an invoice. You can see it in your invoice list. But your Profit & Loss hasn't moved, the debtors report doesn't know about it, and the number on your dashboard looks wrong.
Nothing is broken, and nothing is lost. There are six reasons this happens, and you can usually tell which one in under a minute.
1. It's still a draft
This is the most common answer by a distance.
A draft invoice is a piece of paper, not a transaction. It has a number and a customer and a total, but it has posted nothing to your books — deliberately, because you're allowed to change your mind about a draft. Only issuing it creates the double entry (debit the customer, credit your revenue and the VAT).
So a draft appears in your invoice list and nowhere else. Check the status column. If it says draft, issue it.
This catches people who think of "saving" an invoice as finishing it. Saving creates it. Issuing commits it.
2. It's dated in the future
The second most common, and the one almost nobody expects.
Your reports work off the date on the invoice, not the day you typed it. If today is the 23rd and the invoice is dated the 31st, then on the 23rd that money isn't owed to you yet. It's a real, issued invoice — but it belongs to the 31st.
So for those eight days it's missing from your Profit & Loss, your age analysis and your dashboard. On the 31st it appears in all of them at once.
This is correct behaviour, not a glitch. A report that said you'd earned money you hadn't yet earned would be a worse problem than one that makes you wait. But it's confusing the first time, because the invoice plainly exists — you're looking right at it.
How to check: look at the issue date on the invoice and compare it to today. If it's ahead, either wait, or change the date to today if that's what you meant.
3. The report period ends before the invoice date
Related, but a different mistake: the invoice is fine, your report window is wrong.
Profit & Loss, Cash Flow and VAT reports all cover a period — a start date and an end date. If your invoice is dated 5 March and you're looking at February, it won't be there, and it shouldn't be.
Most reports default to your financial year. If you've narrowed the dates to look at something and forgotten to widen them again, that's your answer. Widen the range.
4. You're looking at the wrong kind of report
A Profit & Loss shows income you've earned. A Cash Flow shows money that actually moved. An unpaid invoice is income, but it is not cash.
So an issued, unpaid invoice should appear in your P&L and your debtors, and should not appear in your bank balance or your cash-flow statement. If you're checking whether an invoice "went through" by looking at cash, you'll conclude it didn't.
This is the accrual basis, and it's the standard way a business keeps books: you recognise revenue when you invoice, not when the customer finally pays. It's also why your profit and your bank balance are rarely the same number.
5. It was voided, credited or written off
An invoice that was voided is still in your list, usually greyed or marked, but its effect on the books has been reversed. Same if you raised a credit note against it, or wrote it off as bad debt.
The invoice is visible. Its contribution to your revenue is not — because you cancelled it. Check the status and look for a linked credit note.
6. You're in the wrong company
If you keep books for more than one entity, check the company selector before you check anything else. An invoice is entirely invisible from inside a different company's books, exactly as it should be.
The quick diagnosis
Work down this list in order:
1. Status says draft? Issue it. 2. Issue date ahead of today? It'll appear on that date. 3. Report period ends before the invoice date? Widen the dates. 4. Checking cash rather than profit? An unpaid invoice is revenue, not cash. 5. Voided or credited? Then it's meant to be gone. 6. Right company selected?
If none of those explain it, then something genuinely is wrong, and the thing to check next is whether the invoice has a journal entry behind it. Every issued invoice should have one, and it should debit your debtors by the full invoice total and credit revenue and VAT separately.
One habit that avoids most of this
When you issue an invoice, glance at the date before you click. It takes a second, and that date decides which month the income lands in, which VAT period it falls into, and when it starts counting as owed to you.
That's a bigger decision than it looks — especially in the last few days of a month, where a single day moves income from one VAT return to the next.