How to Keep a Copy of Every Invoice You Send
· 4 min read
"The client says they never received it — and I don't have a copy to prove I sent it." It's a small problem until the day it isn't, and then it costs you a payment and an argument. Here's how to make sure you always have a record of every invoice that left your business.
The usual ways, and where they fall short
Cc or Bcc yourself on every invoice. It works, but only if you remember every single time. Miss it once — the time it matters — and there's no copy. And your inbox fills with your own invoices.
Rely on your accounting software's "sent" record. QuickBooks, Xero and Sage all keep a record of invoices raised. But that tells you an invoice exists, not that it was delivered — and if you invoice from more than one place, or occasionally from plain email, the record is split.
Save a PDF to a folder each time. Reliable, but entirely manual, and it captures the document rather than proof it was sent.
A better approach: one Bcc address that keeps everything
Instead of Bcc'ing yourself, Bcc a dedicated address that captures and files every invoice automatically. Set it once as the default Bcc in your invoicing software and you never think about it again — every invoice you send is copied to one place, timestamped, whether you sent it from your accounting tool or from Gmail.
The advantage over cc'ing yourself is that it can't be forgotten (it's a saved default, not a manual step) and it doesn't clutter your personal inbox. The advantage over the software's own record is that it captures everything in one place regardless of where you invoiced from — and it records the moment it went, not just that it exists.
Where Execore fits
This is exactly how Execore works. You Bcc one address on the invoices you send, and every one is captured, timestamped and filed automatically — a permanent archive of what went out, without a single manual step. Execore then tracks whether each one gets paid and drafts the chase if it doesn't, but the copy-of-everything is the foundation: nothing you invoice ever goes unrecorded again.