Bulk actions on invoices
When the same thing needs doing to a stack of invoices — a check that covers several of them, a batch of bad debt to write off, a run of paperwork to print — you can do it from the Invoices page in a single pass instead of opening each invoice one at a time.
Bulk Actions at the top of the Invoices page offers five actions:
Record a payment
Enters one manual payment per invoice, sharing a payment method and note
Mark as uncollectible
Writes off the remaining balance on each invoice, with one shared note
Void
Voids each invoice so the customer can no longer see or pay it
Download PDF
Downloads each invoice's PDF (one file, or a zip for several)
Merges the invoices' PDFs into one document and opens your print dialog
Before you start
You need permission to edit invoices to see the Bulk Actions button.
Bulk actions are available on desktop only. The mobile invoice list has no selection checkboxes — use each invoice's own page there.
Every action has its own eligibility rule, so the invoices you can pick change with the action you chose. While you're selecting, the list only shows invoices that qualify — anything the action can't take is left out until you cancel or finish.
Invoices created by your payment provider (for example, one billed through a Stripe-managed subscription) are left out of Record a payment, Mark as uncollectible, and Void — the provider collects on those, so recording or cancelling them here would put the two out of step. This excludes any invoice carrying a provider invoice id, not only ones set to charge automatically. You can still download and print them, and you can still act on them individually from the invoice's own page.
One batch can hold up to 100 invoices. If you need more, run it in several batches.
How selecting works
Open the Invoices page and choose an action from Bulk Actions (top right, between Tax Report and New Invoice).
Click each invoice you want — anywhere on its row, not just the checkbox; clicking again deselects it. While you're selecting, a click never opens the invoice. Use the status tabs, search, and filters first if that makes them easier to find — the banner's Select all and the checkbox in the table header both pick every eligible invoice currently in the list, across all pages, up to the 100-invoice limit. If more than 100 qualify, Essential selects the first 100 in the order the list is showing — so sorting a column first (oldest due date, largest amount) decides which 100 you get. The banner's Select all tells you it capped the selection; the header checkbox caps the same way but without that notice. Narrowing the list with filters works too.
The banner above the table shows how many invoices are selected and the button that runs the action.
Cancel in the banner leaves selection mode and clears the ticks — it's also the only way to switch to a different action, since Bulk Actions is hidden while you're selecting.
Record a payment
Use this when one check (or one cash drop-off) covers several invoices, or you simply have a stack of manual payments to enter.
Eligible invoices: Unpaid, Overdue, or Partially Paid, and still with a balance owing. Draft, Paid, Void, Uncollectible, and Payment Processing invoices can't be included. An invoice with a card or bank payment already in progress can still appear in the pick list — Essential names it and rejects the whole batch when you confirm, instead of filtering it out beforehand.
Everything in the batch shares one payment date, one payment method, one reference field (when configured), and one note. If the payments were collected on different days or in different ways, do them in separate batches.
The banner shows the selected invoices' combined balance, so you can check it against the amount you received.
Select Record payment in the banner to open the window.
Each invoice appears with its balance due and an amount box pre-filled with that full balance. Change any amount to record a partial payment, or use the ✕ next to a row to drop that invoice from the batch. Total payment at the bottom of the list is what you should be matching against your check.
Set the Payment date — the day the check cleared or the cash arrived. It defaults to today and can be back-dated to any past day, never into the future. It may be earlier than some invoices in the batch (an invoice written up after the check arrived); the window tells you how many invoices are dated after the payment date so you can double-check. This one date applies to every payment in the batch and is the date QuickBooks books them on, so it lines up with your bank statement.
Choose one of your business's configured payment methods. Fill in its reference field if one appears, such as Check #; a field marked * must be filled before recording. Admins manage the choices, field labels, placeholders, and required fields in Settings → Invoicing → Manual Payment Methods.
Add Internal Notes for your team if useful. Notes are included in accounting journal-entry memos sent to QuickBooks, but not on customer receipts or invoices. Use the payment method's reference field for customer-visible details such as a check number.
Select Record … Payments of … to confirm.
When the selected manual payment method has multiple GL accounts, choose the required GL account before recording the batch. Every payment in the batch uses that account. With one mapped account, it is used automatically. GL account details and Internal Notes remain internal.
Each invoice gets its own recorded payment for the amount you entered. An invoice paid down to zero moves to Paid; anything with a balance left moves to (or stays) Partially Paid, or Overdue if it's past due. Every payment is written to its invoice's timeline like a single Record Payment would be.
If an admin changes the payment method's name, reference field, or GL destination after a batch starts recording, Essential preserves payments already recorded and stops recording the remaining invoices with those changed details. Refresh and record the remaining invoices in a new batch. Retrying the original batch still recognizes its recorded payments without duplicating them.
Essential saves each payment together with the invoice status, timeline, payment-reminder stop, and accounting work that describe it. It also prepares the paid PDF before reporting that invoice complete; delivery of the saved accounting entry to QuickBooks may finish just after the confirmation appears.
If the payment is saved but the paid PDF cannot finish, Essential keeps it out of the ordinary payment selection and shows Payment processing needs attention with Retry finishing up. The same safe prompt appears if the browser loses the result and Essential cannot tell whether the payment landed. Essential saves the exact recovery request in this browser before sending the payment, so the prompt remains available after a page refresh or browser restart when you return as the same user. Use that button to replay the exact original request — do not start another payment. Essential either finishes the payment that already exists or records it once if the first request never arrived.
To correct a recorded payment, open that invoice and use Mark as Unpaid. This undoes all manual payments on that invoice; it is not a bulk action.
Mark as uncollectible
Use this to write off balances you've given up on collecting — the same thing as Mark as Uncollectible on a single invoice.
Eligible invoices: Unpaid, Overdue, or Partially Paid. Drafts are deliberately excluded — an invoice the customer has never seen isn't a write-off. An invoice with a card or bank payment in progress can still appear in the pick list, but if that payment goes through afterwards it would put the invoice straight back to paid and undo the write-off — so Essential names it and rejects the whole batch when you confirm instead. Wait for the payment to succeed or fail, then decide.
Select Mark uncollectible in the banner. The window lists the invoices you're writing off.
Enter Notes. A note is required, and the same note is saved on every invoice in the batch — write the reason you'd want to read a year from now ("customer out of business", "sent to collections").
Select Mark … Uncollectible to confirm.
Each invoice moves to Uncollectible, the note is saved on it, and the write-off is recorded in accounting. This can't be undone — if you only want to stop the invoice reaching the customer, void it instead.
Void
Use this to pull invoices back — a duplicate run, a batch raised against the wrong property, paperwork that shouldn't have gone out.
Eligible invoices: Draft, Unpaid, or Overdue, with no payment received. An invoice that has taken any money can't be voided (there's no refund path on void) — mark it uncollectible instead. An invoice with a card or bank payment still in progress can't be voided either: the payment could settle a moment later and reinstate the invoice as paid. The invoice may still appear in the pick list in that case — a payment that hasn't gone through yet isn't shown in the list — so Essential names the invoice and blocks the batch when you confirm.
Select Void in the banner. The window lists the invoices you're voiding.
Select Void … Invoices to confirm.
A voided invoice is no longer visible to the customer or editable, and any scheduled reminder emails for it stop. Unlike a write-off, you can re-open a voided invoice later from its own page — see Void an invoice (and reopening a voided one).
Download PDF
Eligible invoices: any invoice that already has a PDF — that is, one that has been sent or finalized. An invoice that has never left Draft has nothing to download yet.
Select Download PDF in the banner. One invoice downloads as a single Invoice-I….pdf; several download as a single zip named invoices.zip, with the files in the same order they appear in your list.
All invoices matching your filters can be printed, including unpaid invoices. Essential reuses an invoice’s associated PDF when it matches the selected template and is current with its payments. Otherwise, it generates a temporary PDF for that print request without attaching it to the invoice. Printing does not finalize an invoice or change its payment status.
Choose Invoice date to print to narrow the list to one day. Invoices for that day matching your other active filters are selected automatically, across pages, up to the existing 100-invoice limit. If more than 100 match, a notice explains that only 100 are selected. You can deselect any you do not want. The date uses your business timezone. If the existing invoice-date filter already covers one day, entering Print selects that day’s matching invoices.
If your business has multiple invoice templates, choose Print template beside the date picker. Your business’s default invoice template is selected initially. The selected template is used for every invoice in the batch. This only affects the printed copies; it does not change saved templates or the invoice PDFs shown to customers.
Select Print in the banner. Essential merges the selected invoices' PDFs into one document, in the order they appear in your list — including whatever sort you have applied to the table — and opens your browser's print dialog on it. Print the whole batch in one go rather than opening each invoice.
When something is skipped or fails
Download and print skip any selected invoice whose PDF cannot be prepared or retrieved and tell you how many were skipped. Printing also skips invoices that cannot be prepared before the request deadline. The rest still download or print. If not one of the selected invoices can produce a PDF, nothing downloads or prints and Essential says so; if that happens to an invoice you know has been sent, re-send it to regenerate its PDF.
Record a payment, mark uncollectible, and void check the whole batch before changing anything: if one invoice isn't eligible, nothing is changed and Essential names the invoice and the reason.
Each invoice is re-checked again at the moment it's written. If something changed while the batch was running — a customer's card payment landed, or a colleague voided the invoice — that one invoice is skipped with a reason and the rest of the batch still goes through. This is what stops a bulk payment from overpaying an invoice that was settled seconds earlier.
If a batch is interrupted partway, Essential tells you which invoices were affected and keeps only those whose payment was not recorded selected, so you can retry without re-running the ones that already went through. If the same response also contains a payment whose paid PDF still needs repair, Essential closes the ordinary selection and makes you finish that saved repair first; afterwards, start a new batch for any invoices that remain unpaid. This prevents the new batch from replacing the saved repair for money already recorded. If a payment was recorded but its paid PDF failed, or the browser loses the response before it can confirm the result, a separate Retry finishing up banner preserves the exact submission even after paid invoices leave the ordinary selection or you refresh/reopen this browser. Use that safe replay instead of starting another payment.
If the browser loses the response entirely after part of a Void or Mark uncollectible batch committed, retrying the original selection is safe: Essential recognizes invoices already in the requested status, does not repeat their history, automation, or accounting entries, and continues with the remaining invoices.
Where to find it: Invoices page, Bulk Actions (top right)
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