Overview of the invoice creation process
We demonstrate a method for generating invoices within SharePoint by integrating data from monday.com. The system uses three connected boards in monday.com to manage contacts, clients, and invoice details.
This functionality (and much more) is available in the Microsoft 365 SharePoint • Automate & Embed app.
Setting up the monday.com boards
The solution uses three interconnected boards:
- Contacts board: Contains individual contact details
- Clients board: Lists company information
- Invoices board: Manages all invoice data
The invoices board connects to both clients and contacts, pulling information such as billing addresses and shipping details using connected board and mirror columns. This is not absolutely necessary, but just shows the power of the automations to support formula, connected board and mirror columns within monday.com.
Each invoice contains sub-items representing line items with:
- SKU details
- Unit quantities
- Pricing information
- Automated calculations for net total, tax, and gross total
Automated calculations in invoice items
In the example, we use formula columns to automatically calculate:
- Net total: Units multiplied by unit price (rounded to 2 decimal places).
- Gross total: Net total plus 20% VAT (in this example it's for a company in the UK, but you can adapt this to the needs of your own local tax laws).
- Tax amount: Difference between gross and net totals.
These calculations update dynamically when any underlying values are modified.
Creating the word template in SharePoint
The process begins with a Word template stored in SharePoint containing:
- Placeholder text for dynamic fields
- A repeatable table row for invoice line items
- Fields for client and contact information
- Job numbers and due dates (formatted in American date style in the example, but available for all international formats)
The template is designed to pull data from the connected monday.com boards when generating the final invoice.
If you'd like a starting point for building Word template documents, you can browse our document template gallery, then save the Word document template to your own SharePoint site.
Automating document generation
The system uses monday.com automations to:
- Create a dedicated SharePoint folder for each new invoice
- Trigger document generation when a status column changes
- Populate the Word template with data from monday.com
- Save the completed invoice in the appropriate SharePoint folder
The automation workflow:
- Monitors for status changes to "create invoice"
- Locates the SharePoint template
- Generates the document with all connected data
- Saves the output as a Word file in SharePoint
Additional functionality
The solution can be extended to:
- Generate PDF versions of invoices
- Automatically email PDF versions of invoices to clients
- Maintain all invoice documents (with version control) within SharePoint for record-keeping
The integration between monday.com and SharePoint provides a streamlined process for creating professional invoices while maintaining data consistency across platforms.
