How the Invoice Date Is Set
When Luminous automatically creates an invoice from a sales order (whether triggered by shipment, manually, or via channel settings), it sets the invoice date to the original order date of the sales order — not today's date and not the shipment date.
This means if a customer placed an order on March 1st and it shipped on March 20th, the resulting invoice will be dated March 1st.
If the sales order has no recorded order date (an unusual edge case), Luminous falls back to the current date and time at the moment the invoice is created.
When a Custom Invoice Date Is Applied
In certain workflows — such as manually creating or overriding an invoice — a specific invoice date can be supplied at the time of creation. When that override is present, it takes precedence over the inherited sales order date.
How the Invoice Date Affects the Due Date
The invoice due date is calculated by adding your payment term's configured number of days to the invoice date:
- If the invoice date is March 1st and your payment terms are Net 30, the due date will be March 31st.
- If no invoice date is available, the due date calculation falls back to the current date.
This means the due date anchors to when the order was placed, not when it shipped.
How the Invoice Date Flows into QuickBooks
When Luminous pushes an invoice to QuickBooks Online, the invoice's date is sent as the QuickBooks TxnDate (the transaction date shown on the QuickBooks invoice). It is formatted as a calendar date (year-month-day) in UTC.
So whatever date appears as the invoice date in Luminous is exactly what QuickBooks will record as the invoice date — which, in most cases, is the original sales order date.
QuickBooks Push Timing
The moment an invoice is pushed to QuickBooks is controlled separately from the invoice date itself. You can configure push timing per sales channel (under Manage → Channels → Invoice Settings) or globally. The three options are:
| Timing Option | When the invoice is sent to QuickBooks |
|---|---|
| When marked active (default) | As soon as the invoice is finalized/activated |
| When order is shipped | When a shipment is recorded on the sales order |
| When marked paid | When the invoice is marked as fully paid |
Regardless of which timing option you use, the invoice date that appears in QuickBooks will always reflect the date stored on the invoice in Luminous (typically the original sales order date).
Key Takeaways
- Invoice date = sales order order date by default (not the ship date or today's date).
- This date is sent to QuickBooks as the
TxnDateon the QuickBooks invoice. - Due dates are calculated from the invoice date plus your payment terms.
- The timing of when the invoice syncs to QuickBooks is a separate setting, configurable per sales channel.
If you need invoices to carry a different date (e.g., the shipment date), please contact support — an invoice date override may be applicable for your workflow.