Billing via Invoice vs. Billable Item

[WmPitcher]

When I have to bill a client for a one-off, it appears I have two options:

1. I can create a billable item and tell WHMCS when to invoice the client.
2. I can create an invoice directly.

Is the only reason to use billable items so that the client can be invoiced at a specific time? Are there are any other advantages? 
is there any advantage to simply creating an invoice?

Are there any general best practices with these two options?

Cheers.

[zitu4life]

Hello @WmPitcher I am not best one perhaps to point what is the best practices, but... If you need to invoice a client using admin area, so I would advice use ADD ORDER, wich will generate invoice for that order and also this info will be used by WHMCS for reports and analytics.

- using manual invoice will need you to add custom invoice lines that could be anything your want and WHMCS will group all custom invoice items on same group. So add order is better.

I usually use Billable items for small items that I need to invoice clients already with contracts with me, clients with Billing Cycle active, and I need to add something to invoice them and this item is smaller to invoice now, so I use billable items to invoice this smaller item together with next invoice.

[brian!]

17 hours ago, zitu4life said:

using manual invoice will need you to add custom invoice lines that could be anything your want and WHMCS will group all custom invoice items on same group. So add order is better.

19 hours ago, WmPitcher said:

Is the only reason to use billable items so that the client can be invoiced at a specific time?

you can manually create an invoice and keep it in draft until it's ready to be published.

https://docs.whmcs.com/Invoicing